French publisher's boon for Google library

Google said on Wednesday that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project.

Under the agreement, which follows a landmark settlement with US publishers in 2009, Google will be allowed to sell the books it scans as e-books or in other electronic formats.

But there is one important difference between the US settlement and the deal with Hachette, the largest publisher in France and the No 2 trade publisher by sales worldwide, after Pearson. Hachette, not Google, will determine which of the books covered by the deal - those that remain under copyright but are no longer commercially available - can be scanned.