In the fight to defense their copyrights, the publishers decided to make their own virtual library where users can search, borrow or buy books.

The publishers from Germany want to build a online bookshop in order to maintain their copyrights. The interest shown by the search engines like Google to make such a service has grudged the publishers and they decided to build their network of books. The content will be “searchable” by the search engines but it will reside on publishers’ servers. “We don’t want Google to hold the texts in its servers; we want the publishers to keep them,” Matthias Ulmer, who is leading the project, told on an interview.

Google currently offers book-content online but readers can see limited portions. The German association plans to build a search engine to compete with Google, Yahoo or Lycos.

The Germans will scan their books and store them on their own servers. Search engines like Google or others will be allowed to search the servers but the content shown will be limited. Ulmer is optimistic when it talks about a deal with Google.

There are over 100 publishers to support this project which are able to pay around 3.000 euros/year for servers and additional 10 euros for each book scanned.