Re: Blog post

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Those who read Joe's post a couple of days ago probably missed 
seeing my riposte, posted today:

The print/digital divide isn't quite as sharp as Joe depicts it 
here. Some years ago Penn State Press stopped using a UK-based 
distributor in favor of making its books available in the UK 
market through Lighting Source UK. With Amazon's BookSurge (or 
whatever it's called now) having POD facilities distributed 
around the world, the cost of distributing print has come way 
down; print books are now manufactured locally. The CCC also is 
using a network of printers worldwide to supply print articles to 
customers who get their permissions through the CCC and want hard 
copy. The Espresso machine is being bought by libraries. 
Eventually, as librarian Rick Anderson predicted at the 
Charleston conference earlier this month, we'll have the desktop 
equivalent of the Espresso.

Sandy Thatcher

>I just put up a post on Scholarly Kitchen called "One World
>Publishing:"
>
>http://bit.ly/ajIUSq
>
>The topic is how the growth of ebooks is likely to change the way
>publishing rights are handled and lead to a restructuring of the
>book industry.  This restructuring has already largely taken
>place in journals, especially in STM.
>
>In my view, "one world publishing" is a mixed blessing, but it is
>inevitable.  Once again, changes in the publishing world are
>being driven by consumer markets, which appears to be the one
>constant of networked communications.
>
>The post was prompted by a liblicense thread from last month and,
>in particular, the comments of Toby Green.
>
>Joe Esposito