Bloomsbury Academic’s idea is to publish books that can be freely downloaded from the internet under a Creative Commons licence, for non-commercial use. Separately, the same titles will be sold, using publish-on-demand (POD) technology to create small print runs. Income will also be generated from royalties on commercial usage, such as in ‘student packs’.
The thinking behind this model is that free academic and student usage will promote the title, reaching an audience which would otherwise not have access to it. This in turn will generate enough actual book sales and royalties from commercial usage to finance the project. Although the books will still have to cover their editorial costs, they will not have to cover the costs of a full print run that will sit in the inventory for many years....
Bloomsbury Academic will be run by publishing director Frances Pinter. She wants to build a list of 50 titles by the end of 2009, concentrating on the humanities. Pinter said: ‘My thesis is simple; you may lose a few sales because you are publishing free online, but then you gain sales because more people have heard of the book as they can read the content online. Most librarians know that when an academic wants to read the whole book, printing out 300 A4 pages, taking them to their office, reading them and then putting them on their shelf to never look at again is not a very economic or eco-friendly way of distributing knowledge. The most reasonably-priced vessel of the content is the [printed] book....’
‘We think that there will be a lot of goodwill towards the model and it will attract some really good authors who are writing material of interest globally,’ predicted Pinter....Academics do not make a lot of money from publishing monographs. Mostly what they are interested in is the dissemination of their research, and that is what we are offering.’ ....
Bloomsbury is also offering the CC+ service to make it easier to buy commercial rights. Pinter said....
Pinter said that she had expected some hostility from sections of the publishing industry that feel threatened by new business models, but in fact the feedback she has received so far has been overwhelmingly positive. She said: ‘Most publishers know that the models have got to change....Most people are wishing me well because it shows the way for new models....’
PS: For background, see our past posts on Bloomsbury Academic.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/08/2008 11:43:00 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.
