More and more out-of-copyright books are being digitized and many scholarly papers are being posted on the internet. Any scholarly book should now be supplemented by postings on the web because everything that is written cannot be published. The Google Book Search project, which major libraries such as the New York Public Library have signed onto, is in the process of transferring millions of books into the search engine’s database. The publishing industry is also in the process of developing “an automated content access protocol”, a digital framework that will allow publishers to “define and regulate the terms of access in a manner that the search engine’s robot spiders understand”.

Hence the question we need to ask is whether digitization will help the three main players of the publishing industry: the publishers, booksellers and, of course, the readers. Will they get the stuff for free or will they need to pay for it?

Google, the main driving force behind digitization, is not going to give away its labours for a song. It would certainly charge a fee for access. Pricing could be along the lines of the annual subscription fee for the print edition of journals, which also allows access to the archives at a little extra cost.

For instance, if you subscribe to The Economist or The NewYork Review of Books, you get access to the archives. If you do not, all you get online are summaries of the articles that would tempt you to pay the annual fee. These are early days but some such formula would be worked out, probably on a publisher-to-publisher basis. The bottom line is that you pay. But, there are swings-and-roundabouts for each of the three players.

The publisher makes his money on reprints which means not just a straight reprint of the earlier, non-copyrighted edition but also of its re-designed version which is copyright. If Google lifts off the new edition without paying a fee, it is a violation of copyright. Besides, to reset an old book costs time and money. Google would have to pay for it and then charge its users.

Booksellers would lose out a little on the online edition, but not very much. Not everyone has a computer at home, nor would he necessarily subscribe to the digitized edition.

A reader, who owns a computer, makes wide use of it and such usage will definitely increase in the coming years. The reader will certainly benefit from digitized versions of non-copyright books which often are not easily available.

Of course a lot depends on how old you are: if you are under 30, you will easily take to the electro- nic edition; if older, there will be a psychological barrier that would take time to get over.