The Future of the Book
January 31, 2007
A Future for Fragile Books 2
by C. Max Magee
My last post, on Google adding maps to its Google Books pages, generated some interesting discussion about digitizing books in the comments. I can think of many reasons why digitizing books is a good thing, while the motivations of the publishing houses and the Authors Guild in suing Google seem confused at best and [...]
January 30, 2007
Maps Added to Google Books 8
by C. Max Magee
The result isn’t that flashy, but Google’s addition of Maps to its Google Book Search points to the promise of digitizing books. As we have seen with the layers of data that Amazon has added to its database – things like Statistically Improbable Phrases and Capitalized Phrases – digitization of books makes it easy [...]
January 12, 2007
HarperCollins Inks Deal with Digital Book Firm 1
by C. Max Magee
One of last year’s big stories, the publishers’ battle with Google over control of digitized books, has been on the back burner in recent months, but an aggressive move by HarperCollins is pushing it back into the spotlight
In late 2005, Harper, already vocal about its displeasure with Google over the search engine giant’s digital book [...]
November 25, 2006
Google Books Finds Forgotten Plagiarists 0
by C. Max Magee
At Slate, Paul Collins points out that Google Book Search heralds a new era of outing plagiarists. The searchable database of many thousands of books is a boon to researchers, but it also greatly eases the discovery of co-opted passages. Collins mentions a couple of examples and posits that “given the popularity of [...]
October 20, 2006
Google Books Copyright Case Drags On 0
by C. Max Magee
This week, there were a pair of updates on the copyright cases against Google that are being brought by publishers and authors.
Initially, the two groups had been pursuing two separate complaints against Google, but this week Judge John Sprizzo consolidated the two cases into one. According to MarketWatch: “Sprizzo’s streamlining was inevitable because the [...]
October 16, 2006
The Death of Newspaper Book Sections 5
by C. Max Magee
Publishers Weekly has a very interesting article about newspaper book sections which points out that, with the exception of the New York Times, book review sections do not bring in enough ad revenue to cover their costs.
Those of us who follow the newspaper industry are used to hearing all ills blamed on declining readership, but [...]
