Steve Litt wrote:
On Monday 22 December 2008 12:46:10 pm Jonathan Kroner wrote:
I have a question about the "search inside the book". A publishing mailing
list of which I'm also a member is extremely upset about Google's plan to
scan all books from the libraries. The thought is that why should customers
buy the cow if the milk is free -- if you can view it online, why should you
pay for the book?
My impression is that neither Amazon's "search inside the book" feature
nor Google's scanning project are going to make copyrighted works freely
available to anyone. You'll just get to see excerpts. For works of
fiction, I suspect the main virtue is that you can read a few paragraphs
and see if you like the author's style. AFAIC this is no different than
the previews of the next book in a series that you find at the end of
many books.
For nonfictional works, particularly technical works, I think this might
stimulate sales. Before I buy, say, a guide to writing books in LyX, I
usually peruse it at the local "big barn" bookstore, because I want to
be sure it's at the right level, covers the specific topics I want, etc.
That limits me to the titles those stores carry. I'm at an advantage
in that I live in a town with a university, so we have several of these
stores. Back in my hometown, I might have been stuck. Even if the
local mall had, say, a Barnes and Noble, I don't know that they'd waste
a lot of shelf space on slow-moving technical books. So the Amazon and
Google endeavors may let me locate a suitable book for online purchase
that I would otherwise not take a chance on.
FWIW,
Paul
