Readum Combines Google, Facebook for Reader Comments

PW: "In an unusual social media venture that brings together Google and Facebook, BookGlutton.com founder Travis Alber is releasing Readum, a new social media application that allows readers to add comments and notes to books in their Google eBooks library and easily post them on Facebook for the general public or to specific groups. ... "

Google Books for iDevices gets landscape view for iPad and other features

mobiputing: "There’s a new version of Google Books for iOS, which is optimized for the Apple iPad thanks to a new landscape mode that lets you view two pages at a time and browse through the 2 million books in the Google Books library in landscape. I’m really not sure why it took this long before Google decided to enable this feature. ... "

Lessons for journalism from the Google Books decision, across Europe and here in the US

Nieman: "On Tuesday, US Judge Denny Chin rejected a settlement agreement between Google, the Association of American Publishers, and the Authors Guild for a 2005 lawsuit over the search giant’s full-text scanning and displays of copyrighted books. While Judge Chin’s decision makes the precise future of Google Books unclear for now, the issues it raises are already being felt by journalists, newspapers, and media creators of all stripes who are currently grappling with Google abroad. ... "

After Rejection, a Rocky Road For Google Settlement

Insightful analysis from Albanese, PW: "In the hours after Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed Google Book Settlement, publishers and the Authors Guild said they were open to narrowing the scope of the proposed settlement in order to get a revised deal approved, while Google said it “would consider its options.” But after more than two years debating the settlement pros and cons, one thing is clear: the visionary arrangement once on the table is history. This morning, the parties will confront what comes next, and the rest of us what that might mean for the digitization of books. ... "

Google’s Next Stop May Be in Congress

NY Times: "SAN FRANCISCO — Now that a judge has curtailed Google’s ambitions to create a giant digital bookstore and library, the company is left with few appealing options. Google and groups representing publishers and authors were assessing their options Wednesday, trying to figure out whether they would remain allies or become enemies again. ... "

The rejected Google e-books settlement: What it means and what comes next

LA Times:

More than a year after giving it preliminary approval, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin on Tuesday rejected the Google Books Amendment Settlement Agreement, yet left a door open for the parties to try for a revision. 'The motion for final approval of the ASA is denied, without prejudice to renewal in the event the parties negotiate a revised settlement agreement,' he wrote.

What's more, in his decision, Chin detailed several possible revisions, providing a roadmap for the parties if they intend to attempt to revise the settlement.

Will they? It looks like they may try. ...

"Although I am persuaded that the parties are seeking in good faith to use this class action to create an effective and beneficial marketplace for digital books, I am troubled in several respects," Chin wrote. He brought up several key issues that seemed to point a way toward potential resolution of the agreement, including moving the issue of orphan works and international copyright issues to Congress, privacy concerns and inverting the structure of the ASA so authors interested in participating could opt in, rather than being included by default. ...

Judge Rules Against Google Books Settlement

Good decision: Agreement needs an opt-in rather than opt-out in order to fully protect copyrights. That would also help get around the inappropriate fact of a publishers' org and the Authors Guild presuming to have authority to negotiate for all authors of out-of-print works, which they don't. Puts power back into the hands of true copyright holders. paidContent: "A federal judge has ruled against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) in its long-standing attempt to expand a plan to scan and then distribute millions of books online. Google was sued by the Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers back in 2004, with the writers’ groups saying that the company’s Google Books site broke copyright laws. The two sides settled their dispute in 2008, but revised that initial settlement in fall 2009 in response to objections from the Justice Department and competitors, who claimed that the initial settlement gave Google too much control over the electronic distribution of in-copyright, out-of-print books. In an opinion issued today, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the new settlement remained too favorable to Google. 'The [settlement] would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case,' Chin wrote. ... "

Google Acquires End-to-End EBook Technology Startup

WSJ:

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Google Inc. (GOOG) has acquired eBook Technologies Inc. in a move the Internet search giant said was aimed at delivering richer reading experiences on tablets, electronic readers and other portable devices.

