William Morris Tells Authors to Opt Out of Google Book Settlement

Posted on August 10, 2009

The New York Times reports that William Morris is advising its author clients to opt out of the Google Book Settlement. The settlement includes revenues from book sales and a percentage of ad revenues for authors.

In a memo to clients obtained by The New York Times, William Morris advises writers to opt out of the settlement because it would "bind copyright owners in any book published prior to January 9, 2009 to its terms." The terms of the agreement call for authors and publishers to split 63 percent of any revenue that Google generates from the sale of a digitized book either individually or in a database, as well as ad revenues from pages where an author's work appears.
"Now they've got this license to sell your books at a pre-negotiated one-time royalty that you're stuck with unless a court changes the settlement," Eric Zohn, an attorney in business affairs at William Morris, said in an interview. "It's like a legislative change. Under copyright law, you don't have anything without express written consent from the copyright holder. Now the court is saying Google is free to sell your book unless you expressly tell them not to."

William Morris Endeavor is one of the biggest entertainment agencies and this advice to all of its literary clients is a bold move that is sure to irritate the parties to the settlement.

William Morris is still recommending clients to keep their digitized books in the Google database because having your book appear in search results can be beneficial.