

Publisher Realizes Google Books Isn't Evil, But Quite Beneficial - yanw
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100310/2349508514.shtml

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ahk
It's amazing to me that the guy actually changed his mind on the issue. It's
like getting some Vatican Cardinal to convert to atheism.

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UmYeah
As cliche as it may sound, I think that the publishers are simply afraid of
that which they don't understand. I rarely use Google Books but the few times
I have I immediately noticed that what I am looking at is not the entire book.
The fact that this isn't well know by the publishers makes it clear; they have
no clue what Google Books is, but they don't like it.

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Scriptor
The whole situation seems similar to physical books in stores. Anyone can walk
in, pick one up, read, and never pay a cent. But publishers don't complain
about that.

Because most people won't try to read whole books this way. It's inconvenient
by being time-consuming. Google Books is also inconveinient (for different
reasons). There are exceptions, but they exist for both cases. The fact that
GB limits how much content they show also pushes readers to buy the books.

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stavrianos
I think that book publishers really DO have something to fear from piracy. Not
right now, obviously- real books are hands-down a better experience than
reading on a computer. But the digital means are going to get more and more
compelling over the next few years, and a generation is going to grow up with
a different concept of "book".

disclaimer: I've never used an ebook reader. I _have_ read books on my
computer screen.

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hugh3
I wouldn't propose doing this, but would it be possible to automatically
extract the entire text of a book from Google Books?

I mean, if I search for something it will give me the pages just before and
just after, right? Can I then conduct searches for rare phrases found on the
pages just before and just after and work my way outwards? Or have they done
something to prevent this?

