Re: Usage-based pricing (was ebooks in libraries a thorny problem)

[Eric Hellman <eric@hellman.net>]

Of course you can't ignore implementation difficulties, but 
surely you can ignore them long enough to consider whether 
they're worth addressing. Pay per click advertising can be gamed, 
but that didn't stop Google from turning it into a multigigabuck 
proposition.

The statement "all books are made of broadly similar stuff would 
be a good topic for debate. Certainly if a publisher thought 
their content was of disproportionate worth, they would choose 
not to participate. The proposal actually depends on whether 
"many or most books are made of broadly similar stuff"

Eric Hellman

On Apr 15, 2010, at 5:56 PM, Adam Hodgkin wrote:

> There would then be the opportunity to spam the system by
> publishers producing books that meet the 'usage count' whatever
> solution is adopted. So I dont think one can ignore the technical
> difficulties required to measure usage.
>
> How do you in the end measure the relative value to anybody of a
> wonderful illustration, a set of sonnets, or the paper which
> proves Fermat's last theorem (of course the latter should be open
> access!)
>
> The 'utilitarian' model implicit in your proposal only works if
> all books are made of broadly similar stuff.
>
> Adam Hodgkin
> adam.hodgkin@gmail.com
>
>
> On 14 Apr 2010, at 21:33, Eric Hellman wrote:
>
>> As I said, the trick is to control the budget. Consider this
>> variant. Suppose a library system put out a tender for ebook
>> supply totalling 1 million dollars per year. Publishers
>> participating in the tender would be paid a share of the $1M
>> based on usage of the books they supplied.
>>
>> Please ignore for the moment the technical difficulties of
>> measuring usage and consider whether such a system would
>> provide the correct economic incentives. The publishers would
>> have incentives to get their stuff used. The library would get
>> a fixed expense. No one would have their usage rationed.
>>
>> I would also argue that many OA models are usage-based pricing,
>> where the "price" is advertising exposure.
>>
>> Eric Hellman
>> President, Gluejar, Inc.
>> Montclair, NJ 07042
>> USA
>> eric@hellman.net
>> http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/