It is difficult to determine actual statistics about lost music sales that resulted from peer-to-peer file sharing. Some recent studies (sponsored by those in favor of file sharing) have indicated that sales are not negatively affected; other statistics (sponsored by various representatives of the music recording industry) still claim that peer-to-peer file sharing nearly caused the death of all recorded music ever.

Regardless of which argument you choose to believe, there are a couple of basic facts:

1. People download copyrighted information (music) without paying the copyright owner for the right to use the information.

2. For each copyrighted file that is downloaded illegally, the creators do not receive compensation for their work.

It really doesn't matter if one or one million files were downloaded illegally. For those of us who make our livings based on selling intellectual property, every single copy for which we don't get paid is one too many.

The courts apparently agree, and sites like Napster have been shut down.

But for some reason, the brain trust behind the Google Print initiative seems to think that digitizing and freely distributing copyrighted print materials is not the same thing as digitizing and freely distributing copyrighted music.

The Authors Guild disagrees, and has filed a class-action lawsuit to stop Google from (as they put it) "massive copyright infringement".

Death to Printing?

I doubt the Google Print initiative (and others) will have any real impact on fiction publishing. How many people would sit for 14 straight hours in front of a monitor to see what happens to Harry, Ron and Hermione? And if we did, how many of us would have a blazing headache when we finished?

The nonfiction publishing world, however, is something entirely different.

Some branches of nonfiction print publishing have already suffered from the rise of digital alternative media. When you were a kid, did you ever see a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman? Used to be virtually every household with children spent a small fortune on a handsome set of leatherbound reference books.

Now, although you can still buy the printed edition, you can purchase the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica on DVD-ROM for $39.95, or you can buy a subscription to access the company's full archive online (www.britannica.com). And if you don't mind sifting through paid advertising, you can skip any payment and use free resources like Webopedia (www.webopedia.com).

Think of Google Print as a free online encyclopedia, except this particular version will include every book ever published.

Most people who buy nonfiction reference books do not buy them to read cover-to-cover. This is the area in which Google Print poses the most significant threat.

People buy reference books to learn about specific topics or look up specific information. Of course, you could make the argument that people can also go to a bookstore and look up the same information without buying the book. (I would say something about libraries, but as government budgets are constantly cut, a lot of libraries just aren't what they used to be.)

The act of physically going to a store puts people one step closer to actually buying the book they need (possibly plus one or two others that they don't need). But with access to the same reference books through Google Print, we won't have to go to the bookstore anymore. I won't be tempted to just buy the reference that I needed only a few pages of, and I won't be troubled by those pesky impulse buys on the New Books table (so there might after all be some collateral damage to the fiction publishing world).

Fair Use?

One of the arguments in favor of projects like Google Print—that more people will be able to find and buy more obscure books from smaller publishers—is tempting. In fact, my initial reaction was, "Wow, maybe now more than 15 people a year will buy my Color Companion."

So I started clicking through the Beta site, and was at first sad to see that none of my books have yet made their way into Google's archives.

So I clicked some more to see what was available.

I looked up "Photoshop CS", and clicked a random title near the top of the list (Colin Smith's "How to Do Everything with Photoshop CS", which can be legally purchased at most retail and online bookstores). By searching inside the book for the word "Photoshop", I can view 418 different pages without ever paying a cent.

Google's lawyers claim that the site only offers "snippets" of information and falls within the fair use exception to copyright.

Here's the definition for fair use, according to Nolo.com (an excellent resource for legal information).

Note that second bit. Fair use generally allows for limited amounts of copyrighted information to be reused for the purpose of comment, critique, or scholarship.

Now, my legally purchased Webster's defines "snippet" as:

"A small piece, scrap, or portion, specifically of information, of a book, etc."

I'm not a lawyer, but it would take a Herculean leap of language to wrap either "limited amount" or "snippet" around 418 pages. Unless (maybe) the book was really 4 million pages. Which would be too heavy to carry around anyway.

From an Author's Perspective

I'm the author of several not-quite-bestsellers for the educational market. Each book takes at least two months to finish, and I would probably cry if I ever broke down my author's advance into an hourly amount.

I live for the end of March and September. Two times a year, I get royalty checks that, over the next 10 years, might justify the months I spent writing just one of those books.

A large percentage of books never get past a print run of a few thousand, and most of us are happy if half that run isn't consigned to the remainder shelf. Unless you're in the Grisham-Robbins-Clancy echelon of writers, most authors never make piles of money for the books they write.

If Google Print is allowed to give away our work (resulting in even smaller royalty checks), a lot of us will turn our attention from writing to something more profitable, like professional basket weaving. I doubt they'll figure out a way to digitize that and give it away.

Discuss Google Print Is Bad for Authors   >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More Printing Articles          >>> More By Erika Kendra