Autumn Meditation – a poem in terza rima form

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Alice

I’ve been wanting for years to capture the way I feel when I look at autumn foliage, and I’ve finally approached it with an old rhyme form: terza rima. Dante used it to write The Divine Comedy, and much latter, Percy Bysshe Shelley used it to write his “Ode to the West Wind.” Not that I place my poetry in a class with theirs by any means.  I mention it only to establish the long pedigree of the form.

While the poem may be written in any meter, iambic pentameter is preferred in English, and the rhyme scheme is: a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d, e-e. There is something very pleasurable about making one’s verse fit a pattern.

AUTUMN MEDITATION

 Of all the seasons, Autumn is the one
That most persuades me there must be a God
Whose works grow prayerful when their working’s done.

The roads are flanked by boughs of goldenrod,
The Summer’s warmth replaced by nights of chill,
And seed and fruits are fallen to the sod.

The urgent push to procreate is still.
Impending Winter’s dormancy will reign,
But trees have one more duty they fulfill.

The Spring’s new birth, the Summer’s work, sustain
The species; yet for Autumn’s final days,
Without the possibility of gain,

In orange and red they set themselves ablaze
In silent, solemn, joyful songs of praise.

 

 

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On the things we leave in books

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Alice

The odd looking illustration for this article is an index card I found in one of my book purchases. Some frugal bookseller made the front and back of a single index card do for four books, with an equally efficient swirl crossing out each used up entry as the book sold. I discovered that my book was listed on Amazon and was slated to be listed on eBay, which is where I bought it. The seller had a note to add a photo to Amazon. The original seller paid $2.00 for it. I paid…more. The forgotten piece of ephemera offered me an interesting insight into the methods and practices of another bookseller.

The very handy Mirriam-Webster on-line dictionary provides several definitions of ephemera, pointing out that it is generally used in the plural. That’s good to know, because the singular and plural forms are identical.

  • Definition 1:  something of no lasting significance —usually used in plural
  • Definition 2: (plural): paper items (as posters, broadsides, and tickets) that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectible.
  • Bonus definition for English as a Second Language students: things that are important or useful for only a short time : items that were not meant to have lasting value 

Setting aside the second definition altogether because it confines itself to collectibles and I am interested in the broader usage, I like the third definition best. Comparing it to the first, it seems to me that there is a world of difference between something of no lasting significance and something not meant to have lasting value. One is a description of the item itself and the other describes the intent of its creator.

That’s the stuff! Things that no one expected to last, and yet here they are. And sellers of used books find scads of it in their inventories.

I always like finding the things that previous owners have tucked into books. Most often they are bookmarks of some sort, ranging from things intended for that function to whatever happened to be close to hand: bus passes, grocery lists, business cards.

And then there are the momentos. These are often more problematic. The purple pansy plucked so blithly on a summer’s day or the four-leaf clover that unluckily met its fate when some sharp-eyed stroller harvested it leave their stains on the page. Newspaper articles, carefully clipped from the local, hardly acid-free or archival quality newspapers, leave tan marks wherever they rest for long periods.

Even so, I think I would rather find these things than not. They form a connection, often over decades or even a century or more, with those who owned and used the books before.

I find that big, thick books are most often the repository for the memento items. Bibles, dictionaries, substantial local histories. I like to imagine that those were the treasured books in the household and were seen as fitting repositories for whatever memories the ephemeral items held.

And I myself am not immune from the desire to keep things in books. Eleven years ago to the day, at my mother’s funeral, each of her eight children was given a rose at the gravesite. Mine still resides in the largest, heaviest book I own. The leaves and petals are brittle now, but still hold some color and grace.

Perhaps, some day, a bookseller who is not me will find it and wonder what it means. What it meant. The unknown bookseller will wonder, but I will know. Books are the repositories of our lives. They hold their author’s memories, but also our own. They are where we tuck scraps that are immediate and quickly forgotten and also where we place what is fragile but important. Like the memories I have of my mom.

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The merchant spam detector

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Alice

Image from The Pilot and Compass to Character Building, by Henry D. Northrop, 1900

A book seller, just like anyone else with an email address, gets lots of spam.

While we can be as skeptical as the next guy (or gal), we often have an added reluctance to discount an email addressed to the business because it might — just might — be from a customer. Though we love them dearly, there have been cases where real customers offer up disconcertingly spam-like emails.

But there are a few signs that can allow even the most conscientious merchant to consign an email to the trash bin without response.

