Three French publishers are suing Google for €9.8 million (aka $14 million) for scanning its books without their permission, according to a Bloomberg News report. Reporter Heather Smith says, “Editions Albin Michel SA, Editions Gallimard SA and Flammarion claimed Google has scanned 9,797 copyright-protected works for its digital library. The publishers are seeking compensation of 10,000 euros per book, Google said today.”

Another report, from Britain’s book trade mag The Bookseller, confirms the €9.8 million figure, but, unlike Bloomberg, the news feed of Wall Street, it gets the math right: it’s €1,000 per book, not €10,000. Of course, The Bookseller bizarrely credits itself for breaking the story, saying “a publishing source told The Bookseller” all about it. Later, it admits that source was, er, well, a magazine, the French equivalent of The Bookseller in fact, Livres Hebdo (which, in addition to being inaccessible to those who don’t speak French, is inaccessible to non-subscribers).

Bloomberg, you’ll note above, strangely cites Google as the source, even though it too says later in its article that Livres Hebdo broke the story.

But who needs accuracy? or fair sourcing? or rhetorical questions? Here’s the gist of the story, from The Bookseller:

Listings obtained in May 2009 from the US judge in charge of the Google Book Settlement, Denny Chin, show that Google had digitised 4,302 books from Gallimard’s backlist, 2,950 from Flammarion’s and 2,545 from Albin Michel’s. The total number of titles cited excludes those scanned since then and those of the publishers’ subsidiaries, another publishing source said.

The €1,000 per title in damages mirrors the December 2009 court award to the La Martinière group, which sued Google for the same reason, the source said. The French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) and the French Writers Union (Société des Gens de Lettres, SGDL) joined La Martinière in the litigation. A verdict in Google’s appeal is still awaited.