Prominent French Publisher, La Martiniere, Reaches E-Book Detente with Google

La Martiniere, the third largest publisher in France (behind Hachette and Editis), fought a five year battle to stop Google from scanning and selling (mostly out-of-print) copyrighted works willy-nilly ... and they have successfully reached a detente.

I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard, even for out-of-print works, given that they are supposedly copyrighted for life ... unless the copyright ownership was in question.

Anyway, publishing intrigue is alive and well and shouting all over the place and across formats and platforms.

This from Barbara Casassus as reported in TheBookSeller.com:

La Martinière and Google sign agreement

French publisher La Martinière has dropped its legal action against Google and signed an agreement with it to scan specified out-of-print French language titles.

The publisher was locked in a five-year long legal battle against Google for having digitised copyrighted books without permission. The pact is similar to the one finalised last month with Hachette Livre, which was aimed to serve as a model for other French houses.

The difference is that La Martinière and Google will draw up a catalogue including both the titles already scanned in partnership with American libraries and those to be covered by the latest deal, a Google France spokesperson said. The publisher will decide which titles will be withdrawn and which will be scanned.

Several thousand titles could be involved, La Martinière c.e.o. Hervé de La Martinière said. The group will be able to sell the scanned books through the Google e-books platform on a revenue-sharing basis, with the publisher earning the undisclosed majority share, the Google spokesperson added.

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Google Bookstore Snuffs E-Book Market Monopolies

In my post yesterday I ranted about the dumb Apple mis-management of their clients' subscribers' data; and mentioned that they would lose clients to Google and others if they didn't change their hoarding of actual content provider subscription info...gained through docking on and selling through their iPad store.

Well Google opened their eBook store today! This should change the competitive landscape a little more than just a tad, my friends.

This account of the Google eBook store opening by Matthew Flamm of Crain'e New York Business:

Google shakes up e-book market

The long awaited Google e-bookstore opened for business Monday, heralding a possible sea change in the business of selling digital books.

Describing itself as the world's largest e-books collection, Google eBooks has an inventory of more than 3 million titles, which includes millions of public domain books that are available for free, and several hundred thousand titles that are for sale.

Though some analysts have noted that Google is untested at e-commerce, the search giant's digital bookstore has enough distinctive features to make it attractive for users, publishers and bookselling partners. Most significantly, Google is using a device-agnostic open e-publishing format, which makes its e-books compatible with computers and e-readers from Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo, which also use the open format.

A Google eBooks application can be downloaded for the Apple iPad and iPhone.

In addition, since Google has placed the titles in what is known as an “open cloud” platform, they can be accessed by the same user from a range of devices, each one picking up on the same page where the user left off.

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