As a published author I have watched the growing debacle of what Google is doing in scanning books. I am sure John Wiley and company are not happy about it, but hey they haven’t told me their opinion, I am just one of thousands of Authors that have written books for them. As I opted voluntarily for Wiley to hold the copyright on the book knowing they would have to do battle with those that violate the copyright.
I look at what Google is doing and parallel that with what Wiley has done in making my book available not only in digital format but searchable from Amazon the vision impaired folks were happy about it so I know we reached that community. My perspective at this point is purely financial whatever sells “Podcasting The Do it Yourself Guide”, and allows my message to be heard is important.
If I could go to Google Print and search for a phrase on podcasting and my book came up in the search results and a link to buy the book or pay for a digital download was available I think I would be pretty happy. If instead the people could leaf through all of the pages and read the book online I would react not so favorably. The bottom line for me is if they cause the demand for my book to go up and it is found by people that did not know it existed they have done good.
I know their are a 100 different arguments and I am still reading everyones opinions in order to come up with a final analysis. But lets be honest most authors just want to sell a lot of books, granted if the material is good that word will spread like wildfire and they will sell on their own. The key is today it is very easy to get drowned in the chatter of the net with gems in the making lost because of the background noise. Make sure you get over to Amazon and pick up a copy.