E-mails, out-of-print books, blogs, research papers in Arabic--any of them might contain something useful to someone.
When I was COO at AbeBooks, a marketplace for used, rare and out-of-print books, we thought we could expand our site into new books.
Is this, then, a test case for publishers who could work in tandem with the fans of underappreciated and out-of-print books to bring them back into circulation?
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The book effort suffered a setback this week when a federal judge in New York rejected a deal between Google and publishers that would have blessed the scanning of out-of-print books whose copyright holders are unknown.
"Many of us are objecting because we have been working together for years on the mass scanning of out-of-print books - and have worked to get books online for far longer than Google - and Google's 'settlement' could hurt our efforts, " wrote Brewster Khale of the Internet Archive in a blog post earlier this week.
Also, many of Google's books are out-of-print volumes from before 1923.
The much-heralded project called Google Print would provide free online copies of out-of-copyright books and newer books still protected by copyrights, making them searchable with snippets of text available online.
Having already digitized twelve million books, including out-of-print titles, Google will have a far greater selection than Amazon or Apple.
The books online range from classics to manga comics plus out-of-print titles and textbooks.
Those curious to relive the spill's details should get hold of the excellent, out-of-print book by Art Davidson, In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez (Sierra Club Books).
This has already started to happen among primarily mid-list authors, who do reasonably well and then their books go out of print.
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