Google Bitch #3: Publisher's Weakly
Should we really add commentary to the story of Google Bitch #3, the third "victim" from Fortune Small Business's new Google trend piece? Small-press publisher Lynne Rienner is pissed at the idea of Google digitizing the books she publishes, letting people search through them and possibly buy them.
Google stresses that any publisher can keep its books from being digitized simply by sending a list of titles to Google. But that's not good enough for Lynne Rienner...
Rather than compiling a list of her company's 1,200 titles ("a waste of my staff's time"), Rienner fired off an angry letter to CEO Schmidt. Google responded with a letter agreeing not to copy any of her books. Rienner is unmollified. She worries that she will be cut out of some future digital moneymaking opportunity. "Books are my unique content," she says. "I'm sure the smart people at Google are busy dreaming up all kinds of ways to make money off them."
Can we just say, "Oh my god, Magnum!" Repeat after us, Ms. Rienner: "Google could sell my authors' books for me." I hope none of Rienner's signed authors read that article; they might realize that she just cut them out of the only free marketing they'll ever get.
How Google can make - or break - your company [Fortune Small Business]
Earlier: Google Bitch #2: The Wispy Web Startup [Valleywag]
Earlier: Google Bitch #1: The Clueless Retailer [Valleywag]