Here’s a standard “hope the merchant is desperate for a sale” email I received recently:

Hello.

Top of the day to you. I am Wilson Williams, I would like to place an order from your store but before i proceed, i would like to know if you can ship to USA or UNITED KINGDOM and accept credit card as a method of payment, If you do kindly get back to me with your valid website address for selection of items needed.

I await to read from you today. Reply to [email address]

Regards

Well, Will (can I call you Will?) I’m wondering how you managed to send me an email if you don’t know what my web address is. You haven’t told me the product(s) you want or asked what the cost might be. In fact, all you seem to care about is whether I will accept your credit card and ship to a foreign address. Sorry, but I’m looking for a more discerning customer.

And….we have a winner! This scammer wrote to me this morning, with a very detailed request. At least he’s including books:

From: Tokunboh Troy [email address]
To: [Troy's email address]
Subject: Mail Order

Dear Sir/Ma,
How are you with business,Hope Fine…..I will like to place an order for the listed books, So get me the prices and availability as Follows :-

Robbins & Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, 8th Edition By: Vinay Kumar & Abul K. Abbas (Author) Format: Hardcover ISBN: 9781416031215
Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry 5th Edition By: David L. Nelson (Author) Format: Hardcover ISBN:- 071677108X
Black’s Law Dictionary Deluxe Ninth Edition By: Bryan A. Garner (Author) Format: Hardcover ISBN: 0314199500
Franklin Electronic Bible with Holman Bible Dictionary KJV/NIV (BIB-475) ISBN: 1590744314

Awaiting your prompt reply soon and have a great time in business.

Sincerely Yours,
Tokunboh Troy

It does present a difficulty that I sell only used books and have none of those titles. Of course I do have real customers who sometimes ask me to acquire books for them, but they usually send their emails showing me, and not themselves in the “To:” line. Just for the heck of it, I looked these books up on Amazon and they range from $170 to $73 new, somewhat less used. You have expensive tastes, Mr. Troy.

To sum up, there are a few of the things that relieve me of the responsibility for even thinking twice:

  • Addressed “To” any email other than my business email. Showing blank or undisclosed recipients or the sender him- or herself in the “To” field is the sign of a mass emailer.
  • Email asking for my website URL or anything else the sender should already know. If you wanted to do business with me, you wouldn’t have to ask.
  • Email that doesn’t mention any product I have for sale.
  • Email asking if I accept credit cards and ship to foreign countries combined with any of the characteristics above.
  • Email asking me if I will use the emailer’s shipper even if no other scam characteristics are present.

And there are a few things that will make me think twice:

  • Email with significant grammar mistakes in English, especially when it purports to be from an English-speaking country. (These will usually have other spam-like characteristics.)
  • Email where the sender’s domain is a free email service, such as yahoo or gmail.

The customer may always be right, but scamming spammers? Feel free to delete away!

 

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On the Delights of Obsession

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Alice

Woodland Carex Of the Upper Midwest, by Linda Curtis, 2006.

One thing most booksellers learn early on is that specificity sells. It may not sell quickly, but when you have something that’s so detailed and esoteric that ninety-nine percent of the population couldn’t care less, that remaining one percent will find it and be forever grateful to the one who preserved it for them.

No one is better at specificity than a writer whose passion for a subject borders on obsession. Like Alice in Wonderland following her nose, one thing leads to another, and before she knows it, a girl who loves botany has compiled an entire field guide on Woodland Carex of the Upper Midwest. (Linda Curtis, Curtis to the Third Productions, 2006.)

We are not speaking of all of the 100+ species of Carex, but only the 63 species in the herb layer (there’s an herb layer?) of woodlands, forests, swampy woods, river and lake woods, and thickets. Those Carex that inhabit sunny bogs, marshes, prairies, fens or open sandy woods will have to find their own obsessive champion.

Sample pages from Jean Sanford Replinger’s History of Rural Schools of Rusk County, Wisconsin

Delightfully obsessive compilers can be found in many areas of endeavor. Jean Sanford Replinger’s father and mother were the Rusk County Superintendents of Schools from 1925-1931 and 1931-1945 respectively. Ms. Replinger found a box filled with the remnants of an 8th graders’ project suggested by her mother in the 1932 to 1934 years that involved documenting some basic facts about their communities.

From that start grew her own book, History of Rural Schools of Rusk County, Wisconsin. (Rusk County Historical Society: Ladysmith, Wisconsin, 1985.) The book is a compilation of the work of the original 8th graders with new material based on interviews with teachers and others she tracked down. It is illustrated with period photographs of schools and classes from the 1930′s. With more than 70 schools and communities covered, it appears comprehensive.

