Publishers wary of putting their titles online with Google can now side with publishing giant Macmillan, which, with its parent company Holtzbrinck Group, is developing a book digitisation platform to be called BookStore.
Richard Charkin, chief executive at Macmillan , has called for the publishing industry to collaborate on digitisation and search.
Like Google Print, BookStore will be a searchable repository of digital book content, with e-commerce technology for purchasing titles.
Charkin said BookStore will appeal to publishers that want to take advantage of releasing their content online, but don’t want to surrender control of their copyright or invest in the technology required.
Publishers are unhappy with Google’s strategy of asking publishers to send it opt-out list of titles not to be scanned.
BookStore will give publishers the option of making their content available to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN....Charkin admits that Google has increased pressure on publishers to make their content available online. But he denied that BookStore was a knee-jerk response to Google Print – he argued that it is an additional choice for the information sector. “I don’t think we or Google will get a monopoly.”
Comment. Free online full-text searching without free online full-text reading. Plus links for buying the books. That sounds like Google Library's plan for copyrighted books. It's not clear what the advantages of the Macmillan project are for publishers except the satisfaction of spiting Google. But that will come at a price, since Google will always get more eyeballs than Macmillan. If publishers join the Macmillan program because they think it will help sell books, they should admit that participating in Google Print too --either by not opting out of Google Library or by opting in to Google Publisher-- will sell many more books.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/08/2005 11:12:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
