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Arts and Culture

Google Teams Up With Speedy Bookmaker

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Posted on Sep 17, 2009
Moby-Dick
tower.com

Books published before 1923, such as Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” are no longer under copyright and thus fair game for the Googles of the world.

Bibliophiles who can’t warm up to the idea of curling up with an e-reader or a laptop instead of a bona fide book may be heartened to hear that Google just took a significant step in the direction of making more book titles available on short notice—in the offline world.  —KA

AP via fwdailynews.com:

Google Inc. is giving 2 million books in its digital library a chance to be reincarnated as paperbacks.

As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Inc.

The “Espresso Book Machine” has been around for several years already, but it figures to become a hotter commodity now that it has access to so many books scanned from some of the world’s largest libraries. And On Demand Books, the Espresso’s maker, potentially could get access to even more hard-to-find books if Google wins court approval of a class-action settlement giving it the right to sell out-of-print books.

“This is a seminal event for us,” said Dane Neller, On Demand Books’ chief executive, as he oversaw a demonstration of the Espresso Book Machine Wednesday at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

[...] The books published by The Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of $8 per copy, although the final decision will be left to each retailer. New York-based On Demand Books will get a $1 of each sale with another buck going to Google, which says it will donate its commission to charities and other nonprofit causes.

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By nthnaid3, January 5, 2010 at 10:01 pm Link to this comment

Cool post, thank you for the info - I dont really ever post on these thingy’s but enjoyed the info. Awesome stuff!, I bookmarked your blog!  http://www.pressedsubmit.info

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By gmerkwertj, November 13, 2009 at 7:19 am Link to this comment

Greto job. I´m a google fan their services are great.

Regards
Galilea Montijo

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By NYCartist, September 22, 2009 at 7:03 am Link to this comment

Google is taking out-of-copyright books and will be “holding them hostage”...have deals with NYPublic Library and other places.  Lawsuit.  Check out a program on WBAI’s “Off the Hook”, the hacker show, produced by http://www.2600.com  The archived show, free,
is available for 90 days at http://www.wbai.org.

Note: I am in opposition of the recent coup at WBAI
and other Pacifica Radio Network stations.
  See: http://www.takebackwbai.org  for easy ques./ans. format, videos, and “latest news” link at top of page.
  also see http://www.wbaix.org and http://www.wbixradio.org  These
two sites are produced by “fired and banned” (from
WBAI) Don DeBar (former news person for WakeUpCall).
  Some excellent news videos. And more.

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BlueBerry Pick'n's avatar

By BlueBerry Pick'n, September 19, 2009 at 3:59 am Link to this comment

gee, one magnetic field or a malevolent script could wipe out entire regional libraries of *specific books*

    ...how convenient for censors…


perspective, people.


Perspective.

The Jeff Farias Show:
streams FREE & LIVE Mon-Fri, 6-9pmEDT

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