World Bibliography of Bibliographies

Of course, none of this is new to booklovers, who are obsessive in their own right. The field is rife with bibliographies, which are nothing more than detailed lists of books of one type or another. I have any number myself, ranging from the relatively slim and specific 180 page Arabian Horse Bibliography (Arabian Horse Trust, 1985) to the massive five volume World Bibliography of Bibliographies, Fourth Edition (Bowman and Littlefield, 1971). Yes, it’s actually a detailed list of books which are themselves lists of books.

And speaking of obsessives, those likely to buy bibliographies – or write them, for that matter – are book collectors themselves. There’s more than one bibliographic forward that announces, with a kind of modest pride, that the compiler owns, or has at least handled, every book listed.

As a bookseller, I love them all, from the obsessive documenters who create those esoteric tomes my customers love to find, to the obsessive bibliography writers that help me find them, to the obsessive customers who must own them once found. Delightful!

Posted in Book collecting, Book selling, Wisconsin history | 1 Comment

Training vs Breaking – An old teaching a dog book

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Alice

Practical Dog Training; or Training vs. Breaking, by S.T. Hammond. (New York: Forest and Stream. 1892.)

I can’t remember exactly when I bought this little book — probably 35 years ago. I do remember where I bought it: at the Renaissance bookshop (if one can call a four floor warehouse a shop)  in downtown Milwaukee. A pencilled notation on the first free end paper reminds me that I paid $4.00 for it.

Four dollars was probably a fair price back then, and it’s not worth much more now. It’s not a first edition, as evidenced by “Revised and Rewritten” on the title page. It’s not even a “first thus.” The copyright date is 1885, and that was preceded by an Author’s Note dated 1882, which no doubt marks the date of the true first edition.

It was once a handsome book, with the Forest and Stream logo stamped in gilt on the front cover and the title of raised letters in a gilt box set off by decorations in black ink. But even before I bought it, its green cloth cover was soiled and worn and the spine ends and corners were bent and frayed. Its first free end paper, tanned and brittle, achieved full freedom at some point in my stewardship and now is simply laid in, while the lower page edges are adorned by a tide mark that reveals a past not entirely free of water damage.

And yet this book enchanted me from the moment I opened it. Its dog training techniques wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in this day and age of animal rights, the ASPCA (let alone PETA!), and Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. Training with kindness and understanding, teaching in small steps, shaping behavior in increments with frequent rewards, happy dogs and loving owners are what we think dog training should be nowadays.

Not so when the entries of this book were first written as columns in the journal Forest and Stream. In his note, the author says:

The system of dog training described in this book is a new one….This system is humane and rational. It is also practical and efficient. Dog training differs essentially from dog breaking, both in method and spirit, and also in what may be accepted as the test of all systems, namely — the results attained.

The first paragraph of the first chapter gives a graphic description of the dog training methods common at the time this book was written:

Nearly all writers upon the subject of dog training appear to think that there is but one course to pursue: that all knowledge that is not beaten into a dog is worthless, for all practical purposes, and that the whip, check-cord and spike collar, with perhaps an occasional charge of shot or a vigorous dose of shoe leather, are absolutely necessarily in order to perfect his education.

Hammond’s methods were far different. His first lessons begin with the arrival of the puppy at six to eight weeks old and emphasize affection, praise, food rewards, and slow steps toward the final goal.

Gretchen, keeping an eye on the backyard.

I had a German Shorthaired Pointer at the time, though I didn’t hunt myself. Yet, I was able to teach her to make and hold a solid point and quarter a field using the methods in this book. I thought at the time, and I still think, that it is an excellent primer for someone who wants to develop a hunting dog and doesn’t live in the country or have access to birds all of the time.

In his Note to the Revised Edition, the author remarks on the number of grateful correspondents who have written with praise for his method of training by kindness. He says:

If it be true — if the public have found that they can train their dogs by kindness instead of “breaking” them by cruelty — then the object of the author has been attained, and the satisfaction that he feels in believing that through his efforts the condition of man’s best friend has been in some degree ameliorated is a sentiment that he cannot express in words.

There have been many books that were harbingers of a new era in their own fields, and Mr. Hammond may not be the only writer of his time who espoused kind treatment in the training of hunting dogs, but he is the one that marks the transition for me. I’m very glad I found Practical Dog Training, for just four dollars, all those years ago.

 

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What ever happened to St. Matthews?

