RE: Does free lead to paid?

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

I'm with you 100%. We just have to figure out a business model to 
make publishing scholarly monographs OA economically feasible. A 
number of publishers are now experimenting.

Sandy Thatcher


>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