The Globe and Mail ran an article today by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney titled “HarperCollins does Net end run: will sell digitized books to search firms”.
I’d like to link to the article but help me if I could find it in the digital edition of The Globe. So here’s my summary. There’s a controversy raging at the moment about the future of book, in particular the future of books as Google and Amazon wish to display them in their digital glory. At the moment publishers send physical copies of their books to Amazon and Google to be scanned and included in Search Inside the Book (Amazon) and Google Print (now Google Book Search). Google does offer publishers the option of sending an electronic scan of the book instead of the physical copy, which for Canadian publishers means no shipping costs and no duty fees.
The big news today is that HarperCollins Publishers is telling the search engine giants and Amazon to forget it. Essentially HarperCollins wants the search engines to back away from digitizing content on their behalf and instead wants to digitize their own books and determine who they license the content to and how it will be displayed.
Quote: Instead of sending copies of their books to various Internet companies for digitizing, as it does now, HarperCollins will create a digital files of its books in its own digital warehouse. Search companies such as Google will then be allowed to create an index of each book’s content so that when consumers do a search, they will be pointed to a page view. However, that view will be hosted by a server in the HarperCollins digital warehouse.
So the digital files will only be on HarperCollins servers. Search engines will have to crawl the HarperCollins website but will not be allowed to index the image of the page. HarperCollins will control the terms of trade, i.e., deciding who they want to partner with as retail partners. There is no strategy for selling directly to the consumer. They hope to have scanned and digitized key titles by mid-2006. And, the strategy is seen by CEO Jane Friedman as a way to “protect our rights and the rights of our authors.”
So what do you think? It doesn’t exactly address the reader’s right to easily find and discover new titles, when they want, where they want, unless HarperCollins has a very clever arrangement with Amazon and Google about how those page views will work. Perhaps nested within an Amazon frame? I don’t think it is in Amazon’s best interest to move people away from their site.
On the one hand, I think HarperCollins is going to engage in a very interesting exercise. I’m keen to see how it all works out. On the other hand, I’d rather see publishers work things out together with Amazon and Google, you know, the subject-matter experts in online retail and search.
I’m confident that there are enough level-headed people to find a way to balance user rights with creator rights, but, it is a big conversation that isn’t easy to have. Again, what do you think?
UPDATE: Quill and Quire reported the following in the OMNI edition. A quote from David Kent, president and CEO of HarperCollins Canada.
Quote: Kent is more inclined to talk about the principles at stake. Maintaining control over digital content reflects publishersí right to be paid for their work. ìWe invested in [the book], we took the risk, we should control it,î he says, adding that at the same time, no publisher wishes to restrict the publicís access to the books. ìIf you want it, come to us, and you can get it.î