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Alice

Commemorative booklet 1909

Just over one hundered and two years ago, the community of St. Matthews Evangelical Lutheran church published a booklet commemorating their newly built church and its consecration on December 19, 1909. The church was located on the corner of 10th and Garfield streets in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The pastor at that time was August C. Bendler.

The booklet provides a brief history of the congregation’s buildings and members from the beginning through 1909.

The first picture of a building, dated 1865, depicts the small Erstes Gotteshaus (first church — the entire booklet is written in German). It was situated between 10th and 11th Streets on Beaubien Street, which was renamed Garfield shortly after that president’s assassination in 1881.

First building, 1865

A second picture, dated 1870, shows a larger, two story structure with the church above and a schoolroom underneath.

Second building, 1870

Another photograph, dated 1875, shows an even more classically church-like building complete with a handsome steeple and rectory behind the church.

Third building, 1875

Finally there is a photograph from 1909, showing the subject of the booklet, the new church, with a tall clock steeple and bell tower. A pencilled notation on the photograph points out a water tower “200 ft high” in the distance behind the church.

The subject of the commemorative pamphlet, 1909

I don’t know if any more church buildings were erected on that lot, but the congregation survived there for almost another fifty years. A Milwaukee Sentinal article, dated September 6, 1958, documents the closing of the church and its move west to North 84th and West Melvina Streets. According to the article, the Rev. Arthur Halboth succeeded his father-in-law, August Bendler as pastor in 1929 and cared for the congregation there for another three decades. (Bendler was pastor when the 1909 church was built).

St Phillip’s Lutheran church took over the 10th and Garfield property in 1958 and opened a church and school, which it maintained until that congregation moved again in 1965.

There is a St. Mathews Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wauwatosa, but it does not appear to be a descendent of the original St. Matthäus-kirche because the Wauwatosa church was founded in 1920, at which time the Milwaukee congregation was still going strong.

And apparently they still are, according to their facebook page, which gives the current address of St. Matthew Evangelical Lutheran Church & School as 8444 W Melvina St, Milwaukee, WI 53222. Their current building has eschewed the skyscraping spire for a more modern, low-profile building, but a school is still part of the proposition.

The current church

View Larger Map

I wonder if the founding members, almost 150 years ago, could ever envision the progress and travels of their church, as it grew and moved across the city. In 1909, the community created a booklet to commemorate their history and progress. Today, it’s recorded in facebook and Google.

Women's Society, 1879

We’ve come a long way, grandma!

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On guessing the value of books

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Alice

This book should be worth more bsed on the title alone!

Nothing warms a bookseller’s heart more than picking a book out of the “maybe” pile thinking it is only worth a few dollars and then finding that it’s actually worth ten times as much.

I find that this happens to me a lot, especially as I review my personal collection to see if I want to keep, discard or actually sell the books I bought for myself twenty or thirty years ago. Apparently, when buying for my own pleasure, I zeroed in on texts that would eventually be apreciated by others as well. A good example is Newcomb’s Wild Flower Guide, which I wrote about in my blog entry On ruining a perfectly good book.

Soemtimes I get it wrong. I have a copy of Great Mambo Chicken & The Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge, by Ed Regis. (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1990). The title alone should make it collectible. And yet, there are plenty of dollar copies to be had. It’s a piece of non-fiction I would recommend to any science fiction buff. To quote the publisher’s blurb, it “…explores this gray area between overheated imagination and overheated reality, introducing us to a newwork of scientists bent on creating artifical life forms, building time machines, hatching plans for dismantling the sun, enclosing the solar system in a cosmic eggshell, and faxing human minds to the far side of the galaxy.” This book was published more than twenty years ago, and yet it’s still cutting-edge. How could it be so common and dirt cheap?

Sometimes I get it right for just a while. My copy of Show your Horse: Practical Training Advice from a Professional Horseman, by Bob Robinson (St. Louis, Mo.: Saddle and Bridle, 1978) is pristine, which isn’t easy for a paperback more than 30 years old. There was a time when the only copies on line were in the $75 range. Now they range from $10 to $110. This is a book I’m not particularly attached to, so I’ll list it somewhere near the lower end of the range and see what happens. If only I’d listed it sooner, instead of hoarding it like a little treasure! There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Who would have thought people would be willing to pay so much for this little book?

