This afternoon, we filed suit against HathiTrust, the University of Michigan and four other universities over their storage and use of millions of copyright-protected books. The press release follows. AUTHORS AND AUTHORS’ GROUPS FROM AUSTRALIA, QUEBEC, THE U.K., AND U.S. SUE HATHITRUST, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, AND FOUR OTHER U.S. UNIVERSITIES FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT Digital Files Provided by Google at Issue, As Plaintiffs Seek to Impound Unauthorized Scans of 7 Million Copyright-Protected Books, Pending Congressional Action NEW YORK – The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois (UNEQ), and eight individual authors have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court against HathiTrust, the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, and Cornell University. Plaintiff authors include children’s book author and illustrator Pat Cummings, novelists Angelo Loukakis, Roxana Robinson, Danièle Simpson, and Fay Weldon, poet André Roy, Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning biographer T.J. Stiles. The universities obtained from Google unauthorized scans of an estimated 7 million copyright-protected books, the rights to which are held by authors in dozens of countries. The universities have pooled the unauthorized files in a repository organized by the University of Michigan called HathiTrust. In June, Michigan announced plans to permit unlimited downloads by its students and faculty members of copyright-protected works it deems “orphans” according to rules the school has established. Other universities joined in Michigan’s project in August. The first set of so-called orphans, 27 works by French, Russian, and American authors, are scheduled to be released to an estimated 250,000 students and faculty members on October 13th. An additional 140 books, including works in Spanish, Yiddish, French, and Russian, are to be released starting in November. “This is an upsetting and outrageous attempt to dismiss authors’ rights,” said Angelo Loukakis, executive director of the Australian Society of Authors. “Maybe it doesn’t seem like it to some, but writing books is an author’s real-life work and livelihood. This group of American universities has no authority to decide whether, when or how authors forfeit their copyright protection. These aren’t orphaned books, they’re abducted books.” “I was stunned when I learned of this,” said Danièle Simpson, president of UNEQ. “How are authors from Quebec, Italy or Japan to know that their works have been determined to be ‘orphans’ by a group in Ann Arbor, Michigan? If these colleges can make up their own rules, then won’t every college and university, in every country, want to do the same?” The complaint also questions the security of the 7 million unauthorized digital files. The numbers are staggering. The universities have, without permission, digitized and loaded onto HathiTrust’s online servers thousands of editions, in various translations, of works by Simone de Beauvoir, Italo Calvino, Bernard Clavel, Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, Michel Houellebecq, Clarice Lispector, Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller, Haruki Murakami, Kenzaburō Ōe, Octavio Paz, and Jose Saramago, among countless other authors. Works from nearly every nation have been digitized. HathiTrust’s databases house more than 65,000 works published in the year 2001, for example, including thousands of works published that year in China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, and the U.K., and hundreds from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, The Netherlands, The Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. “These books, because of the universities’ and Google’s unlawful actions, are now at needless, intolerable digital risk,” said Authors Guild president Scott Turow. “Even if it weren’t for this preposterous, ad-hoc initiative, we’d have a major problem with the digital repository. Authors shouldn’t have to trust their works to a group that’s making up the rules as it goes along.” Google’s library scanning project is already the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit in New York. A status conference in that case is scheduled before Judge Denny Chin this Thursday, September 15. Attorneys Edward Rosenthal and Jeremy Goldman of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz are representing plaintiffs.

Steve Lohr of the New York Times reports a startup outfit in the field of Artificial Intelligence that “takes data, like that from sports statistics, company financial reports and housing starts and sales, and turns it into articles.” One computer scientist observed: “The quality of the narrative produced was quite good.” But an investor in Narrative Science, witnessing the software’s skills in reportage, was more fervent: “It’s as if a human wrote it.”

Going back to introduction of the linotype at the end of the 19th century and word processing in the 20th, automation in the technical production of newspapers, magazines and books has replaced whole work forces in journalism and publishing.  But, other than speculative science fiction, the notion of replacing authors themselves seemed too fanciful to take seriously.

