Claim your books: you could make some money

The BRGs were talking recently about the Google book settlement and whether or not it was worth bothering to fill out online claims for our books. In short: YES.

It only takes about five minutes to fill out the online forms and (if you do and Google scans your books before May), you will be paid at least $60 and maybe as much as $300. That's worth five minutes of MY time!

NOTE: You may need to enter the title, rather than your name -- that's how I found my books.

Here is what the Authors Guild had to say about the settlement:

"The settlement strengthens authors' rights and will, if approved by the court, result in millions of dollars of payments to authors. At least $45 million will be paid to authors and publishers to release claims for books that are scanned by Google by May 5th of this year. But that's not the most significant part of the settlement, in our view. We expect the licensing that this settlement would enable, particularly of out-of-print books, will result in far more revenues for authors over the coming years.

The settlement covers essentially all in-copyright books that were published by January 5, 2009. (Some authors have told us that they think of the settlement as covering only books for adults or nonfiction books. This is incorrect. Books of all types are covered by the settlement.)

We think it's in the strong interest of authors of all books, whether in print or out of print, to go to www.googlebooksettlement.com and claim their books. Here are some of the benefits of doing so:

1. If you file your claim by January 5, 2010, and a book in which you have a copyright interest is scanned by Google before May 5, 2009, you will be entitled to a small share (at least $60 per book, but up to $300, depending on the number of claims) in a pool of at least $45 million that Google is paying to release claims for works that were scanned without rightsholder permission."

(There were more benefits but you can read them yourself at the Authors Guild Web site -- I just wanted to give the main info for those who hadn't seen it.)