Now I am presented with another suprise treasure, and it meets at least one criterion for a book that might be worth more than first impressions would suggest: it’s thin. At just 53 pages, and a small 5 1/4 by 7 1/2 inches, it really doesn’t look like much. The title is: 101 Plots Used and Abused, by James N. Young. (Boston: The Writer. 1946 Revised edition.) Apparently people really want this book, even in the revised edition, which actually contains 125 plots. Prices start near $100 and go up from there.  This discovery is particularly delightful in that I don’t want this book myself, so I shall have no qualms about listing it.

How soon I get to that task depends on how well I learned the lesson of Show Your Horse!

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Ten years after 9-11

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Alice

In another post, I tell the story of where I was when I first heard about the attack on the World Trade center.  Today, the 10th anniversary of that event brings it all back, including the emotions. It’s a good day to write poetry.

There is no picture to illustrate this article because the picture I would like to use, The Falling Man, is under copyright. It’s the inspiration of my first cinquain.

THE FALLING MAN
Head-first
Plunge to heaven,
Escaping hell above,
The world turned upside down in an
Instant.

The next two poems, also cinquains, came after watching the President lay a wreath at the memorial in the Shanksville, Pennsylvania field where forty passengers and crew died after foiling the terrorists’ plans to fly the plain into yet another of our iconic landmarks. The President didn’t make a speech, but he spent over an hour just shaking hands, and posing for pictures with the citizens who where there.

FLIGHT 93, TEN YEARS AFTER
Wreath laid,
President turns.
No speeches, just reaches
To families of those who took back
Our skies.

It has never been determined exactly where that fourth plane was headed, but taking out almost anything in Washington, D.C. would have been an even worse wound than the others we suffered that day.

FLIGHT 93, SHANKSVILLE FIELD
Forty
Citizens brought
Terrorists down before
They struck the capital. Simple
Heroes.

Simple poems. Such a small memorial for such a large event.

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Wisconsin the welfare state. In 1869?

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Alice

Laws of Wisconsin Relating to the Organization and Government of Towns

One of the things I love best about acquiring and selling old books is the wonderful feeling of holding history in my hands. Right now, I’m looking at a battered old book called Laws of Wisconsin Relating to the Organization and Government of Towns, and the Powers and Duties of Town Officers, with Practical Forms, by J.C. Spooner and E.E. Bryant, Counselors-at-Law (Madison, Wis.: Atwood & Rublee, Book and Job Printers. 1869)

It was originally published in wraps (a nice bookseller term for paperback), but my copy was done up in ugly, green, cloth-covered boards some time early in its 142-year history. Both the front and back pastedowns bear the personal library stamp of James McIver, Justice of the Peace, Bay View, Wisconsin. He arrived in Bay View the year this book was published, and he no doubt needed its guidance to inform him of his many duties as Justice of the Peace. He must have made a good one, or was at least well-regarded, because he was elected to the state Assembly in 1874.

The book is filled with laws that seem quaint and old-fashioned today, such as the one that states: Any owner or keeper of any bowling saloon or alleys in this state, who shall allow or in any way permit a minor to play with bowls on such alley or bowling table, for pay or otherwise, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

The penalty was a hefty fine of “…not less than twenty dollars nor more than one hundred dollars, and costs of suit….” Based on the average unskilled labor wage, this translates into a fine of between $2,300 and $11,500 in today’s wages.

Wisconsin was apparently serious about preserving the innocence of its youth. One can only imagine what the 1869 Wisconsin legislature would have done with Grand Theft Auto, had it had the chance.

But along side some of the odd old laws are provisions addressing topics that could have come from today’s headlines. I speak “OF THE RELIEF AND SUPPORT OF THE POOR” (Chapter 34).

Section 1. Every town shall relieve and support all poor and indigent persons lawfully settled therein, whenever they shall stand in need thereof.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple. There are rules for determining what a “lawful settlement” is, and there are provisions for charging relatives (in this order: first the father, then the children, then the mother) for the care of paupers, if relatives can be found who have the means.

A Justice of the Peace might well have had to enforce the laws referenced here.

There are provisions for selling the personal property of responsible relatives who have absconded from their responsibilities, and for binding minors into indentured servitude to keep them from becoming charges upon the town.

It was also unlawful to remove or entice paupers from one town to another or to bring them into a Wisconsin town from outside the state with the intent of making such town chargeable for their support.

I find all of this attention to the needs (or the problem) of the poor fascinating to contemplate. It leads to a number of conclusions:

  • The idea that society, in the form of local government, is responsible for the care of its weakest members is not a new one, but — at least in Wisconsin — existed from early in the state’s foundation.
  • The idea that family members should be the first line of defense for those without the means of self-support was an important component of that relief, and could be forced by legal action.
  • No one was allowed to export their poor to another jurisdiction to avoid the responsibility of taking care of them.

