HarperCollins to begin digitizing books | CNET News.com

HarperCollins to begin digitizing books | CNET News.com
U.S. publisher HarperCollins said Monday that it plans to convert some 20,000 books in its catalog into digital form in a bid to rein in potential copyright violations on the Internet.

The move comes as the U.S. publishing industry is bringing lawsuits against Web search leader Google over its effort to scan copyrighted books in libraries--a move the industry fears would set a dangerous copyright precedent.

Chief Executive Jane Friedman said HarperCollins, a division of News Corp., had no immediate plan to raise revenue from the digital copies of the books but it had concluded it was a vital move to protect its authors' rights.

"This is going to be a costly initiative," she said, adding that a budget had not yet been set but the cost was expected to run into millions of dollars. The publisher has invited proposals from vendors to carry out the contract to digitize some 20,000 or more books in the global back-catalogue as well as the 3,500 to 5,000 new books it publishes each year.

"We just don't know how many millions (of dollars) this will be, and we won't know that until we get responses," said Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins Publishers.

"We hope to have a few thousand books available by the middle of next year," he told Reuters.