Google Books loses lions of literature

Documents released as a result of last week's hearing into Google's book-scanning settlement reveal thousands of authors asked to be excluded from the project.

There are over 6,000 authors, including literary colossus Jeffrey Archer, on the list prepared by Rust Consulting for Google. Rust set up a call centre to receive opt-out requests in January 2009 and a website translated into 36 languages which received 1.2 million unique visitors by February 2010.

As of early February Rust Consulting said it had received 42,604 completed forms via the website, and 1,846 hard copies. These forms requested opt outs for 1.1 million books - and 21,829 "inserts" - short stories or articles in longer books. The figure is so high because many of the forms were filled in by publishers rather than authors.

Other names on the list include H G Wells, Graham Swift and Rudyard Kipling.

The full list is available from the public index site, set up by the New York Law School. ®