Re: Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book"

> Is anyone aware of any authors who insisted that their works be
> removed from this program?

I've talked to my publisher and we're considering it. The problem with Amazon's setup is that by searching for common words, you can easily retrieve every page in a book. I gather that we can tell them only to make some of pages available, e.g., the first fifth of the book or every fifth page, so we may do that.

Putting large chunks of a book online helps sales, but putting the whole thing online, particularly high quality page images like Amazon has, is counterproductive.

In my case, the publishing contracts give the publisher (Wiley) broad authority to license electronic rights, but they have the same piracy concerns that we do.

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711
johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail