RANDOM HOUSE NZ PUBLISHING DIRECTOR WRITES TO HER AUTHORS

Many of you will be feeling anxious, and quite possibly confused, about the Google Settlement as there has been a lot of commentary about it. Many of you will also be aware that this Friday is the deadline to opt out of the settlement.

Since 2004 Google has been scanning, digitising, and providing online content search for books from the world’s leading libraries without the permission of authors or publishers. When this initiative was first announced, most in the industry interpreted the settlement not to have any direct impact on New Zealand publishers and copyright holders. Recent analysis suggests otherwise, and that courtesy of New Zealand being a signatory to the Berne Convention (a global accord designed to protect the copyright interests of copyright holders), our works are included in the scope of this settlement.

In the United States a group of American authors and publishers, sued Google for copyright infringement in a class action lawsuit and Google defended its actions as “fair use” under US copyright law. After two years of negotiations, the parties settled out of court and the result is the “Google Book Settlement”. This Settlement comes up for final judicial review shortly. Full details can be found at http://www.googlebooksettlement.com. Applying to all books published or distributed in the United States before January 5th 2009, the Settlement, if agreed:

o Resolves the lawsuit and allows Google to continue to digitise books published before that date.
o Has Google cover all legal expenses and pay US$34.5 million to establish a not-for-profit Book Rights Registry, run by authors and publishers, where rights holders can register copyright interest in their titles and establish what they will allow Google to do with that content (from nothing at all, to previews, to sales of electronic books).

o Has Google pay, to the registered rights holders of all books scanned before May 5th 2009, a fee of at least US$60 per scanned book.

o Establishes the outlines of a business for Google selling, non-exclusively, electronic book content in the United States — licensing books to libraries, selling individual e-books to consumers, selling advertising on book pages, offering free access at one terminal in public libraries with printing for a fee — and distributing 63% of the revenue from that business to the books’ rights holders through the Book Rights Registry.

The Google website has information on the full settlement agreement and also a Frequently Asked Questions section.

This issue of Publisher’s Post is to advise you of the steps Random House New Zealand is taking on your behalf. It’s important to start with the Random House Group policy, which is to opt in: Random House UK recently advised its authors that, “The Google Settlement (which is not yet approved — the hearing is scheduled for October) is a very long and complicated agreement, with significant areas of uncertainty and we continue to work with our sister companies globally and the Publishers Association in the UK to refine our understanding of its likely implications. Random House UK does not currently intend to opt out of the Settlement completely as we feel the interests of our authors are better served by retaining the ability to control how our titles are exploited by Google, and if we opt out we lose this control.”

In accordance with that policy, Random House New Zealand has registered on the site and will be claiming payment for all our titles (including all those published under our various imprints, which also include Century Hutchinson and presses we have purchased such as Godwit and Tandem Press). The Settlement does not authorise Google to make book content available to users located outside the United States, and we can only claim titles where we directly control the US rights. So those of you with titles whose US rights are held by a different publisher should also contact them to find out their stance on the Settlement.

More details will emerge about the way forward following the October fairness hearing in the US. We will then be moving to claim all our relevant titles by the deadline of 5 January 2010. Under the current timetable, titles need to be claimed by then to qualify for the one-off payment if they have been scanned.

Some of you may still wish to opt out, and if you wish to do that you need to go on to the Google site by this Friday September 4 and make the declaration yourself as we cannot do it for you. But we do advise that you opt in as there are definite advantages in having your publisher act on your behalf. Further, do remember that the settlement does limit what Google can do with your book. Opting in means you will be able to say how much of the text Google can display: a 20% preview or nothing at all, or you can request that the book be removed. You will also benefit from the income generated. If you opt out now, you will have no recourse to any income for the books Google has already scanned, and the only way to stop them is by taking them to court.

We will keep you posted as more information comes to hand.

Nicola Legat
Publishing Director

Random House New Zealand Ltd