Re: Google Print Home Page now offers searching

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Oh, dear.  Where to begin?

First, I should note that the bracketed interpolation "[ie.monographs]" is
Mr. Hodgkin's, not mine (nor did he claim otherwise).

Second, most of the examples I would use to support my point are the very
same examples Mr. Hodgkin uses to support his.  Book publishers, for all
their reservations, are rushing to support Amazon's "look inside the book
program" and the original Google Print program, both of which demonstrably
are a means to sell books online.

Third, readers of Publishers Weekly (this is NOT a recommendation) are
familiar with the emerging direct-to-consumer programs at HarperCollins
among others.  The trade publishers are diplomatically coy about their
plans, as it is imprudent to rile the management of Barnes & Noble.

Fourth, countless publishers do what Merriam-Webster does:  they post a
catalogue online and then have orders pass through to Amazon.  This again
is selling books online.

Fifth, textbook publishers are looking to sell electronic versions of
their materials, partly as a means to lower prices.  There have been
several announcements in this regard in the past year.

Sixth, there are expectations that the Sony ebook platform, now popular in
Japan, will come to the U.S. market, and publishers are developing plans
to work with what is likely to be the first reasonable candidate for a
mass-market handheld reader, with etexts to be delivered online in an
iTunes-like fashion.

Seventh, Audible.com already has a deal in place with iTunes.

Eighth, I can't speak to the specifics of the PDF format, but the R. R.
Donnelley company has been storing digital versions of books against the
possiblity of future use at least since 1993, when Jerry Butler, who ran
Donnelley's sales operation at the time, told me about it.

Ninth, I was the executive in charge of putting Encyclopaedia Britannica
online in 1994.  It's still there, last time I looked, and making money,
according to the current CEO, the talented Jorge Cauz.

This list could go on, but I don't think it will satisfy Mr. Hodgkin.  
The reason for this, in my view, is that the original post by Ross
Atkinson mentions making books available online, but in fact probably
means giving books away for free--that is, some form of Open Access for
books.  I don't see any likelihood of this happening except in limited
circumstances, as with the online promotions of Baen Books and the
occasional experiments at MIT Press (where I serve on the Management
Board).  It is very, very hard to make money in the book business and the
appetite for Open Access is minuscule.

Let's be clear what is not happening in the book world.  Open Access is
not happening.  Authors are not clamoring for Open Access (quite the
opposite).  Book publishers are not directing their online plans to
libraries (which are viewed as increasingly poor markets).

In the spirit of experimental science, I ask all members of this list to
take 25% of their savings and invest it in a company that publishes Open
Access books.

Joe Esposito  

On 6/15/05, adam hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com> wrote:

> Every book publisher I am aware of has plans (carefully thought-out
> plans) to make books [ie monographs] available online.
> 
> Joe Esposito
>
> I didnt notice a vigorous reaction to this claim of Joe's. Perhaps the
> list is now too used to Joe's often perceptive and trenchant (and often
> true) comments. But this one is so far from the truth that is should not
> be allowed to pass. Even a week late.
>
> If every book publisher has carefully thought out plans to make their
> monographs available online, how is this going to happen? Are the plans
> to sell them directly (publisher to library, publisher to consumer?). Is
> this due to happen next year or the year after? Do publishers make
> carefully thought out plans for what will happen in five years? Are the
> plans to license them on subscription or to make outright sales or to
> support them through web advertising? Have these plans been announced or
> are they carefully thought out but carefully concealed plans?  Joe do
> you really believe that most publishers have concrete plans to make
> their monographs available electronically as a matter of course?
> 
> Surely Joe is aware of there being several hundred (no several thousand)
> independent monograph book publishers, does this mean that there are
> thousands of carefully thought-out plans in gestation. Or is the range
> of his comment limited to the two or three publishers of whose detailed
> plans he is aware (parse his sentence as 'Of the many thousand monograph
> publishers, in regard to the few whose budgets and plans I am privy to,
> these two or three have carefully thought-out plans to make their
> monographs available.'). There are it is true some publishers with plans
> and some noble experiments (e scholarship editions from University of
> California Press, Bibliovault, Oxford Scholarship Online). But these
> experiments lack scale and do not promise much that Google Print
> demonstrates is achievable. They lack the promise of scale which
> Google's techical platform and broad reach guarantees. I bet those
> publishers are figuring out how they can merge what they are already
> doing with what Google Print promises.
>
> 99.9% percent of monographs (and textbooks come to that) have been
> computer typeset for the last twenty five years. That will be 1 -- 2
> million unique editions. The changeover happened in the 1970s.  In that
> 25 year period, no large monograph publisher to my knowledge has been
> archiving electronic texts in a consistent and reliable way. Even the
> pdf files have not been kept for the vast majority of those books. I
> would guess that very few publishers have been consistently archiving
> pdfs for more than five years. It has been completely obvious for the
> last 25 years that the electronic texts should be archived, but very few
> publishers have been doing it. Publishers have been reliably archiving
> print copies of their books ('file' copies or 'library' copies) for
> decades. They have been living through a dream world in the 80s and 90s
> thinking that it doesnt matter that they were not bothering to archive
> their computer typeset texts in electronic form.
>  
> The truth is that publishers of monographs have been perplexed as to how
> they can or should make them electronically available. Contrast the
> situation with journal publishers, the vast majority of whom have now
> made their current issues and some of their backruns available on
> subscription through database services. Nothing like this is happening
> to the slew of monograph literature. If the publishers had been making
> carfully thought out plans it would already be available.
>  
> Hence it is very interesting to librarians (and it should be very
> interesting and promising to book publishers) when Google comes and
> parks its big tank on the monograph publishers lawn. What ARE we going
> to do about this?
>  
> It will be very disappointing if publishers at large do not respond in
> some broadly co-operative way to Google's proposition.
>
> I dont know why Joe Esposito took exception to Ross Atkinsons comment,
> which seemed to be hitting the nail on the head. If publishers dont act,
> if they fail in their responsibility to publish and make electronic
> editions available, someone else will (Ross mentioned Authors, Scholars
> and Students as possibly relevant actors). Authors are very important in
> that equation.
>  
>  Adam