Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Bring back out-of-print titles?! Why the audacity! That would have been horrible. 
OK, so I was wrong. I can admit it. But when someone tells me the AG lawsuit stopped Google from creating an ebook store from their scanned books, I got the distinct impression that they were talking about preventing them from selling their scanned copies of King, Baldacci, Rowling, Binchy, Murakami, et al. Not that Google had in fact, had the audacity to want to make ebooks of titles that publishers no longer saw enough value in to keep in print. My mistake.
Some of those authors of out-of-print books sure owe the AG a debt of gratitude for keeping Google from bringing any attention to works of theirs that can't be purchased anywhere anymore.  |
Yes they do.
Because what happened was that the savvier authors got their rights reverted and published their backlist themselves. So instead of the crumbs google and the Authors Guild negotiated, they got to make good money.
That wasn't the intent but that is how it ended up.
So today we have most of the out of print titles readily available anyway but the money goes to the authors or their heirs instead of google and the AG.