What is an eBook? How do Publishers price it?
A short video explaining the costs that go into producing a book, and how little difference there is in those costs between electronic and print books.
Hit the Road — How a Forgettable Paper and a Misguided Publisher Created an Unnecessary Controversy
The censorship scandal at Taylor & Francis has wrapped up, and the lessons are as obvious as you think.
How Important Are Library Sales to the University Press? One Case Study
A study of sales data for 2012 imprints from the University of Chicago Press offers tantalizing hints about the importance (or lack thereof) of library sales to university presses — particularly with regard to scholarly monographs.
This Just In from the 1990s — We’re Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Sayeth the Editor of VentureBeat
A Silicon Valley journalist has seen open access and deemed it disruptive. He’s 15+ years and scads of evidence behind the times, as we enter the post-disruption era.
Contemplating a Chart — How the Home Page Dominates Thinking . . . and Little Else
A quick analysis of data based on an insight from the New York Times’ “Innovation” Report suggests that the home page dominates thinking far too much, leading to blind spots about what really deserves our design attention.
Life in a Bubble — The Limitations of Public Access, the Challenges of Public Engagement
Presumptions about the benefits of access fail to take into account the power and difficulty of true engagement with diverse publics.
Regret Salad with Aspiration Dressing — A Scholarly Publisher Delves Into the New York Times’ Innovation Report
The New York Times’ “Innovation” Report will hit a lot of nerves when it comes to strategy, long-term transformation, investment, digital operations, silos, print legacy, and organizational culture. And it will remind you how barely contained panic looks to others.
Identity Crisis — Does Print Need to Die for Online to Flourish?
The bias against printing has a technological basis and some business rationale, but are we underserving our role as “content marketers” by shutting down this option out of hand?
How Do We Address the Continuing Problem of Inadequate and Deceptive Publishing Practices?
Technological trends have enabled experiments in publishing. But now that we’ve seen plenty of experiments, is it time to bring them under control?
What Is the "News" Associated with Journal Publication?
The news function of journals has many dimensions, a major one consisting of where and when an article is published.
Keeping It Real — Ethics and Privacy as the Frontiers "Recursive Fury" Case Continues to Churn
Frontiers issues another statement about why the “Recursive Fury” paper was retracted, raising once again questions about why it was retracted, but shifting the focus more and more to how it was retracted.
Public Access to Public Books: The Case of the National Trust
The UK’s National Trust owns 140 libraries containing hundreds of thousands of volumes, many of them in the public domain. What would it take to make those books available to the public that owns them?
Learning to Read: Navigating the Ebook Reader Market
This post explores the confusing landscape of ebook readers, presenting a few of the options available along with their pros and cons.
Does Creative Commons Make Sense?
Axiomatically more complicated than copyright, built to provide no legal cover, and possibly put in place by the technocrats in Silicon Valley, does Creative Commons make sense for the creative class?
What Library Directors Are Thinking: An Ithaka S+R Survey Report
Ithaka S+R has just published the latest in its ongoing series of triennial library director surveys, and its findings are interesting and, in some ways, sobering.