After three years of wrangling, Google is pushing closer to a digitized future for books. Even as the U.S. Justice Department continues to review a newly released, modified version of a settlement with groups representing authors and publishers, Google’s plans still contain within them the blueprint for a seismic shift in how we consume and interact with books.
By way of backstory, the settlement explains, “Three years ago, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Books.” Beginning with that lawsuit, there have been several roadblocks on the way to a final settlement. Some have been cleared, but as the Wall Street Journal points out, “the issue of whether it is fair for the settlement to let Google distribute books whose legal rights owners haven’t been identified—known as orphan works—is still drawing criticism.”
Meanwhile, in the newest version of the settlement, the central elements of Google’s digitization plan are mostly unchanged from a year ago when the settlement was initially announced.
We outlined a year ago what is most likely to matter to readers, a massive expansion in the access to books still under copyright, but out-of-print, including the so-called orphan works. Google’s plan paves the way for a huge expansion in the access to this massive class of books — 80% of the books in libraries, according to Google.
More important, however, is how these books will be made available. As Google has outlined in its breakdown of the new agreement, “Once this agreement has been approved, you’ll be able to purchase full online access to millions of books. This means you can read an entire book from any Internet-connected computer, simply by logging in to your Book Search account, and it will remain on your electronic bookshelf, so you can come back and access it whenever you want in the future.” This means that millions of books that were once available only in library stacks or through used book dealers or, more likely, that were essentially invisible to all but the most motivated buyers and researchers, will suddenly be as ubiquitous and easily accessible as Google itself.
It is hard to overstate how big this change could be. You might liken it to the creation of the internet itself, when a critical mass of interconnections gave rise to the sharing and spread of information on a massive scale. Even as the internet has changed how we think about the accessibility of knowledge and data, a massive, “dark” cache of human knowledge has remained largely untouched, many millions of physical volumes whose copyright status doomed them to the analog world. With a finalized settlement, these volumes will become plugged into the internet as we know it, available for purchase, and accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a willingness to pay.
The ripple effects of this development may be hard to predict, but it seems likely to bring further into the mainstream the notion of buying a digitized, format-agnostic book. The impact of this will be amplified by the recent news that Google will not be the only seller of the books it has scanned. As a Publishers Marketplace overview of the newest version of the settlement points out, “any book retailer — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, or other retailers — will be able to sell consumers online access to the out-of-print books covered by the settlement.” In this way, the settlement heralds a whole new category of books being sold by book retailers.
Meanwhile, the settlement has been scaled back in one significant way from a year ago. It will only apply to books published or copyrighted in the U.S., U.K., Australia, or Canada. The legal intricacies of including books from other countries apparently proved too challenging to overcome.
But ultimately, at least for the English-speaking world, this reining in of Google’s effort will hardly limit its potential consequences.
Max,
How do those numbers compare to average weekend sales figures for the actual, physical book? Any idea?
It's tough to know for sure, obviously the numbers vary widely and publishers are notoriously tight-lipped about sales numbers, but Jynne Martin did also tell me this: "quite amazing considering most debut novels don't even sell 10,000 copies in their whole lifespan"
Richard Ford's Lay of the Land, not considered a "big seller" compared to his earlier books, sold 51,000 in hardcover and 36,000 in paper. Those are Nielsen BookScan numbers which track about 70% of sales and were reported in a recent NYT piece on Ford.
So, that's just a random recent comparison but it offers a little perspective.
My sources tell me Random House would consider 50,000ish copies sold over the life of the hardcover to be a success. This could be utter bushwa, given that I've only heard the darkest murmurs about the amount of advance money tied up in the book.
How do those numbers compare to average weekend sales figures for the actual, physical book? Any idea?
A lot more. 15,000 copies in one week would be in the top ten on the Times list. Watch the list this week and see if it moves up or down from 38 and that should give you a sense of whether it worked or not.
Honestly, I very much doubt that one week will show the effect of this. The download event got this novel a ton of exposure and spread it's name. Along with all the other publicity — the features, the mostly positive and very positive reviews, the general discussion and buzz around this book and its merits or lack thereof — it seems more than possible that this will be a title people remember and check out, either in hardback or paper form.
I don't think comparing a first novel's sales to the sales of Richard Ford's sequel to his pulitzer prize-winning novel is necessarily fair. I also don't think that judging this promotion in a week is particularly shrewd. Most successful books need to be passed from one person to another, or have a special air to them. This novel seems to have a chance at being one of those books.
Thanks for the input from all three anonymous commenters. I particularly agree with this sentiment: "I also don't think that judging this promotion in a week is particularly shrewd. Most successful books need to be passed from one person to another, or have a special air to them."
For those still interested in the numbers involved here, USA Today offers a little more color: "Nielsen Book-Scan, which tracks about 70% of book sales, reports 12,000 sales as of Feb. 27. The publisher says the novel is in its seventh printing, with 50,000 copies in print."
So it's possible that the number of books downloaded from the Random House site alone equaled or surpassed the total number of book sales thus far.
yes, I saw that USA today article yesterday. So 12,000 by Feb 27th, a little over a month after publication which they said is perfectly solid sales for a new author no one has heard of.
But with bock, he received a spread in the NY Times magazine followed the next week by NY times book review cover. So that means about 2500-3000 per week (with maybe a spike just after the cover to say 4,000? I guess this is what got it on the bestseller?).
Interesting to see that all it takes is 4,000 sales in a week to get on the bestseller list. Then even though his book dropped off the list, he can forever more say it was a "bestseller." Always interesting to see the behind the scenes stuff. I'm surprised RH allowed that to be printed because it shows that the book isn't really selling like it should be.
Most publishers have issues with the tracker numbers. Last month Riverhead made a point of saying how off the BookScan numbers were on Oscar Wao. I wouldn't make too big a deal about it.
"Most publishers have issues with the tracker numbers."
Not really. Many editors do, but then editors are often shocked at how their books are doing. Many, if not all marketing and sales people in the trade rely on bookscan.
well, bookscan reportedly reflects about 70% of sales, and it includes borders, b&n, amazon and sales from major independent bookstores. so I think bookscan numbers are a pretty big deal – and at the very least, they are the only hard numbers available for publishers to rely on.
Parse it however you want, but If a literary first novel sells 16K books during a five week period and also has 15K free downloads of it, that book is doing very very well, my friends.