Can’t happen here?  Not only can it, not only will it, but one of the company’s founders, Kris Hammond, predicts “In five years, a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology.”

If after reading In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column you still think it will never happen, drop us a comment. But please identify yourself as human. E-Reads management reserves the right to reject postings submitted by robots.

Richard Curtis

In the rising of the sun and its going down,
We remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
We remember them.
In the opening buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
We remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We will remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We will remember them.
When we are lost and are sick of heart,
We remember them.
When we have Joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live, For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.

Traditional Jewish Prayerbook Remembrance

Though Quirt’s name is little-known, his skills as a gladiator are quickly obvious and hard to match. In Aureity, noblemen battle in the arena circuit, using their powers of teleportation and telekinesis to prove their breeding and strength. The prizes at play are not only silver and bronze but also the chance to rise amongst the nobility and mate with the ruling class of women.

In Ill Met in the Arena, award-winning fantasy author Dave Duncan creates yet another new, fully-realized world filled with complex cultures and brisk adventure. Intrigue, politics, action, humor–this book will grab you from page one and not let go until the final word. But why would you try to get away from a great Dave Duncan fantasy?

Visit his author page to see some others you may have missed.

When Doctor Owen Orient, a prominent New York physician decides to renounce his practice and all the material comforts he has become accustomed to, his goal is to find a simpler, more meaningful existence for himself.

But Orient is not like ordinary men. For years he has been studying the secrets of the Occult and, though he seeks simplicity now, finds himself drawn more and more deeply into a horrifying series of events that challenge his scientific rationality, his occult powers, and the instincts and emotions that guide his manhood.

The puzzle that began in a Manhattan black magic commune eventually draws Orient to Tangier, Marrakech, and Rome to a confrontation with an ancient ravening evil–a battle in which telepathy, telekinesis, and even sex become weapons in a frenzied struggle to the death–and beyond…

For the first time E-Reads is collecting the seven novels in the Doctor Orient series in a new, unified format, and will make them available to readers all over the world. Written over a period of more than twenty years, the books narrate Doctor Orient’s discovery of his own psychic powers, his continuing research and his efforts to expand and deepen his understanding of the hidden level of reality in which psychic events occur and the monstrous and terrifying uses to which such powers are put to use by those who regard humans, and humanity as a whole, as play-things for exploitation of their dark desires. Frank Lauria, the author of the Doctor Orient series, is also at work on the first new Doctor Orient novel in almost two decades.

Raga Six : A Novel of Ancient Evil

“Hypnotically readable…Frank Lauria has written the most believable Vampire and Werewolf stories I have ever read.”
–William S. Burroughs.

Are e-readers gender-specific?  Fox News seems to think so.  Laura Hazard Owen happens to think so too. She says tablets are a guy thing, Nooks and Kindles are for females. “A new study from Nielsen finds that 61 percent of e-reader owners are now female, she writes in Paid Content, “but women lag behind men  in ownership of tablets, 43% to 57%.”

To what does Owen attribute these tilts? She speculates that Barnes & Noble’s pitch of the Nook to women has been very effective:

“Use your Nook while you get your hair done: Marketing also plays a part. Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch recently introduced the new Nook Simple Touch Reader by suggesting it was easy enough for a grandmother to use. The Nook videos on B&N’s website are narrated by women, and someone named ‘Kate’ describes the product features. An ad, ‘I love my Nook Color,’ features a female special-ed teacher, a ‘marketing professional’ named Megan who describes the Nook Color as ‘pretty,’ and Rhoda, a ‘retired teacher and grandma, who says, ‘I’m a dinosaur, that’s what my kids call me…but if I can do this, it’s definitely easy.’ (One guy, who doesn’t speak in the ad, is thrown in at the end.) One Nook TV ad, ‘Love of Reading,’ shows women using their Nooks while cooking, pregnant, and at the beauty parlor.”

