A story in The Wall Street Journal today announces “HarperCollins Plans to Control Its Digital Books.” They plan to spend seven figures to digitize their backlist by mid-2006 and open this “digital vault” to search engines rather than allow Google to scan their books. Though they found Amazon’s Search Inside program boosted sales, they are not too happy that Amazon is talking about selling content and see this as a chance to control their ditigal future – even at a cost.

This looks like one of the unforseen consequences of Google’s library program. Here’s a publisher who, thanks to all the fuss, has bought into the idea discovering book content through the Web is good for business – so good they’re willing to pay their own way.