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Those boys and girls at Google will have you believe that everything should be free. The search engine that is taking ove the world, made zillions of dollars for The Brothers Grin last year, wants to abolish copyright. They want all books to be available free at the click of a mouse.

Sounds brilliant doesn’t it? Every book online free. Literacy rates would soar and we would all have a library at our fingertips. But stop there reader and just think. Google doesn’t do everything out of the kindness of their corporate heart. Google exists to suck as much money out of advertisers as they can. They are The Goldman Sachs of the internet age. Don’t be fooled by their zany ball pool head offices and driving around the grounds on big boys toys. They want dollars, and they want them now. Free books? What about the content? Who provides that? Of course, the author. The Creator of those magic words that transport each and everyone one of us from the tedium of our daily existence. How does the writer get paid if the copyright is free?

Content is king and the writers need some sort of protection to put food on the table Mr Grin. Copyright is there for a reason, to give them enough calories to finish the next chapter. When the CEOs of Google are taking their billion dollar dividends and buying spaceships to go to Saturn because its a hoot, remember, your search enging relies on the content of others. Journalists and writers. Without them you will have nothing to search for. And if they do get their way and abolish copyright and everything is free, then we will see them start to charge for everything. When the fences are broken, the big bad fox won’t have to blow anything down because dinner will have been provided, all trussed with condiments too. Beware those that say all lunches are free. They’re not and they never will be.

We have an extremely busy few weeks ahead of us at BLUEMOOSE BOOKS. On the 1st September, we are publishing an historical fiction title called THORN by Michael Dean. Spinoza and Rembrandt on a Rabelasian tour of Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th Century. David Nobbs, the acclaimed author and creator of Reggie Perrin, says, ‘It’s an astonsihing and powerfull book.’ Praise indeed. Michael will be singing and talking about his book at Colchester Central library on Saturday 24th September at 11am and at Waterstone’s Chelmsford on saturday 17th between 12-2pm.

KING CROW by Michael Stewart has been nominated for The Guardian’s NOT THE BOOKER LIST, get your votes in now.

Leonora Rustamova, fresh from espousing her thoughts on BBC Radio Leeds on Thursday 11th August and after being interviewed by The Telegraph and Argus, will be signing copies of her book STOP DON’T READ THIS at Watesrtone’s Bradford on Saturday 20th after 1pm and the following Saturday between 11 – 2pm at Waterstone’s Leeds.

We’re off to BBC Radio Leeds this morning. That is, Leonnora Rustamova and I. She has been invited onto the morning show to talk about how she managed to engage with five disaffected young lads and get them to come back into school and finish off their education. She succeeded and the result is her book, STOP DON’T READ THIS. Because she was so successful, she was sacked. Madness I know, but when the educators find somebody getting great results but not following the dictats and formula, they get worried.

Then we’re off to see the Bishop of Bradford. He’s worried that he can’t speak to the youth of Bradford. He doesn’t know the ‘idiom and argot’ in which they speak. He’s blogging. We’re going to see if we can help. Leonora’s not one for pointing. She listens. Perhaps there should be more people like her. You can’t have a conversation without listening, and defintely not with water cannon and rubber bullets on the streets. Wasn’t Mr Cameron part of a social group that met in pubs in Oxford, got drunk, trashed the rooms but then paid the owners for the havoc they’d wreeked? It’s called hypocrisy. The youth know, you know.