Google A Book Or Two

By Pat Browning

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
-- Sergey Brin, co-founder & president of technology at Google.


My first look at Google Books blew my wig off. There are
thousands of books displayed -- l,053 alone in the
Fiction/Mystery and Detective/General category. You can
search by title or author.

When I searched by "Pat Browning" my book cover for
ABSINTHE OF MALICE came up. I clicked on it and got
a full-size cover, plus a summary and the first 49 pages
of the book. There were links to Amazon, etc. for more
information and purchase.

I looked up books by friends and other authors. Some
listings had very little information. Others had reviews
and interviews. Apparently a listing depends on
information furnished by the author or publisher.

As far as I can determine, it costs nothing to be included
in Google Books, and it's a great way to promote your
writing online. The web site is fascinating, well worth any
time you can spare to explore. Go to www.books.google.com.

For a bare bones overview of the program, here are a few
snippets of information from the web site:
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Three years ago, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Book Search … Today we're delighted to announce that we've settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners to bring even more of the world's books online.
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We've partnered with renowned libraries around the world to include their collections in Book Search. For Library Project books that are still in copyright, our results are like a card catalog; we show you info about the book and, generally, a few snippets of text showing your search term in context … For Library Project books that are out of copyright, however, you can read and download the entire book
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This agreement helps define how our users may access different categories of books on Google Book Search.

In-copyright and in-print books
In-print books are books that publishers are still actively selling, the ones you see at most bookstores. This agreement expands the online marketplace for in-print books by letting authors and publishers turn on the "preview" and "purchase" models that make their titles more easily available through Book Search.

In-copyright but out-of-print books
Out-of-print books aren’t actively being published or sold, so the only way to procure one is to track it down in a library or used bookstore. When this agreement is approved, every out-of-print book that we digitize will become available online for preview and purchase, unless its author or publisher chooses to "turn off" that title. We believe it will be a tremendous boon to the publishing industry to enable authors and publishers to earn money from volumes they might have thought were gone forever from the marketplace.

Out-of-copyright books
This agreement doesn't affect how we display out-of-copyright books; we will continue to allow Book Search users to read, download and print these titles, just as we do today.
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