Thoughts from authors:

"When The Gulf War Chronicles first appeared in Google Books, its sales ranking on the Barnes & Noble index jumped by 85 percent and stayed there."
– Richard Lowry, Author
Read more about how Google Books helped author Richard Lowry gain visibility and sales.

"Google Books has opened the possibility of making every book in every language available to every person who has access to a computer. A fantastic prospect..."
– Marvin Kalb, author of "The Last Ambassador" and "The Nixon Memo: Political Respectability, Russia, and the Press" among others, in his acceptance speech for the Fourth Estate Award.

"What the author's goal must be, above all, is awareness of his work. Without awareness his book is merely a castoff artifact, forever exiled, beyond the reach of the reader, his authorial voice condemned to silence and all potential earning power gone."
– Warren Adler, Author, 'The War of the Roses' and more
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"As a writer, my biggest worry is that no one ever happens upon my books unless they go to a bookstore – used to be that writers could rely on grocery stores and drugstores and so on, but no more. The only readers who discover books are those that seek them out. We've been robbed of our serendipity. Thank you, thank you, thank you Google, for providing a way to put books back into the daily round of average people. When books are visible in search-results, they get an equal footing with web pages and other new media. If we have hope as authors in the digital age, it's in projects like Google Books."
– Cory Doctorow, Author, 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom' and more

"As a longtime dues-paying member of the Authors Guild, I'm party to a lawsuit against Google over its new book-search service called Google Books. As an author of two books, though, I'm not sure I want to be suing Google. Every writer wants his or her work to be read. But to be read, a work needs to be found. Digital search is fast becoming the de facto way to be found...Google Book Search aims to do for books what Google has done for the Web...Without some digital equivalent to the concept of a library, a lot of great writing could be lost to the ages. And no one – readers, authors, publishers, Google and its competitors – would benefit from that."
– Paul Andrews, Author, 'How the Web Was Won' and more
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"Speaking as the author of a long-forgotten, but still copyrighted, book that would likely be included in the Google [Book Search] project, I cannot imagine a reason why my publisher would turn down this form of free advertising...[Google's] project has the potential to revolutionise the way that we search for information online. Google may make money doing that but authors and publishers will almost certainly make money too. That sounds like the classic win-win bargain that underlies American capitalism and American innovation."
– Patti Weldmeir, Author, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa
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"Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. I spend most of my day trying to get attention for my book. Not for the money, but because I believe that it is well written and funny. Very few authors will become rich writing books. We do it because we have something to say...No one has been able to explain to me how I would suffer from people being able to search for phrases and read excerpts of my book online…Someone asked me recently, 'Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?' I replied, 'Well, it seems to be working for Jesus.' "
– Meghann Marco, Author, 'Field Guide to the Apocalypse'
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