E-Reads™ is
...a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors. Our books are available in all e-book formats and paperback. Read the latest publishing news and provocative blogs by top commentators in the traditional and digital publishing fields.
FEATURED TITLES
The Road to Victory
David Colley
The Red Ball Operation, the vital train of supplies improvised by American troops during the invasion of Europe, was one of the GIs' bravest exploits, without which World War II would have dragged on at a terri...
Courting an Angel
Patricia Grasso
There was a familiar feel in the air. She knew it well, knew exactly by whom that sensation had been provoked. But could it be? Could it really be he? He was the one man who set her soul on fire. He was also th...
On Wings of Joy
Trudy Garfunkel
In this engaging history of dance, readers are introduced to the major performers, choreographers, and composers who influenced the development of ballet. Beginning with the birth of the art in the sixteenth-c...
Song of Kali
Dan Simmons
Blood will curdle in Calcutta! In the most crime-ridden city, nightmares become real and evil is defined by frightening occurrences. When an American family finds themselves encircled by the terrors of this lan...
A Delicate Situation
Elizabeth Chater
With the startling beauty of a princess, but hardly the wealth to be associated with royalty, Miss Thalia Temple's pride prevents her from growing too close to anyone or anything unfamiliar to her--even when ...
The Stoned Apocalypse
Marco Vassi
Marco Vassi was possibly the greatest erotic writer of his generation. His first publisher at Olympia Press, Maurice Girodias, compares his talent for prose to Henry Miller’s writing. His sexual exploratio...
Shatterday
Harlan Ellison
Mercurial, belligerent, passionately in love with language and wild ideas, Harlan Ellison has, for half a century, steadily gathered to himself and his thirty-seven books an undeniably fanatical readership. W...
Appointment in Jerusalem
Max I. Dimont
Biblical historian Max Dimont, author of the classic JEWS, GOD, AND HISTORY, explores the mystery surrounding the predictions Jesus made about his fate. Examining the gospel, Dimont recreates the drama in thre...
The Stone Mage & the Sea
Sean Williams
The Stone Mages rule the huge deserts of red sand. The vast coastlines are ruled by Sky Wardens. Magic is everywhere but not all have the power to control and direct it. Any child found to have magical abili...
Cinderfella
Linda Winstead Jones
As Stuart Haley grew older, year by year, he worried more and more about the security of his famous Cattle fortune. He had raised his daughters in the lap of luxury--they wanted for nothing--and all three gi...
Love's Wild Desire
Jennifer Blake
It starts as a case of mistaken identity but it will slowly blossom into the union of two people so right for each other that all of New Orleans society will stand up and take notice. As soon as aristocratic Ra...
Milady Hot-At-Hand
Elizabeth Chater
Andrea is devastated when her father, the Count, and sister, Pola, are murdered. Determined to unmask the killer, Andrea puts her very honor at stake when she disguises herself as a young, fair-haired boy. It i...
The Stricken Field
Dave Duncan
Paranoid but almighty, the sorcerer Xinixo had seized control of the Impire. But ruling the imps and most of the world was not enough. He would never feel safe until he was universally loved, so he would smash...
The Kennedy Men
Nellie Bly
Unparalleled by any other family in the history of our nation, the Kennedys have become a legend for the scandals, the love and the mysteries that surround them. THE KENNEDY MEN: THREE GENERATIONS OF SEX, SCAND...
The Space Eater
David Langford
Ken Jackin has defeated death forty-six times thanks to the extraordinary phenomenon called Anomalous Physics, but now he has his most difficult mission: stop the experiments on a runaway space colony. In order...
Google, the Authors Guild, and publishing industry leaders have filed a revised and sweetened settlement with the court. To those who are still opposed to it despite every reasonable effort to placate them, a request:
Spare us the hypocrisy.
You can dress up your objections to the Google settlement in legal niceties and pious pleas for fairness, but the truth is you’re just jealous that Google took initiatives that you lacked the vision to take – until it looked like there was money to be made. So now you want to gut the settlement so you can get a piece of the action you didn’t raise a finger or spend a dime to earn.
Where were you when a treasure house of literary works was abandoned? And isn’t it odd that now that someone has come along with a viable plan to recover that treasure and wants to make a reasonable profit, you have suddenly become passionate bibliophiles and champions of fairness?
Google, the publishing industry, and the Authors Guild have walked an extra mile to satisfy your so-called “concerns”. A revised and sweetened settlement has been presented to the court. Do the right thing: honor the men and women of good will who have forged it, the corporate leaders who deserve to profit from it and the generations of humanity that stand to benefit from it.
Read the sweetened terms of the settlement here. For additional observations read Google Settlement Under Attack for Making Treasure Out of Trash.
Richard Curtis
Google, the Authors Guild, and publishing industry leaders have filed a revised and sweetened settlement with the court. To those who are still opposed to it despite every reasonable effort to placate them, a request:
While I do not doubt that some of the parties opposed to the settlement have selfish motives that are not in the public good, I do not think it is correct to assume a rosy picture for Google and the Author's Guild. There are people who oppose the settlement for ethical reasons, legal reasons, and philosophical reasons. This settlement should be rendered illegal and a proper path that includes all partners, not just the ones that Google deems worthy, should be pursued. The process should be democratic, transparent, and inclusive. The best ways to achieve any kind of just solution needs to include all of these elements. The current settlement is truly fascist and oligarchical–rule by a centralized select few that permits little criticism from outsiders. To put it kindly, your post is reductionist and employs the very tactics of which you accuse your opponents.
Somewhere between democratic, transparent and inclusive on the one hand, and fascist and oligarchical on the other, stands a fact that Anonymous and other critics of the settlement keep forgetting. Which is that Google's Book Search is a capitalistic enterprise designed to earn a reasonable profit for its investment. And that investment has been substantial. In fact it has been prodigious.
Other businesses had the opportunity to do what Google has done but lacked the vision and imagination, the will and the financial resources, to do it. Google deserves to be rewarded for its enterprise but not profligately, and the settlement sees to it that they will not be rewarded profligately. But rewarded they should be. The settlement is the best and fairest course between two opposing forces. It should be endorsed by the court, and I hope it will be.
RC