Frankfurt Day 3: More Hammering on Google, But Deals Are Froogle

by Steven Zeitchik, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 10/21/2005

A big book is emerging at the Frankfurt Book Fair--the one being thrown at Google.

For the second consecutive day the talk was less of huge rights sales than of publisher worries about the new searchable age. This time the chatter was more formal, with Google part of a three-hour panel session titled "Who Will Digitize Our Books?" in a room off the floor. (The meeting consisted of a number of international types acquainted with digital publishing, but it was Google's Jim Gerber who fielded a disproportionate amount of the questions.)

Gerber walked the audience through the program, saying that the snippet views in Google Print for Libraries were not always fully understood, and there was much general talk about the need to use technology to unlock book content.

But what was most notable about the event was the forum it gave to publishers, whose fears now seem to be coming into sharper focus. At the panel some brought up a desire for more contracts and legal arrangements between pubs and digitizers a la libraries; a separation of church and state (between sales and searching); and more respect for the copyright differences between countries.

At the session, as over the last few days, it's become clear that while most publishers like the fact of digital material, they're less sanguine about the process and perhaps the people who create those digits--a fear of which the new Google suit is just one symptom. "Trust isn't enough. Good intentions aren't enough," said Richard Rudnick, speaking from the audience. "We need to build structures."

Many of the assembled urged more co-operation between digitizers and publishers, though still squishy is how to do that when the ambitions and security thresholds of, say, Google don't always match the ambitions and security thresholds of publishers. "What's clear is that there are no clear views," panelist Hermann Spruijt said in a closing statement.

Back at the rights center, the consensus was of a slightly slower show. The title generating the most talk was Buffett, and it was happening very far away.

(Things no doubt also moved a little slower today after the Bertelsmann party last night, which featured the usual welcome stream of beverages and swankiness until after midnight (we heard), while heads of the company's various divisions and CEO Gunther Thielen joined much of the Frankfurt faithful at the fest.)

Still, despite the rabble-rousing, Soft Skull's Richard Nash managed to sell his Paul Berman book, Power and the Idealists, in part about German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, to five countries, including Germany. And Joe Regal was drawing heavy interest for foreign sales of the Crown-acquired Does Stevie Wonder Have a Sense of Smell?--described as a Why Do Men Have Nipples for the music set.

It was, at least in this sense, a rocking fair: Word on the rights floor also had another mega musician autobio on the brink of finding its first publisher, following Courtney Love from earlier at the show and Eric Clapton from last week. Perhaps music memoirs, like celebrity deaths and exhausting days at Frankfurt, also come in threes