Google has settled its suit and now has the authority to scan and sell the text of about ten bazillion out-of-print books. The good news for readers is that it's obviously that it will be much easier to find previously-difficult to find books. The only real losers are small used book shops, which was not exactly a thriving market to begin with.
However, I don't think that all is lost for those businesses, simply because Google will not take trade. Bookmans, for many people, operates like an unusually cool (but paid) library: They bring in books/CDs/electronics for trade, and walk out with stuff they're not tired of. They don't usually get out for free, though, because there's too much cool stuff.
So as long as used book stores stay smart about what they buy (in particular for collectors who want the real, physical item) and stay smart about how much they give and take with trade-ins, they should do OK.
One thing I'm interested to see in this is whether or not "indie" culture will start spreading more quickly across books. Thanks to torrents, iTunes and other digitalization in music similar to what Google is doing with books, anyone can access ultra-rare recordings. In the age of freely-accessible music, it is no longer remarkable to have heard highly obscure music. You can buy U2's impossible-to-find Celebration single on iTunes, or download a nearly-infinite number of indie bands from torrent sites. Indie music snobs can fill their iPods all the pirated lame early hip-hop, obscure classical that they only pretend to like to sound smarter, and terrible indie music (the more obscure the better, obviously). I wonder if they'll be filling up their Kindles in a similar way soon.Labels: Bookman's, books, capitalism, Google, music |
