Re-inventing Publishing for the Digital Age

As a former publisher (no, really) I am fascinated by, and sympathetic to, efforts to come up with new models for profitable publishing in the age of digital abundance. Clearly, part of that must include making digital text available for free (because if you don't do it, someone else will); the question is, what's the best way of doing that?

Against that background, I was intrigued to come across something calling itself OpenBook Publishers:

Open Book is an independent publisher run by academics for academics and for the readers of academic work. We are a Social Enterprise (CIC) company that publishes high quality, peer-reviewed monographs in the humanities and social sciences and ensures the widest possible distribution of its publications.

Open Book makes the whole publishing process in academia fairer, swifter and more affordable by utilizing three important technological advances: the digital medium, the Internet and print-on-demand.

Open Book:

* Provides free online access to read digital versions of all publications.

* Retails high quality paperback editions at around £12, and hardback editions at around £25.

* Enables printable digital versions of both the entire book and individual book chapters to be downloaded online.

* Allows authors to maintain copyright on their own works.

* Makes publication decisions on academic merit alone through a rigorous peer review and editorial process.

* Requires no publication payment by the author.

* Speeds up the refereeing and printing processes.

That sounds pretty promising, so I thought I'd explore a title that seemed rather appropriate in the context: Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright:

What can and can’t be copied is a matter of law, but also of aesthetics, culture, and economics. The act of copying, and the creation and transaction of rights relating to it, evokes fundamental notions of communication and censorship, of authorship and ownership – of privilege and property.

Sounds just up my street. Interestingly, it uses print on demand for its analogue copies:

Open Book Publishers uses print on demand technology, so your books(s) will be printed rapidly once we have received your order.

That seems absolutely right to me - no huge cost upfront, no bulky stock to store, and lower cover prices as a result. But I'd prefer to take a look at the free digital version, if I may; so where's that "printable digital versions of both the entire book and individual book chapters to be downloaded online"?

Well, it's there as a PDF - but it costs £4.95 - not quite what I was expecting. It's true that you can read the title on Google Books, but it's a painful experience.

But wait, it says here:

Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright edited by Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Which means that once I - or anyone - has bought a copy of the PDF, it can be freely shared, subject to those conditions. Which means that it *will* be available online, sooner or later (assuming it's worth reading, and hence sharing), and that all the search engines will find it. So why slow down that process of discoverability by forcing someone to buy one copy? Is it really worth losing all that free marketing and visibility in the intervening days or weeks for the sake of £4.95?

This is a perfect example of well-meaning venture that hasn't quite thought through what publishing means today, and is still penny wise but pound foolish about those digital downloads....

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Is Amazon Getting Greedy?

I'm a big fan of Amazon - actually, make that a big addict. But when it starts throwing its weight around, I can't help thinking it is starting to act like a certain other large company that wants it all:

Reports have been trickling in from the POD underground that Amazon/BookSurge representatives have been approaching some Lightning Source customers, first by email introduction and then by phone (nobody at BookSurge seems to want to put anything in writing). When Lightning Source customers speak with the BookSurge representative, the reports say, they are basically told they can either have BookSurge start printing their books or the "buy" button on their Amazon.com book pages will be "turned off."

"POD" is Print on Demand, an exciting and increasingly popular way to publish books, especially those with small runs (most of them); Lightning Source is a big POD publisher, while BookSurge is Amazon's rival version.

Come on, Amazon, you don't need to do this: you can become the central point where people buy books, without insisting you print the bloody things too....