“Especially here in COVID era, we aren’t going to bookstores. People want to be able to read part of a book first to get an idea of what it’s like,” says McDonald. “Buying a print-only book sight unseen is an odd idea to some people.”

I think in the end, [Controll Digital Lending] drives sales because you are finding readers you wouldn’t normally have. Those readers aren’t getting a copy that they keep forever — it’s a copy that’s going to lead them to want to own it.

Jason C. McDonald, author and publisher, AJ Charleson Publishing

The Archive also provides readers of its digitiz online books a chance to easily purchase a copy through Better World Books, an affordable alternative to Amazon and an avenue to help amplify sales for less well-know

Copyright Expert on Publishers Lawsuit: “The idea that lending a book is illegal is just wrong”

Post on July 28, 2020 by Wendy Hanamura

On July 22, 2020, Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguish Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke at a press conference about the copyright lawsuit against the Internet Archive brought by the publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House. These are her remarks:

Good afternoon. Very happy to be here with you today. The Authors Alliance has several thousand members around the world and we have endors the controll digital lending as a fair use and I think that this is a lawsuit I hop would never happen. Because controll digital lending has been going on for such a long time, it’s really tragic that at this time of pandemic that the publishers would try to basically cut off even access to a digital public library like the Internet Archive is running.