"We have some here that are fairly hard to find," says G.J. Flockstra, the Manager at ABC Books in Springfield.

Like many used book stores, ABC books boasts quite a selection of out-of-print reads.

"Probably 90% of the book on the shelf over here are probably out of print," Flockstra says.

Books that could bring in some big bucks if the right reader finds them.

"Collectors or specialsts - looking for books on a specific topic."

Problem is, people looking for a specific book don't always take the time to go to a store.

"I'm looking for some baseball books," says customer Josh Kennedy.

...they track them down on the net.

"Sometimes I'll have to go online and look on eBay or Amazon," says Kennedy.

So, when prospective customers go online and "google" hard-to-find books, Google wants to capitalize on that captive audience. That's where "Google Books" comes in - selling access to digital copies of those rare books.

"They have put a lot of time and effort into it," says Flockstra

They've already scanned millions of documents. So what's the problem? Copyright.

"Copyright law is abstract in that it's ownership over intangible property," says Springfield patent attorney John Bay.

Some of the books are by unknown authors, what're called "orphan works." If there's no known author - only google benefits from the publication.

"They've made a private agreement a force of law and who's agreeing to it? Everybody that's getting paid, and the public isn't really a part of it," Bay says.

Anything written is considered copyrighted work, meaning an "orphaned work" could be something as simple as a letter.

"It's automatically, from the moment of authoring, federally recognized as having copyrighted rights," says Bay. "If Google wants to scan it, allow other academics to get access to it, and that's depriving your of your use and your right to benefit from the thing you published or authored, but you never know it got away from you."

Unless the author contacts Google.

Google won't have exclusive rights to the published work, but some say it will have a virtual monopoly.

"Once Google's done it, they've killed the incentive or the economic viability of anyone else coming and compete, then," says Bay.

For those that do find interesting reads on Google books, ABC Books isn't worried it will hurt their sales. It expects customers will still come in the door.

"I think that that in some aspects will help the used market as far as people then will possibly look for the originals," says Flockstra.

People like the Josh Kennedy.

"I would rather sit down on my back porch and read a book than read it all on my computer," says Kennedy.

Contact: dmagditch@kspr.com