At a time when publishers are suing to prevent Google from putting excerpts of copyrighted books online, HarperCollins has started an advertiser-supported program that will offer a free look at the full text of selected works. The Harper program, announced Monday, is being launched with Bruce Judson's "Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own." The book was published in hardcover at the end of 2004, and recently came out as a paperback. Anyone who wants to read the whole text can visit the author's Web site. "We hope this pilot will demonstrate a win-win for publishers, authors and search engines. The new era does not need to be a zero sum game," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said Monday in a statement....[On the lawsuits against Google:] "This has always been an issue about control, who gets to decide what gets put online," Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins, said of the legal battles. With control of its books in mind, HarperCollins announced late last year that it was digitizing its vast catalog....Murray told The Associated Press that a measure of the Harper program's success will be whether "the new revenue stream" of advertising money compensates for any lost sales....But several writers, including marketer Seth Godin and science fiction author Cory Doctorow, have made a point of offering free content online, believing that it helps sales. M.J. Rose, a marketing expert and author of "Lip Service" among other novels, praised HarperCollins for its "smart" initiative. "We all know that readers don't want to read the whole book online," Rose said. "But as Seth Godin proved with `Unleashing the Idea Virus' - people will start a book on line and if they get hooked - click over and purchase it."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/07/2006 09:22:00 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.
