Dennis Johnson at MobyLives reacts angrily to James Gleick’s New York Times Op-Ed piece concerning the agreement between Google on the one hand and the Association of American Publishers and the Author’s Guild on the other over Google’s scanning and digitizing every book in the universe (they hope) for Google Book Search. The G-Man has already scanned over 7 million titles and is essentially aiming for all of them.  The text of these titles is now frequently included in standard Google search results, and one can also search exclusively within books at Google Book Search.

Gleick confesses to being a representative of the author’s side during “two and a half years of secret negotiations.”  (Note to Gleick:  the negotiations were NOT secret.)  His attitude toward the agreement and Google’s ongoing digitization project, though never clearly stated, seems to be something like:  it’s inevitable, don’t worry about it and let’s learn to see the physical, printed book as an object to be fetishized.

One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines: the Web pages, the blogs, the organs of printed and broadcast news, the general chatter. (Thanks for everything, Gutenberg, and now goodbye.)

But I don’t see it that way. I think, on the contrary, we’ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology. Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms.

He sees Book Search as a way of getting books that are out of print back into the marketplace.  A nice thought, though it’s going to be awfully hard to get noticed in a marketplace of 7 million+ titles and everything else on the internet.

Johnson rightly points out Gleick’s defensiveness and self-contradictions but seems to believe that Google Book Search somehow means the end of books and libraries and perhaps civilization as we know it.

There’s no consideration of the fact that, actually, the implications for long-form intellectualism are dire in an age of complete-digitalization. (Consider reading War and Peace on your iPhone.) Nor is there any seeming awareness, let alone discussion, of the better implications for “form” under discussion in the indy publishing and art-making community. Nor is there any discussion/awareness of how some big publishers may be up to something better - no consideration, for example, of the better implications for authors of the massive digitalization of its backlist underway at Random House. Instead, Gleick discusses the way the Google deal brings “back to commercial life” books that had only “existed at libraries,” without mentioning that, well, authors were paid for those books, too, and at better rates than Google will pay them. And really? A book is somehow more “alive” in the ethernet than in a used bookstore or as print-on-demand from a publisher - or in a library? And of course there’s no discussion either of one of the deal’s most important aspects: that those public libraries are being taken away from the public and given over to a private company, something that will have a huge impact on not just our culture but our democracy.

Phew!  I suppose I should be really worried about this.  Except I’m not.  More than one Google Book Search alarmist has lectured me with these dire predictions (including my employer), but I just don’t feel it.

Some random, deep thoughts…

• Yes, Google certainly crossed the line of copyright law, and that line has now been moved as a result of this agreement. But with over 7 million books scanned, have you ever heard of anyone actually reading an entire book (or even a significant chunk) on Google Book Search (other than as some experiment in self-punishment)?  Even if you wanted to do that, only public domain titles can be viewed in their entirety.
• The entire enterprise is more analogous to a bookstore customer flipping through a bunch of the titles on the shelves without buying them, except it’s a bookstore with 7 million titles, the content is searchable and no spines are being broken.
• Whatever problems libraries are having are not Google’s doing, and Google Book Search will not replace libraries.
• Few are suggesting that the book as a self-contained, salable entity should cease to exist.  If one person creates something that other people want, those other people will pay money for it.
• No, no one would want to read War and Peace on an iPhone or on Google Book Search. But people, to their credit, will still want to read War and Peace, and will use the most practical technology to do so, be it a printed volume, the Kindle or something else.
• I agree that print is the most dependable archival format and for that reason believe print should continue to be. But there’s no reason that every reader and book-buyer must be an archivist, is there?
• The real challenge for publishers and authors now is to determine the business model most suitable to whatever ends up being the reading technology of choice.
• Whatever happens, writers will continue to write and publishers to publish. The big music labels have taken a tremendous hit, but the music scene is as vibrant as ever despite the fact that almost any recording can be obtained online for free.  Granted, the majority of musicians make their money from live performances, not recordings.  Writers are lucky if they can get someone to show up at a free reading, so perhaps the same rules do not apply.
• Most published writers don’t make enough to live on via their writing as it is, so I don’t see how things can get much worse for them as far as profitability goes.
• More is being written and published and read now than at any point in human history, and I don’t see that changing at any point in the near future.
• Maybe it would be a good thing if there was actually less being written and published, but that’s a topic for another day.

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