The demographics on age are even more eye-opening. “Thirty percent of e-reader owners are now over the age of 55, compared to 25 percent in Q3 2010. A full 51 percent are over the age of 45. Meanwhile, market share for e-reader usage among younger people is declining for people under the age of 45. It might seem as though all of those people are switching over to tablets, but that does not appear to be the case. For example, 18- to 24-year-olds made up 15 percent of e-reader owners in Q3 2010, and 10 percent now. 18- to 24-year-olds made up 23 percent of tablet owners in Q3 2010, and that is down to 13 percent now,” writes Owen.

She doesn’t address the reasons for the decline in ownership of tablets by young people but in this economy it’s always a good idea to look at the price as a determining factor.

Who Loves E-Readers? Your Mom by Laura Hazard Owen

Richard Curtis

Some readers are indulgent about typos and production errors they find in books, and stolidly tolerate them as yet another confirmation of the truth that authors, editors and proofreaders are fallible.

Other readers freak out over them and feel that the introduction of even a single typo is as disruptive of the reading experience as if a moth landed on the page.

We tend to be more surprised to find errors in printed books than in e-books.  The longer lead-time and high editorial standards of the old publishing business make clean texts an achievable goal, whereas e-books are often produced and released in haste.

A number of publishers including E-Reads specialize in previously published books, and the temptation to be slapdash is high. One publisher confessed that “In the rush to get these older books back into print and capitalize on this otherwise moribund intellectual capital, it appears that expediency has often been prioritized over accuracy. When a book may only sell a modest number of digital copies and ‘good enough’ will do, proofing likely seems like an unnecessary step.”

It would be easy to say the hell with it and just publish the book unproofread, or formatted with minimal attention to such issues as placement of line breaks. For one thing, we would save a lot of time. For another, we would save a lot of money. We don’t stint on either and though I’m sure our books are not 100% error free, zero defects is definitely our goal.

We agree with our colleagues at Open Road, who recognize that: “this is a challenge and therefore has a stringent process in place and puts in a lot of resources to produce quality e-books. The books go through a thorough proofread and at least two subsequent levels of quality assurance before being finalized. While the technology is certainly new and there will always be some mistakes when you publish hundreds to thousands of e-books a year, we are proud of our track record and will continue to invest in and improve our already thorough process.”

Olivia Snaije, writing for Publishing Perspectives, interviewed a number of colleagues in the e-book business, asking the question “Why are there so damn many typos in e-books?”  The epithet in her question implies that she does not suffer typos gladly, and we equate it with the damned spot in Lady Macbeth’s imprecation.

An executive at Aptara explained how mistakes creep into e-books to begin with. When a book is scanned as the first step in the e-book conversion process, the software “is very good for handling structured information, but not very good at identifying and processing information that varies and is inconsistent. Software will get you 90 percent of the way, but the rest needs to be controlled manually. To ensure top quality you need quality control editors to look at every line and every page…the challenge is when you are converting a large number of books and you’re not willing to spend the hours of quality control.”

A publishing colleague described E-Reads as “the artisanal bakery of the e-book world.” After reading Snaije’s article you’ll understand why we took it as a compliment.

Error-Free E-books Will Come “When Cars Can Drive Themselves” by Olivia Snaije

Richard Curtis

Mariners of Gor, the 30th installment of John Norman’s bestselling Gor Chronicles, is emerging from the production line and heading for release this fall. It is John Norman at his most vivid, stirring and imaginative and extends the Gorean adventure into a realm of daring vision.  We believe Norman fans will acclaim Mariners of Gor one of the finest creations in this vast, world-spanning saga.

To sample a scene from Mariners of Gor, click here.

Have you filled out the form to qualify to win one of five e-books of Mariners?  If not, click here.

And if you haven’t read the forerunners to Norman’s latest work, visit his author page to see what you’ve missed.

