Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

The following message was sent to Authors Guild members this week. If you’ve chosen not to opt out of the Settlement and haven’t yet claimed your works on the Settlement website, this should make things a bit easier.

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Claiming a lengthy list of your books, short stories, essays, poems and articles for Google settlement benefits just got much easier. You can now start the process by simply submitting your bibliography to the claims administrator. You need only e-mail — or send by regular mail — a list of your books and shorter literary works (poems, short stories, articles) that may appear in books covered by the settlement. When in doubt, we suggest you submit everything.

Although the author’s name and the title of the work is enough to get the ball rolling, it’s helpful to include this additional information you can find in or on your books: ISBN, publisher, place and year of publication.

E-mail your bibliography to BookSettlement@RustConsulting.com. Feel free to send it as an attachment or paste it into the body of the e-mail itself.

If you prefer to submit your bibliography by regular mail, send it to:

Settlement Administrator
c/o Rust Consulting, Inc.
PO Box 9364
Minneapolis, MN 55440-9364
USA

You may still file your claim through the regular claiming process, which our members with short lists of works have generally found easy to use. To do so, or to learn more about this simplified procedure, go to www.googlebooksettlement.com.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Settlement Administrator will contact you to complete your claim, but it may be several months before that happens. You will be contacted before any of your works are displayed pursuant to the settlement, and you will have ample opportunity to instruct Google regarding which of your works you’d like displayed. (Remember that this is really about out-of-print books. None of your in-print books will be displayed under the settlement without your approval.)