Google has issued an apology to China for ” its poor communication with Chinese authors about scanning their books into its online library,” reports an Associated Press wire story, and the company announced it is “ready to work out a settlement to allay copyright concerns.”

As the AP’s Gillian Wong reports, “The search giant’s statement comes after a recent call by the government-affiliated China Written Works Copyright Society to negotiate compensation for Chinese authors.” Google said it would get together a proposed settlement by March that it hoped would lead to a formal agreement by June.

A New York Times report by Andrew Jacobs Google also “agreed to hand over a list of books by Chinese authors that it has scanned in recent years … in an apparent effort to placate writers who say their works were digitized without their permission.”

A letter sent to the 8,000 members of the China Writers Association from the head of Goggle’s Asia-Pacific division, Erik Hartmann, said, “We definitely agree that we haven’t done a sufficient job in communicating with Chinese writers.”