Has Google Already Digitized Your Book?

Google has already digitized more than 7 Million books as part of its book program. Authors and publishers who remain a part of the Google Book Settlement are to receive between $60 and $300 for each book Google digitized without permission.

Limited Access to Google's Official Database of Digitized Books?

During my April 2, 2009, teleseminar, What the Google Book Settlement Means for Authors and Publishers, attendees asked how they can determine whether Google has already digitized their books. As I shared during the teleconference, in the Final Notice of the Class Action Settlement, Google indicates that a searchable database of all books covered by the Settlement is available at www.googlebooksettlement.com. I could not locate or access the database when I went the Settlement website. I suspect it is only available to those who have confirmed their participation in the Settlement.

Other Options for Determining Digitization Status of Your Books

If you can’t get to the searchable database on the Settlement website, here are some suggestions obtained from the Anz LitLovers Litblog.

• Visit Google Book Search which is available at http://books.google.com/
  
• Search for your books by title or by author name
  
• If you find your book, click on the link “About this book” and check the information included under the heading “More details”

According to Anz LitLovers Litblog, if your book has been digitized, it will be indicated under the “More details” heading along with identification of the library that provided the book for digitizing. While I don’t think this is true for every book that Google has digitized, it was the case for the sample search ‘Tribal Guerillas’ cited in the Anz LitLovers Litblog posting.

I say it’s not true for every digitized books because I saw several books that did not have this information listed under “More details” yet were listed as being available preview. For example, one book listed as “Limited Preview” offered 60 of the book’s 300 pages for online preview. If there is that much of a book available for preview, my bet is Google has digitized the entire book.

Obviously, this method of checking the digitization of your book is not full-proof.