The world’s largest book publisher Random House is thinking about a joint book-search project with its old time arch rival Google. According to Reuters, the two giants are in talks with each other about Google’s book-scanning project.
Apparently, Google has agreements with over 10,000 small and large publishers who have submitted their books to Google for scanning. Once scanned, these books are made available for partial reading online according to publisher agreements. Google also works with about 27 academic and reference library partners for access to out-of-print works.
German media group, Bertelsmann’s unit Random House has been reluctant to join publisher partner program so far. Publisher partner program is known over for boosting book sales especially of older titles.
Both the parties showed different reactions on being contacted. A Random House spokesman said: “Random House continues to have periodic constructive conversations with Google on issues of mutual relevance.” On the other hand Google declined to comment.
Offlate, Google has been put into legal dispute with American publishers over part of library project. It is because Google scans copyrighted works from U.S. library partners without publisher’s permission.
In the year 2005, Random House had participated in a lawsuit against Google with expectations to stop the scanning of copyrighted material without publisher’s explicit content. It has been over 2 years since then but till today Random House, a member of the American Association of Publishers, continues to support that copyright case filed against Google.
