While authors and publishers balk at the Google's ambitious plan to digitize the book collections of major libraries, Julie Hilden has some interesting comments how the project could help to increase public demand for e-books:
So in the end, rather than joining the challenge to Google's Library Project, I'd like to pose a challenge to Google: When are you going to apply your genius to eBooks? Having scanned all those books in already, wouldn't you like to distribute them too? Of course, for that, you would need a copyright license - but I think many authors would give you one for a low fee. In the future, Google's Project might even do for eBooks what Apple did with Itunes: Provide a sample of a work, as an inducement to download the whole thing at a modest cost, and entirely legally.
Because of hopes for innovations like this - which will bring authors profits, protect copyrights, and potentially democratize book-writing, much as music has been democratized - authors may be shortsighted if they support the Authors' Guild suit.
Related:
Authors Guild alleges Google's Library Project violates copyrights