What The Collapse Of The Google Books Deal Really Means

For all the growth in the digital book market over the last few years, Google Books is still the only project with the outsize ambition of scanning every book, and it’s not an exaggeration to say the deal it reached with publishers would have changed our relationship to books forever. Now, that agreement looks like a failure.

So what does that mean for the digital-book business and for the universal digital library Google is trying to create? For the modern e-book market, it’s really status quo. It’s hard to see anyone coming out ahead because this deal fell through, unless you count Google competitors as indirect “winners” in any Google setback. Amazon and Apple have built healthy businesses selling contemporary, in-print e-books. The big money will continue to be in that space, which is unaffected by this settlement. It’s also a market where Google is a new entrant and a small presence, so far.

But even though there aren't any big winners from this recent decision, there are some parties who lost out. First of all, Google would have been positioned to have a dominant position in the market for in-copyright but out-of-print works, so it has lost something. That’s not a huge or lucrative market, but it’s not insignificant either, and would have seen a fair amount of use by researchers and universities. Speaking of academics, they’re the ones most likely to want full copies of hard-to-find out-of-print books, so they have also clearly lost out here. Finally, authors of some out-of-print books would have seen a new, albeit modest, revenue stream. The “status quo” for them just means that when searchers find their works in Google Book Search, they'll continue to be directed to used book stores -- a solution that’s inconvenient for users and doesn't get a penny to publishers and authors.