Norway's National Library is digitizing all books in its collection for access to all

[OnlinePoker]

The National Library of Norway is digitizing all the books in its collection, processing the text to make it searchable, and making them available to read online.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/11/5199472/norway-is-digitizing-all-its-books-and-making-them-free-to-read-online

I don't know how I would feel about this if I was an author who just spent a year or two researching and writing a book, only to have the government come in and makes it available for everyone free of charge. I've lost all monetary benefits from my work.

[CBGLuthier]

1. "Norway has taken the extra step of making agreements with many publishers"

From the article it sounds like paths to compensation have been worked out. Publishers are not known for "making agreements" that net them zero profit.

[MineralMan]

2. Publishers are also not known for making sure that authors

are compensated properly for their work.

My advice to book authors: Negotiate an advance that compensates you for writing the book. That's what I've done for the three books I have written. I never saw a penny of royalties, but I got paid up front for my work. Note: They were non-fiction.

Get paid up front. It's the only payment you'll see from most publishers. Today, e-books provide an alternative publishing method that actually rewards you for sales of your work. I highly recommend that route.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. A lot hangs on whether the online access will be charged

Here's what the library says:

Entering into agreements

Digital content no longer covered by copyright shall be made available to everyone in the digital library. The entire digital collection shall be available for research and documentation on the National Library of Norway’s premises. The Library shall otherwise enter into agreements with beneficial owners regarding the right to grant online access to researchers, students and the Library’s users in general.

http://www.nb.no/English/The-Digital-Library/Digitizing-policy

The Bookshelf

Bokhylla.no (The Bookshelf) is a collaboration project designed to provide online access to literature published in Norwegian based on a formal agreement between the National Library of Norway and Norwegian beneficial owners represented by Kopinor.

The service will cover around 250,000 books when completed in 2017. Books from the entire 20th century will be available to anyone with a Norwegian IP address. Books not protected by copyright may be downloaded.

http://www.nb.no/English/The-Digital-Library/Collaboration-Projects

If that means, for instance, that copyrighted works will be limited in the speed at which you could access them (the speed of a fast reader, say), and this only applies to work in Norwegian, then this becomes an online lending library for the country - which they can cover with payments from taxes to authors - like a Public Lending Right scheme.

If this includes books in languages other than Norwegian (I can't tell if 'The Bookshelf' is meant to be the whole project, or just part of it), then I foresee a new market in IP addresses spoofed to look like Norwegian ones. And I doubt they'd want to be paying taxes for access by non-Norwegians.