From Mariners of Gor

******************
We plied our levers, at a ten-beat, which strong men can maintain for as much as an Ahn, and continued this beat for something like twenty Ehn, and then the keleustes, warned to silence, put aside his hammers. The ship drifted forward a bit, noiselessly, through the fog. Then it rocked in place. One could hear the water lapping against the hull.
There was no command to bring the oars inboard.
The beat need not be rung, of course, but may be called softly, from amidships, if appropriate.
But there was only silence.
Then there was a rift in the fog, like the sudden, whispering drawing aside of a curtain, but briefly.
Aiii! cried a man.
We stood then, at the thwarts, and first beheld her.
Then the fog again closed in. I did not think we were more than seventy-five yards from her.
It seemed we were a chip, floating on the sea, off the coast of some ponderous, drifting immensity.
What is it? asked a man.
A ship, said a fellow. A ship.
Oars! called the captain, and we resumed our position.
Back oar, said the second officer, shuddering.
No, said the captain. Stroke!
Withdraw, urged the second officer.
Stroke, called the captain.
We did not know if he were curious, courageous, or mad. I think he was a good officer.
The ship moved a little forward, but there was murmuring behind me and to the side, consternation, and I do not think that every oar was drawn. Had we been a round ship I think the lash would have fallen amongst us.
If you must, said the second officer, go closer, look, and then flee, but it is pointless, and none will believe your report.
Stroke, called the captain.
It is rumored that there were gigantic dragons of the sea, prodigious monsters, lurking beyond the farther islands, aquatic prodigies guarding the end of the world, set there by Priest-Kings, as one might post guard sleen about the perimeter of a camp, but this thing, in the glimpse we had had, was no water-shedding, surfacing monster, toothed and scaled, nothing alive, as least we commonly thought of life, nothing curious, jealous, and predatory.
Your command will be taken, said the second officer.
Stroke, called the captain, softly, peering into the fog.
Desist, Captain, I beg of you, said the second officer.
The captain then was silent, listening.
The patrol ship was not large. She was a light galley, and she, though fitted with ram and shearing blades, was built more for speed and reconnaissance than fencing at sea, the ship the weapon itself. She was only some fifty foot Gorean from stem to stern, some ten feet in her beam. Such ships are less likely to engage a medium- or heavy-class galley than support such larger sisters in their altercations, perhaps hovering about, like a small sleen, awaiting an auspicious moment to take advantage of an otherwise distracted foe. We had only five oars to a side, and a rowing crew of twenty, two to each oar. Our common concern, or prey, were small boats, with a crew of four or five, tiny merchantmen, or smugglers, if you like, hoping to run the blockade to the farther islands. Larger galleys, rogues from the coastal ports, not signatory to the imposed treaties, or, more dangerously, pirates or merchantmen from Port Kar, our enemy, detected, would be reported to Telnus, in theory to be intercepted, if possible, on their return to their home ports. To be sure, interceptions were rare, and it was suspected that this had more to do with understandings and secret fees than faulty intelligence. Many high captains of both Tyros and Cos were wealthy men.
There, whispered the lookout, suddenly, pointing.
Ah! breathed the captain.
The fog had parted, again, and we could see the monstrous structure, now some fifty yards abeam.
Clearly it was a ship. It was wood. It was carvel-built, the mighty planks fitted, not the clinker-construction with overlapping planks. That construction is common with the serpents of the north. It ships more water, but with its elasticity, with its capacity to shift, to twist and bend, it is less likely to break up in a heavy sea. The ship had six masts, apparently fixed, which suggested it was a round ship, which has fixed masts, and often more than one, say, two or three, though never so many as six. The round ship, with its size and weight, though oared, usually by galley slaves, chained to their benches, relies more on its sails than a long ship. Interestingly, though the ship was carvel-built it was square rigged, with tiered sails, on tiered yards. The square sail is an all-purpose sail, whose single canvas may be adjusted to the wind. The mighty structure before us had a blunt, rearing prow. It had no ram, no shearing blades. It would be slow to come about, and a small galley might easily outdistance her, much as a racing kaiila might easily overtake a caravan of bosk-drawn wagons. It was not built for war, but for space and power, for height and storage, perhaps for invulnerability. We did not know what cargo it might carry. In its holds it might carry the stores of a small city. Its maneuverability would be so sluggish that the deft adjustments of shearing blades, responsive to subtleties of the ship’s movement, so common in the swift movements of Gorean naval warfare, would be impractical, if not impossible. Too, in such a mountain of wood there would be little use for a ram, as it would be of little use against a swifter, darting foe. To be sure, the ship itself would be formidable. It might plow through piers.
The fog then closed in again.
The great ship had been abeam.
The captain lifted his hand, and then lowered it.
We rocked, gently.
Back oars, suggested the second officer. Back oars!
No, said the captain.
I sensed he was alarmed. So, too, were we.
It was very quiet.
We were not sure, now, of the position of the great structure, or even if it were moving.
He called for no further stroke.
Then we heard the cry of a Vosk gull. These are large, broad-winged birds, which occasionally fish three and four hundred pasangs from the delta. Smaller gulls nest on the cliffs of both Tyros and Cos.
We did not see the bird.
It was then again quiet, save for the soft sound of water against the hull.
There was then another cry, but it was not the cry of the Vosk gull. It was a wild, shrill, ringing scream, unmistakable.
That is a tarn! cried a man.
Impossible, said the captain.
Even with the fog we could not be so far off our course, or so confused. The tarn, you see, is a land bird, a hook-beaked, vast-winged, gigantic, crested, dreaded, fearsome monster of the skies. Its talons can clasp a kaiila and carry it aloft, to drop it to its death, thence to land and feed on the meat. Its most common prey is the delicate, flocking, single-horned tabuk. A single wrench of that mighty beak could tear the arm from a man. The tarn, you see, never flies from the sight of land. It could not be the cry of a tarn.
Then, again, we heard that shrill scream, as though at dawn, as it might announce itself to the sun, Tor-tu-Gor, as it might inform the world of the privacy and sanctity of its nesting site, as it might warn even larls away from its surveyed domain.
The tarn, it is said, is the Ubar of the sky.
So astonishing then that men, so tiny beside its bulk, might saddle and use such monsters as mounts! Such men are called tarnsmen.
Back oars! Back oars! cried the second officer, standing wildly at the port rail.
Back oars! screamed the captain.
We seized the oars but it was useless. There was no time, no time to even lift the blades from the water.
Emerging from the fog, literally upon us, suddenly visible, was the vast bulk of the great ship.

