In the Wall Street Journal (Feb 11), JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG has an article about an experiment by Random House to begin selling books one chapter at a time. This seems to follow the model that has become popular in the music industry.

Random House Publishing Group’s experiment appears to be the first time a major consumer publisher has offered a title on a chapter-by-chapter basis. It will sell the six chapters and epilogue of “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” for $2.99 each.

The move comes at a time when retailers and publishers are looking for clues into how readers want to access digital content. Most recently, Amazon Inc. announced that it was buying audiobook seller Audible Inc. for about $280 million. Late last year, Amazon introduced its Kindle electronic-book reader, a device with built-in wireless Internet access that quickly sold out upon debut.

Publishers are convinced that as it becomes easier to download books, and screen technology improves, an ever-larger number of readers will opt to receive digital content.

The print on demand model services are becoming more main stream and naturally are becoming central to the business model for a number of publishers. This is particularly true for those publishers who are willing to print what are likely to have small target audiences. One of the issues this raises is marketing. One of the ways libraries obtain books is through major book vendors who obtain a stock of the books and make them available through approval plans, etc. If a publisher publishes only through POD, a new form of marketing will be required…

Technology Rewrites the Book – New York Times
The print-on-demand business is gradually moving toward the center of the marketplace. What began as a way for publishers to reduce their inventory and stop wasting paper is becoming a tool for anyone who needs a bound document. Short-run presses can turn out books economically in small quantities or singly, and new software simplifies the process of designing a book.

I’ve mentioned before Katleen Fitzpatrick’s collaboration with the Future of the Book to create an electronic scholarly press. Her May 3 summary of a meeting that took place is remarkable several reasons. The fact that a group of scholars was willing to seriously discuss and support the concept is remarkable. The group developed a set of principles that suggest their new publishing environment will:

• promote intellectual discourse in all its forms;
• design its process to improve the quality of that discourse;
• encourage openness in its process and its products, while offering a range of options to authors;
• share the tools that underlie its process;
• provide for the preservation of its products;
  support collaboration and experimentation;
• make visible the social networks that underlie intellectual discourse; and
• leverage the information that results from the impact and use of material published by the press.

Fitzpatrick goes on to say:

The first two of these principles are of the utmost importance: if the purpose of scholarly publishing is to further the dissemination of ideas, which in turn produces new advances in scholarship, then a process that takes advantage of the technologies that networked systems make possible can only be an improvement. The average scholarly book takes over a year to move from manuscript to published book, and that’s after the lengthy delays produced by the current peer-review system. Adding to this the fact that getting reviews of such books published can take several years more, it begins to become clear that intellectual discourse is not being served, not even remotely, by print. It is little wonder that so many scholars have begun blogging; it’s currently one of the few ways to have conversations about ideas in anything like a timely fashion.

What’s clear from her statements is that the group is drawing a distinction between scholarly publishing and scholarly discourse. She is not willing to allow the ineffectiveness of the first to interfere with the second.

A similar dissatisfaction prompted the development of digital repositories to reduce cost and time for dissemination of findings in scientific research. From that has developed the Open Archives Initiative and protocols for harvesting metadata. It will be interesting to see how the efforts of Fitzpatrick and her colleagues shape the future of publishing.

DLIST – Digital Libraries

: his is an online version of the book Digital Libraries published by the MIT Press in January 2000. The text of the book is copyrighted by the MIT Press (please see copyright notice and details at end of this abstract). Here is an excerpt from the book’s Preface by the author, William Arms, dated June 2005: This online edition of Digital Libraries is an updated version of the book of the same name published by the M.I.T. Press in January 2000. I am extremely grateful to the press for giving me permission to place it online even while the book is still in print. The field of Digital Libraries is moving rapidly. Most of this book was written in 1998 and many sections are now seriously out of date. In particular: * In the few years since the book was written, there have been some major developments. Important topics that need to be updated or included for the first time include the emergence of XML, the dominance of Google, reference linking, the Internet Archive, the Open Archives Initiative, and many more. * Numerous details need to be brought up to date. * A few projects have come to an end and a few topics have proved to be less important than expected. They need to be deleted or give less emphasis. * The book does not have a bibliography, because, only a few years ago, nobody had confidence in the longevity of URLs. Now it is clear that many online collections are managed for the long term and can be cited with confidence. * Our understanding has developed. In some aspects, uncertainties have been resolved; in others the complexities seem to have grown. There is less need to be an advocate for digital libraries. Despite being out of date in these ways, the major themes and much of the material remains valuable. In particular, the importance of understanding the human and social context while carrying out technical work remains the heart of all work in digital libraries.” COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This material has been placed on the Web for use by the general public, subject to the following: Copyright License This copyright license is provided by Creative Commons. The key license terms are: * Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the original author and publisher credit. * Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the work for commercial purposes — unless they get the licensor’s permission.

