The Battle for the Books examines the Google Books project through interviews with people inside the project and humanizes challenging concepts like the intricacies of copyright and long-running tensions between publishers and authors. The story also reveals how librarians’ traditional role as cultural guardians is evolving in the digital age.

1. The Battle for the Books:
Inside Google’s Gambit to
Create the World’s Largest
Library
A GigaOM ebook by
Jeff John Roberts, staff writer, paidContent

2. The Battle for the Books - Summary
The Battle for the Books follows the
development of the Google Books project and
examines the struggles, innovations and legal
hurdles involved in digitizing books.
Author Jeff John Roberts gives the first
detailed account of Google’s grand plan to
build a modern day Library of Alexandria, its
subsequent undoing, and how it changed the
way knowledge is viewed in the digital era.

3. The Battle for the Books - Summary
Available for download for $2.99 on Amazon and iTunes, The Battle for
the Books tells a technology story through interviews with the
fascinating people involved and humanizes challenging concepts like:
• the intricacies of copyright,
• the role of publishers and authors,
• ownership of content, and
• the traditional role of librarians in society as well as their evolving
role in digital society.

4. The Battle for the Books - Excerpt
One crisp winter day in early 2010, the OJ Simpson of copyright trials was taking place in a federal courtroom 23 floors
above lower Manhattan. The place was filled to capacity. More people sat in a nearby overflow room and yet more
people stood gathered outside the doors, straining to hear the proceedings.
The cause of the fuss was Google. On this day, everyone from Microsoft to folk singers to the government of Germany
was clamoring to warn the court about Google’s scheme to create the world’s biggest library. One after another they
told Judge Denny Chin of digital dystopias that would take place if Google controlled the world’s books.
This was more than even Google had anticipated. What had once been a pet project of the company’s founders had
metastasized into what one executive would later describe as “a Rorschach test” for people’s fears of the future. Those
fears probe a time not long off when books are replaced by computer servers and companies could replace librarians
as the prime the curators of our knowledge.
Google did not start this upheaval but it will remain in the middle of it for a long time. Already, it has upended the
publishing industry and bent the contours of copyright law. In doing so, Google also scanned everything from War and
Peace to Watership Down, and built the world’s largest library.

5. The Battle for the Books - Praise
"Jeff Roberts has written a compelling, fast-paced and thoroughly
absorbing account of the creation of the greatest - and controversial -
accumulation of knowledge the world has ever known.”
- James Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist for The New York Times
"Excellent and beautifully written,”
- Bruce Clark, correspondent and former editor, The Economist

6. The Battle for the Books - Author
Jeff John Roberts is a staff writer for
paidContent, reporting on large media
companies and legal issues affecting the
development of online media. A lawyer and
journalist, he has been covering copyright issues
for the past 10 years, and has followed Google
Books closely since 2009, including attending
most of the court hearings in the copyright case.

7. Download The Battle for the Books here:
pro.gigaom.com/books/the-battle-for-the-books/
Press contact:
Allison Parker
allison.parker@gigaom.com