Bragging Rights

Some time back I did a blog post about the controversial and eventually overturned settlement between Google, the Authors Guild, the major publishers and others about the Google project to scan zillions of books and make them available.

Read that post here.  http://brilligblogger.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-settlement.html

This week, the major publishers settled their case with Google, you can read the Google press release about that settlement here. http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2012/10/publishers-and-google-reach-agreement.html

Just to say, I called this one.

The main part of the settlement here is that the publishers get Google's file for their use.

Which is exactly what I said was missing from the larger agreement.

If they had done that same thing three years ago for the broad settlement, our ebook program would have long ago had a lot more books, our clients would have been making a lot more money all along the way.  Instead, the Authors Guikd is still spending how much money on who knows what in the case, while the publishers and Google have now recognized where the fairness is.  Let Google do what it wants in search, so long as it lets you do what you want to sell your book.