What are the numbers? How have Penguin, Tor and Baen seen sales develop over the live of an open book? Do they have any information that would allow a comparison between downloads and sales?
Does open publishing prolong the shelf-life of a book?
Is success genre specific, and focused on internet-literate readers such as science fiction fans and tech books?
Do authors who open publish earn more overall? Do they get more requests to speak, or write for magazines or newspapers? Do they get other paid gigs alongside their writing?
Will the model work when we don't need paper at all? Is open publishing a blip, viable only during the period within which ebooks are non-interchangeable with paper books?
Do ebook downloaders buy more books overall?
What's the relationship between audiobooks and ebooks? ...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/27/2007 10:36:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
