Mary Emmons, a published author and friend of mine, said she went to Google’s new web site and found one of her novels posted. Another friend of mine, also a published author went to the same site and found one of her novels there, in a form that you could read online. These are but two of the copyrighted novels that were argued over in court for three years. Google lost the lawsuit—authors must be paid for their work. Novels cannot be freely read online.
I went to the site and found no less than 8 of my novels, six of which I own the copyrights on. All rights n these six novels have been reverted back to me. So Google sells them and pays my ex-publishers. Good deal, right? Wrong. I will never get paid for these novels. By the way, typed in my name and none of the novels showed up. They are listed by title name.
I suggest everyone go to the site: http://books.google.com/ and type in the name of your novel/s in the search box at the top to see if your work is posted there. If you find any, I suggest you contact the advocacy group that took Google to court.
One more thing: I suggest you make a list of the copyright numbers now shown on your novels. You can do this by either clicking on the cover or your name. All 8 of my novels are showing the new 13 digit copyright numbers that I never applied for. So who did? Google?
Google has also made deals with two libraries, one at a university, one in Germany, to stock their novels. So if you use the 'Search library' button, or 'get from library', they will be available for reading online, this includes fiction in all genres plus non-fiction. I know a lot of author novels are in libraries; mine are. However, from what I saw these two libraries are available to all readers, and I don't think there's a waiting list since the books will be read in digitalized form.
Something I forgot: My titles either had no cover or totally new covers made up by Google. One was a plain red cover with just the title and my name. So don't look for your cover; check the list of titles and author names.
I saw my book listed on this site and I tried to open it and was unable to access but one page. How safe am I and should I still report this to the advocacy group you listed? Thanks so much and I appreciate your alert to this very, very serious matter. Keep me "posted."
