On Sat, 2010-01-23 at 15:52 -0700, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> especially the part about not worrying  
> about what's on the net 

I most certainly would not do anything about stopping illicit downloads
by fans. The lessons of what happened to the Star Trek fan base, where
fans where in technical breach of copyright and making up Star Trek
stories using downloaded footage, or something like that, and the
copyright holder put its foot down intending to stop this from
happening. What happened is the fan based collapsed as if almost
overnight and as a result far more money was lost then would have been
gained. Don't know the outcome of this, but Star Trek may still be on
the nose. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_fan_productions

Non-realist popular genres have quasi illicit characteristics and this
is a big part of the appeal, as against the proper and real. Anne Rice's
Lestat is a good example, implicitly homosexual and filthy rich
(vampires in gothic lit are traditionally homosexual, of course.)

Stamp down on this quasi-illicit activity and kiss your royalties
goodbye... the risk is too high. The difficulty would be knowing what to
say if you get cornered by fans and asked about this, I would guess.


As for google, I do read the excerpts of books I am interested in
buying. In a real bookstore I can read as much of the book as I wish (at
least with my bookseller since I already have a rep as being eccentric
enough to do something like this.) I have recently ordered 2 books based
on the google excerpts, one being Liz Grosz's book. Other then this,
excerpts from websites I find. It is just that google tweaks the search
to its scans. Most of these are academic titles, and it makes sense to
target this by google given the very large market of more costly books
which helps with google's advertising revenues which is where it makes
its money. For myself, I would be inclined to opt in or say yes: But,
listening to your agent or publisher may be best advice, of course.

I only have one poetry book which sold around 300 to 400 copies so I
donated my royalties back to the publisher. This turned out to be a good
deal since the publisher posted me 20 remainer copies which sell on the
collectors market for around $30. Obviously, a book is much more then
what I wrote, the designer was arrested and deported after his boyfriend
died of aids as the book went to press etc. Perhaps I should approach
google and ask them to digitise and put it online? 

CAL has advised not to give copyright away on the book and my lawyers
would probably shoot me but at least excerpts shouldn't hurt?