Launch of LibreDigital Warehouse

Steve Bryant, Publishers Fight Back Against Google with New Book Search Service, eWeek, August 22, 2006. Excerpt:

Publishers who want to make their books searchable online but aren't comfortable with Google Book Search now have another option.  Publisher HarperCollins and Austin, Texas-based LibreDigital announced today a hosted service called LibreDigital Warehouse that will give publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites.

Like Google Book Search, the service will allow users to search the entire content of a book and preview a percentage of its text and illustrations.

Unlike Google, LibreDigital Warehouse allows publishers to customize which pages a user can view, which pages are always prohibited from viewing (such as the last three pages of a novel), and what overall percentage of a book is viewable. Publishers can customize these rules per title and per partner....

HarperCollins is currently the only participating publisher, but the program has received a "warm welcome" from other publishers who are also interested in participating, according to LibreDigital....

Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, said LibreDigital Warehouse would be a way to help authors, distributors and independent booksellers market their titles, while allowing publishers to maintain presentation quality and copyright control....

HarperCollins announced a version of LibreDigital Warehouse, called "Browse Inside," on its own Web site earlier this month, although users can only browse predefined pages instead of searching.

Comments.

1. LibreDigital Warehouse doesn't seem to have a web site yet. I'll post the URL as soon as it's available.
2. This project is welcome if it means more free searching of full-text books. Don't be misled by the name, however. While libre has acquired strong connotations of open source and open access, and this project is delivering neither.
3. Like most publisher announcements that touch on Google, this one fails to distinguish the Google Publisher program from the Google Library program. The former gives the publishers all the controls that LibreDigital Warehouse does how much of a book, and which parts, will be visible online. The latter only displays fair-use snippets.