Capitalist publishing doesn't work

From yesterday's Guardian, Publishers unite against Google, a story on Google Book Search.

"Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the Bookseller, says publishers are tempted to back Google in its partner programme because there are no devices in much of the world on to which a scanned book could be downloaded so the threat posed is limited. But that could change.

"Now you can search the text but you still need to buy the book," he says. "However, in less than five years' time an application will almost certainly be invented that makes leisure reading a more comfortable experience in digital format. So if you agree in principle that Google can scan anything it likes from a library, and feed it into its search engine, then it effectively becomes the backlist publisher and starts to destroy the basis of your business."

If this is true, if backlists are the basis of publisher's business, they've looked after them badly. Take the case of Patrick Hamilton, an author of some significance, yet at the moment I think only Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky and Hangover Square are in print.

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