The author and board member of the American Authors Guild, James Gleick, appealed to the European Commission for its support of digital book initiatives.
Speaking in Brussels alongside Google representatives on Tuesday (1 September), Gleick, who wrote the bestseller 'Chaos', said books dead in the world of print publishing could be given a second life by digitisation.
"All too many books have fallen into a kind of limbo: protected by copyright but out of print. Their publishers had given up on them. They existed at libraries and used booksellers but otherwise had left the playing field."
Maintaining that Google was in Brussels primarily on a fact-finding mission, the company's director of book partnerships in Europe, Santiago de la Mora, said greater digitisation offered a "win-win-win" situation for all parties involved: Authors would have a wider opportunity to showcase their work, Google would have access to a substantially wider selection of books and users would have more access to a broader spectrum of works.
On the back of complaints made by member states including Germany and France, EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy scheduled a hearing on alleged copyright violations by Google for 7 September.
Positive noises have already been made in Brussels, in particular by Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, who has voiced her support for Google's plans to expand its digital books brand into Europe.
Last Friday (28 August), the EU executive published a document calling on member states to make more of an effort to digitise books, in order to make them available to a wider public.
According to EU figures, only 5% of all digital books are available in the recently-established and free access EU library Europeana, nearly half of which come from France.
Google has had some success promoting its digital books business in Europe. An Italian and French library are allegedly close to striking deals with Google to digitise their works, which would reportedly save the libraries money while providing a larger audience for their works.
Subject to the settlement of a lawsuit between Google and the American Authors Guild, rights holders would receive over two-thirds of the revenue from digital book sales. The next hearing is scheduled for 7 October.
Gleick warned that the "somewhat quirky and unexpected lawsuit" between the Authors Guild and Google should not serve as an example to Europe, but rather as a laboratory on digitisation and copyright issues.
