I recently deposited a royalty check for a book published in 2001 (four generations of books ago for me). That check included more income from digital distribution than from print sales, a pleasant surprise that was enough to pay for dinner out.
When I received my mailing about the Google Books settlement, I had to decide: did I want more people to possibly see my work; or would I hold out to cover part of my costs of research and writing?
My investment in my ideas won out. I agreed to the most aggressive open distribution of all my titles.
As a scholar, I already have seen the way that digital publication renews access to my ideas; I hear from people in countries where I would likely never have found an audience from print, who know about my work because of digital publications.
For my interests in getting my ideas out, the biggest problem has been the lack of a widely shared format for digital publications. Google Books currently provides the best approximation. But we need to follow up our endorsement of the use of Google Books with debate about, and development of, a more ideal system so that academic publishing doesn't get stuck again being dependent on the demands of for-profit companies.
So instead of fighting Google now (and cutting off access to my own ideas) I want to see us get on with the next step. Scholarly research agrees: the future of digital scholarship will be impeded if we don't see the following features emerge, and academic authors need to advocate for a future like this:
(From Digital Libraries and the Need for a Universal Digital Publication Format
Terje Hillesund, Jon E. Noring,
vol. 9, no. 2, Summer 2006 accessed here.)