It was not immediately clear how Google intends to use eBook's technologies, which include an end-to-end electronic book platform offering a full range of ebook products and services. ...

The deal comes just over one month after Google launched Google eBooks, its long-anticipated digital bookselling enterprise. Google eBooks will enable the Web giant to challenge two of its powerful rivals, Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), in the digital books business, which is valued at close to $1 billion and is expected to grow in the coming years.

Database of Google Books Shows the Half-Life of Celebrity

arstechnica: "Is it possible to study something as ill-defined as culture in a quantitative manner? Researchers from Harvard have collaborated with Google and some traditional publishers to answer that question with a qualified 'yes.' By leveraging a portion of Google's massive library of digitized books, the team has created what they call a 'culturome,' with which they can track the use of language and terms across hundreds of years. This lets them track not only trends in language and usage, but the rise and fall of celebrities and historic events in the books of many eras. And, thanks to Google, the underlying data has been exposed via a Web interface, allowing others to perform their own analysis."

How Google Can Save America’s Books

Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books: "Google represents the ultimate in business plans. By controlling access to information, it has made billions, which it is now investing in the control of the information itself. What began as Google Book Search is therefore becoming the largest library and book business in the world. Like all commercial enterprises, Google’s primary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. Libraries exist to get books to readers—books and other forms of knowledge and entertainment, provided for free. The fundamental incompatibility of purpose between libraries and Google Book Search could be mitigated if Google were willing to contribute some of its data and expertise to the creation of a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). ... "

Art by Félix Vallotton

French Government Dubious of Hachette Livre/Google Deal

The Bookseller: "French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand has reacted extremely cautiously to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed yesterday for Google to scan French-language out-of-print books for Hachette Livre. The minister said he regrets that France's largest publisher acted unilaterally before the French book business adopts a common strategy on the issue."

Google in 'Notional' Talks with UK Publishers After French Deal

The Bookseller: "Google is in 'notional' talks with UK publishers about a digitisation deal, the internet company has said. Speaking at the press conference to announce its agreement with Hachette Livre over book digitisation, the business also reiterated its view that its e-book platform would launch 'shortly' with hopes it would be up and running across Europe by Easter. Google said Hachette had already signed up with Google Editions for the US."

Google Strikes Deal With French Publisher

NYTimes: "PARIS — Google said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project. Under the agreement, which follows a landmark settlement with U.S. publishers last year, Google will be allowed to sell the books it scans as e-books or in other electronic formats. But there is one important difference between the U.S. settlement and the deal with Hachette, the largest publisher in France and the No.2 trade publisher by sales worldwide, after Pearson. Hachette, not Google, will determine which of the books covered by the deal — those that remain under copyright but are no longer commercially available — can be scanned."

London: Free Word Centre Debate on (drum-roll) ... THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK

Books | guardian.co.uk: "People often talk about the future of the book; strangely, no one in the UK has recently thought to examine the prospects for the book industry in public. So the Free Word Centre's debate on the future of publishing was a first, and very interesting it was, too. As it turned out, the headline news from this event, which I chaired with a panel of two influential contemporary publishers (Faber's Stephen Page and Canongate's Dan Franklin), a self-styled techno-geek from the BBC (Bill Thompson), and a very senior Google person (Santiago de la Mora) was all about Google. ..."

Google Books - Rampant Bibliographic Errors

Laura Miller - Salon.com:

... everyone seems to agree that Google Book Search represents a revolutionary boon to scholars, especially people embarked on specialized research but without ready access to a university library. But is it? As UC-Berkeley professor Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out in an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education last year (expanded from a post on the blog Language Log), a research library is only as useful as the tools required to extract its riches. And there are some serious problems with the bibliographic information attached to many of the digital texts in Google Books.

Nunberg, a linguist interested in how word usage changes over time, noticed "endemic" errors in Google Books, especially when it comes to publication dates. A search for books published before 1950 and containing the word "Internet" turned up the unlikely bounty of 527 results. Woody Allen is mentioned in 325 books ostensibly published before he was born.

