Cautious welcome for Google's pay plans

Alison Bone

Publishers including noted "Googlephobe" Nigel Newton have extended a cautious greeting to Google's plans to sell access to book content online, but stressed the importance of maintaining multiple routes to the online market.

The next step in Google's Book Search programme will enable publishers to sell online access to titles as part of a new "suite of online tools".

The programme will be launched first in the US and the UK. Details are not finalised, but Google said revenue would be shared, with the publisher receiving the majority.

Publishers will set the price for online access to their titles and choose which books they wish to include. Users will only be able to view the book online, with the possibility in the future of selling sections of titles, or timed access to books.

A consumer launch will follow, and Google intends to eventually roll out the service across the world. Publishers lined up to participate include Taylor & Francis and Netherlands-based Brill.

PA president and Macmillan c.e.o. Richard Charkin said: "I welcome every new avenue for distributing our authors' data more effectively, but it is vital that publishers take control on behalf of their authors to ensure there are multiple delivery routes, not just a few.

"Meanwhile, I hope that Google decides to stop digitising copyright material without permission, and will ensure that territoriality is respected in this new world."

Bloomsbury c.e.o. Newton, who recently called for a boycott of Google, said: "The news that Google is starting to face up to the fact that authors' works have value other than as a vehicle for its imaginative advertising department is indeed welcome, and its proposal of payments for online access is excellent news."

But publishers would be in a stronger position if they hosted online access from their own sites, he said. "It is crazy to talk about hosting online access or downloads on Google or any other third-party's website when it could be done so much more profitably for the author and the publisher on a publisher's own website."> n.b.news > Briefs

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