This hardly contains all the answers for the sometimes bitter debate over how much “welfare” is too much, but we could do worse than to look back at our own history and realize that we have always accepted some obligation to to support the less fortunate, while at the same time refusing to allow the system to be abused.

That’s the value of books that are pieces of history themselves, rather than works by historians, who must necessarily have some bias from their own time and culture. Books like Laws of Wisconsin are the real thing, growing directly from the soil of their own era and place and giving us an insight that can’t be had when someone else interprets them for us.

Posted in Opinion Pieces, Wisconsin history | Leave a comment

Google and author’s rights

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Alice

Photo attribution: Quin, Liam: “Pictures of old books” (2003) Click the picture for a link to his site.

The AE Monthly, a newsletter put out by the Americana Exchange, is one of a few on-line publications I read religiously.

Most of the time, I find the articles interesting and educational, but just this once, I’m a little disappointed with the biased opinion expressed in the article. I would leave a comment on line, but I can’t find a way to do that without subscribing to one of their packages, so I’ll vent here.

The article is entitled Google Books Hearing Postponed. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait.

~~~

The basics are that Google, in its desire to make all the knowledge of the world available on line in its own databases, has decided that the importance of its mission outweighs its need to obey US copyright law.

Google is having trouble with Title 17 of the US code, specifically Chapter 3, Duration of Copyright. In a nutshell, works created after January 1, 1978 are protected for the life of the author plus 70 years. For works created before January 1, 1978, a number of different factors come into play, all of which are summarized quite nicely on a page maintained by Cornell University: Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States. The bottom line is that the only works securely in the public domain are those published before 1923.

As Google (and AE Monthly) see it, there are plenty of works published after 1923 which are out of print, and therefore unavailable to people who might benefit from the knowledge contained therein. What’s more, many of those books are what Google characterizes as “orphaned works,” meaning that they can’t find the author to ask for permission.

Not that they seem to try all that hard. AE Monthly received a “letter to the editor” from a certain William J. Chamberlin, who I believe to be the author of Catalogue of English Bible Translations: A Classified Bibliography of Versions and Editions Including Books, Parts, and Old and New Testament Apocrypha and Approcryphal Works (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991). He states that his still in-print book, currently priced near $300 a copy, was being offered 50 pages at a time by Google, and has somehow been made available on the Kindle as well, all without his knowledge or permission. (Or, by the way, any payment to him.)

While that appears to be a slightly different issue than the older, out of print works, it does go to show that Google, whatever its stated intentions may be, apparently feels author’s rights are secondary to its desire to be the online everything source.

Fortunately (more or less) for authors, who may not have much clout individually, the Association of American Publishers is larger, more organized, and can afford good lawyers. They sued Google and were quickly followed by the Author’s Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors. The Author’s Guild has provided an extensive list of the pertinent documents and key dates in the suit and subsequent settlement.

This settlement includes a description of revenue models that include: print on demand (POD), file downloads, advertising sales and consumer subscriptions. Revenues would be split 33% to Google and 67% to a fund that might someday make payouts to the rights holders. Authors and their representatives were apparently opted in automatically, and were required to opt out if they didn’t want to be part of the scheme.

It is amazing to me that Google, The Association of American Publishers, and the Author’s Guild think an agreement that divvies up revenues from this commercial venture (revenues that rightly belong to authors who never gave their consent) will trump copyright law.

Enter Judge Denny Chin, the federal judge in New York who struck down the settlement. His opinion is 48 pages long, but well worth reading. He cites a number of objections to the agreement, but the primary one seems to be the same one that’s bothered me all along. A civil contract cannot trump congressional law to removing the rights of individual authors. The judge suggested that the parties renegotiate and come back with a scheme that required opt in rather than opt out.

To which reasonable and lawful request the AE Monthly says: The authors and publishers weren’t making any money off of these old books anyway, the objectors for the most part are happy to kill any deal, and this is hardly the biggest kettle of fish on Google’s table. The only real losers will be the public. Sorry, loser.

AE Monthly, I would like to point out that there are a few thousand used and out of print booksellers that would be happy to make those books available to the public the old fashioned, legal way: by finding them, preserving them, and offering them for sale to our customers. (Who would probably rather hold a “real” book in their hands anyway.)

 

Posted in Book selling, Opinion Pieces | Tagged , | 3 Comments