Other errors include misattributed authors -- Sigmund Freud is listed as a co-author of a book on the Mosaic Web browser and Henry James is credited with writing "Madame Bovary." Even more puzzling are the many subject misclassifications: an edition of "Moby Dick" categorized under "Computers," and "Jane Eyre" as "Antiques and Collectibles" ("Madame Bovary" got that label, too). ...

Will Google's Net Neutrality Shift Complicate the Book Settlement?

Publishers Weekly:

With the Google book Settlement still pending approval in Judge Denny Chin's court, observers say that a shift last week in Google's stance on the issue of 'net neutrality' raises new questions about the deal. ...

Now more than six months since the book settlement's final fairness hearing, New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann suggested that the company's retreat on net neutrality principles could complicate the already complex settlement debate. "What I think the [Verizon-Google] proposal sets up in sharp relief is the question of which services under the [book] settlement are optional and which are mandatory," Grimmelmann explained to PW. "Settlement opponents could well use the Verizon-Google proposal as evidence that commitments or options that don't actually bind Google may never happen, and therefore shouldn't be counted in the settlement's favor. ...

eWeek's Google Watch: Google Editions Doesn't Stand a Chance vs. Amazon Kindle

Clint Boulton: "Google: Apple owns music, Amazon owns books. Don't embarrass yourself. Google Book Search is a different animal because it aims to make orphan works the other book providers aren't trucking in available online for purchase. This could catch on big in university libraries. But Editions is just another mini-mart for books. The open device and platform approach is a nice gesture, but it's not enough. Amazon Kindle is rolling."

Google Foe Antoine Gallimard Elected President of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE)

Read about it at Bookseller.com.

[Gallimard's] priorities for the SNE include an agreement for digitizing out-of-print titles, but despite political pressure "let us not confuse speed with rushing," and "allow technical and financial reasons to interfere with the aim of including French 20th century heritage in digital libraries and thwarting the worrying ambitions of Google Books."

He called for more dialogue with booksellers at a time when "a few major players want to control our pricing policies in order to impose their vertical integration model," and for VAT on ebooks to be reduced from 19.6% to the 5.5% levied on print.

Gallimard, who took over as SNE chief from Serge Eyrolles, welcomed the recent industry-wide agreement to achieve interoperability of the various ebook distributors. "We must overcome divisions and form ties between the profession’s structures," he said.

But interoperability was not enough for former culture minister Jacques Toubon. "Publishers should get together to create a single distribution platform," to compete with the search engines and other powerful groups, he told The Bookseller.

Google Editions "Open-Ecosystem"

Chris Dawson writing on ZDNet: "Google Editions has been on my radar for a while now, primarily for its potential applications to educational technology. After all, while the Kindle and Sony Reader were great tools for bookworms, they were hardly the sort of devices that could bring the next generation of interactive books to students with their gray-scale low-resolution screens. Besides, the iPad was just around the corner, right? Google’s distribution model seemed a perfect fit for web-centric tablets like the iPad and any other smartphone or computer to which users happened to have access. For those of you not familiar with Google Editions, this will be Google’s entry into the ebook marketplace. Ultimately, it will probably include millions of scanned titles from their controversial Books project, but until the legal wrangling over Books is wrapped up, Editions will feature both Google’s own Amazon-style store as well as partner sales channels for small distributors and bookstores when it launches this summer. ..."

Google Editions

CNET UK: "Google Editions will launch this summer, and looks set to start a new chapter in the ebook market. The browser-based ebook store will offer ebooks that work on any device, which could spell trouble for the proprietary systems offered by Apple, Amazon and Sony. Ebooks bought from Editions will work on devices from phones to a netbooks to any one of the range of ebook readers already on the market. Other ebook stores are often tied to the store's own device, as with the market-leading Amazon Kindle, and Apple's forthcoming iBook store for the iPad. Google is planning for Editions to launch by July, although it's likely that will be a US launch date."

Blog Kindle has as many details as are currently available about the program - a very good rundown.