Re: Does free lead to paid?

[Laval Hunsucker <amoinsde@yahoo.com>]

Heather Morrison wrote :

> For academic books, the purpose for writing, very similar to
> articles, is to disseminate new knowledge.

Oh dear.

And there I was all this time thinking that the prime operative
purpose was of quite a more enlightened nature -- having to do
with career advancement, job security, peer recognition,
self-satisfaction and fulfillment, perhaps secondarily with
furthering the scholarly debate.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, or simply too naive.

I hardly dare get into the question of whether knowledge -- a
dynamic cognitive state, if I'm not mistaken -- is something that
is subject to dissemination, or of what it might mean for it to
be old or new or somewhere in between.

- Laval Hunsucker
   Breukelen, Nederland

----- Original Message ----
From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Mon, March 15, 2010 10:37:09 PM
Subject: RE: Does free lead to paid?

As Sandy Thatcher has pointed out, there are significant
differences between academic books and trade books.

The key difference, from my perspective, is the purpose of the
book. For academic books, the purpose for writing, very similar
to articles, is to disseminate new knowledge.  The difference in
access between open access and today's typical academic book
print run of a few hundred copies is huge.

In other words, the important criterion for success of an
academic book is not whether access is "paid", but whether the
book is read.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
PhD Student, SFU School of Communication
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com