A while back we wondered what was going to happen to your Kindle, Nook, or iPad when the next generation of e-readers replaced them. “If what’s happening in Europe is any guideline,” we wrote “it will end up in a toxic e-waste landfill in Asia and Africa where the destitute, many of them children, will scavenge it for scrap. These scavengers incur horrifying and often fatal skin, lung, intestinal and reproductive organ ailments from the plastics, metals and gases that go into discarded cell phones, televisions, computers, keyboards, monitors, cables and similar e-scrap.” (See Getting Rid of E-Trash? Dump it on Asia’s Poor)

We’re all so dazzled by our new digital toys that we’d rather not think about these tragedies. But the New York Times‘s David Barboza forces us to look at them in his exposé of environmental abuses perpetrated by e-book and tablet manufacturers, and in particular Apple. The Chinese government has accused Chinese suppliers to Apple of “discharging polluted waste and toxic metals into surrounding communities and threatening public health.”

For instance, “Apple acknowledged that 137 workers at a Chinese factory near the city of Suzhou had been seriously injured by a toxic chemical used in making the signature slick glass screens of the iPhone.”

For the dismaying details, read Barboza’s Apple Cited as Adding to Pollution in China

And if you’d like to drill down into the subject, read Greeners Speak Up About Toxic E-Books.

Richard Curtis