Google Book Search
Mar 28th, 2006 by Sandra
I finally took some time to dig around a little and see what all the brouhaha about Google was about. What with the RWR having an article on the subject, and RWA teaming up with the Author’s Guild and other writer organizations to complain about it, I decided it might be time to weigh in on the subject.
I went to Google’s Book Search page at http://books.google.com and did an experimental search on “orchid hunter.” Up came several dozen books for my perusal. Some books allowed me to view a few complete pages, while others allowed me to view only snippets where the term “orchid hunter” or “orchid-hunter” appeared.
Underneath the snippet was a link called “Where’s the rest of this book?” and when I clicked it, I was sent to a help page with the following:
Why can’t I read the entire book?
We respect copyright law and the tremendous creative effort authors put into their work. So, unless any given book’s publisher has given us permission to show sample pages, you’ll only be able to see the Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows information about the book plus a few snippets – a few sentences of your search term in context. If the book isn’t under copyright at all, you can browse the entire book in the Full Book View, but the aim of Google Book Search is to help you discover books and learn where to buy or borrow them, not read them from start to finish. It’s like going to a bookstore and browsing – with a Google twist.
Now, see a page you like? Try printing it. The pages I attempted to print had a big blank spot where the book text ought to have been.
Even when I looked at a book that had the word “romance” on almost every page (Julie Beard’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Your Romance Published), I got stopped after looking at about 10 pages. Google suggested at that point that even though there were over 200 instances of the word “romance” in the book, my search was deemed “too general.”
I would be baffled by the writing organizations’ positions on Google’s work if I hadn’t worked in the software industry.
Simply put, non-technical people get up in arms about all sorts of technology they don’t understand (and usually, therefore, fear) and it takes ages to get them to understand enough about the technology to see that they aren’t being robbed.
So I encourage everyone to go to Google Book Search and try it out for yourself. Then write your professional organization and let them know your thoughts, whether pro or con.
But let’s please stop bashing Google without understanding their process.
Thank you, thank you. Finally someone who took the time to see what is going on, and not jump in with your behind in front to assess a situation. Google is a tool that can guide you to where you want or do not want to go. I’m a new fan by the way. Thanks for the Reading. Rosa Partee
Rosa, thanks for stopping by! I feel a little bit like a voice in the wilderness on the Google issue, but have written my Region Reps and am submitting a Letter to the Editor of RWR outlining what I found.
It seems like the first order of business is to educate folks on what the book search tool is, and then start asking hard questions like, “Why do publishing houses get to decide how much of a page is shown, when the author holds the copyright?”
A subject for another day, I suppose.
I suspect the publishers’ real issue is that they don’t want Google to have electronic full text of books in their database, full stop.
(p.s. hi Sandra! Long time reader, first time commenter.)
Hi Danielle! I suspect you’re right — the full text is probably an issue for publishers.
But the arguments I’ve seen put forth by writers groups are almost exclusively about being afraid that books still under copyright will be made available “for free” by Google (and Yahoo! and MSN).
This issue has several threads to it: Why are publishing houses the ones to give Google the okay to display a full page of a book whose copyright holder is me? How is Google’s Book Search different from a library (except that Google isn’t loaning out books — yet)?
It seems like we’re on the verge of a major publishing shift that started when e-publishers began becoming economically viable. This is going to be The War Over Music Downloads, Part Deux, I think, and I hope the publishing world shows more creativity and brains than the music business….