if:book: sophie is coming!

This is worth a read, if nothing more than to see a good critque of E-books. Speaking about the PDF and HTML options:

Here, in a nutshell, is the problem with these ideas about electronic books: they treat a book as being essentially a text. A text, however, is not a book: a text is only part of a book. A book presents a reading environment which is something we’re interested in creating with Sophie. Electronic books could be much more: there’s no reason to stop with what we have.

I’ve suggested before that the problem with E-books has far less to do with display technology than that current efforts fail to understand how people read. At this point, Sophie is vaporware, but I’m encourged that the Institute for the Future of the Book understands that an E-book needs to be more than simply display of text…

I’ve just finished a third major writing project in two weeks, thus the silence ….

I’ve suggested before that libraries should take on a more active publishing role. I made a link in my mind with what Katheen Fitzpatrick talked about over at The Valve. She advocates for radical change in scholarly communication, including a much more collaborative publishing model that would include “versioning.” Trying to sort out editions drives some catalogers crazy. (What’s a new edition and what’s simply a reprint with a new introduction?) In an article I finished today, I suggested that libraries (particularly university libraries) take on the publishing role.

If libraries established and maintained publishing systems that provided feedback (comment) and version control, they could easily (well maybe not easily) control the metadata. This could be done in collaboration with (or in lieu of) University Presses.

Fitzpatrick’s isn’t the first voice I’ve heard urging change in scholarly communication. Carlos J. Alonso, Cathy N. Davidson, John M. Unsworth, and Lynne Withey suggest a number of changes in Crises and Opportunities: The Futures of Scholarly Publishing . I don’t see an imminent revolution in scholarly communication, but I think in the next decade we’ll see significant changes. Libraries ought to play a big role…

Business Week Online has an article that is rather optimistic about e-books, primarily based on new display technologies. I think they are right about the technologies. But I don’t think they have really looked at how people read.

Digital Books Start A New Chapter
Many experts are convinced that digital books, after plenty of false starts, are finally ready for takeoff. “Every other form of media has gone digital — music, newspapers, movies,” says Joni Evans, a top literary agent who just left the William Morris Agency to start her own company that will focus on books and technology. “We’re the only industry that hasn’t lived up to the pace of technology. A revolution is around the corner.”

CNN.com – E-textbook demand slow despite comfort with technology – Feb 16, 2006
Brown University junior Stuart Thompson jumped at the chance to save $30 and become a digital pioneer when his school bookstore offered a discounted, electronic version of an American history textbook.

But after making the purchase, he noticed a few things amiss: He couldn’t run a highlight marker over key points or jot notes in the margins, nor could he curl up with the tome without printing out the pages.

He won’t rule out another e-book, but he’s not completely sold, either.

People do more than simply read the text of an e-book.  They write, annotate, highlight, etc.  The Brown U. student is pointing to a problem with current e-book design…

Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification a new open access journal has posted Jonathan Band’s “The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the Story.”

From the journal’s Web site:

International in scope, Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification is a new scholarly journal devoted specifically to the study of plagiarism and related fabrications/falsifications within the professional literature (i.e. scholarly journals and books) and popular discourse domains (i.e. journalism, politics, audio-visual texts). Providing a forum for scholarly discussion and research on trends and phenomena (both recent and historical) related to plagiarism, Plagiary features refereed research articles, “Perspectives” articles, book reviews, and responses as a point of focus on issues of vital importance to professional and popular discourse communities.