April 9

Next Chapter for E-Books

©istockphoto/jorge delgado

That great new book is timed for release this summer, and you’d love to have it on your syllabus for the fall semester. But like many a high-demand scholarly book, the one you have your eye on is being released only in hardcover. If you’re willing to spring for (and have your students pay) the full hardcover price, you can choose to buy now or, in some cases, make an electronic version of the book through a service like NetLibrary.

More likely, though, you’re going to decide to wait the year or more until the paperback edition comes out, bringing the price down into a reasonable range for students.

The State University of New York Press hopes its new “Direct Text” program provides another alternative for the college faculty member and her students. Under the program, which was announced Tuesday, the press will simultaneously make available, for $20, electronic copies of front-list books that are released only in hardcover. Professors, students or others have several options: They can download or print copies of the book, or they can gain online access to it for 180 days. About 20 such titles are available now, and the press expects 100-plus books to be available in this format each year, many in its core fields of philosophy, political science and Asian studies.

“In the past, a professor may not or probably would not have been able to assign that book until it came out in paperback,” said Dan Flynn, marketing director for SUNY Press, adding that oftentimes, by then, the content of some scholarly books has lost currency. “This approach takes those books, which are important as a teaching tool for their students, and makes it an affordable purchase for them.”

Flynn said SUNY believed it to be the first press making hardcover-only, front-list titles available simultaneously in a lower-cost electronic form. Alex Gendler, founder and president of Publishers Row, the company whose software undergirds the Direct Text program, said that while Hebrew University’s Magnus Press was using a similar technology, he too believed SUNY was the first American press to take such an approach.

Flynn and Gendler noted that many presses want to keep publishing hardcover books so that they can be sold to libraries — an important source of income — but need to find ways of making the titles affordable to students for use in courses.

SUNY Press’s latest effort, Flynn said, shows that the press is “continuing to adjust to the new paradigm of publishing. Really what this is about, first and foremost, is giving the purchaser of the book what they want in an affordable way. We’re trying to make it available, make it affordable, and make it accessible.”

By mid-day Tuesday, within hours of launching the new program, the press had its first sale: David Janssens’s Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophesy and Politics in Leo Strauss’s Early Thought.

— Doug Lederman

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Comments

Frontlist eBooks Not That New

I applaud this development, which is a long time coming. Alas, however, Parlor Press (an independent scholarly publisher) has been making front list ebooks of its titles available at release since 2002, most for $12, some for free as open-access (see the titles in the Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition, for example). I think there are other presses doing this as well, so the claim of “first to market” is a bit disingenuous if not misinformed.

David Blakesley, Purdue University, at 7:35 am EDT on April 9, 2008

Sales ro libraries?

Just curious: what is to prevent libraries from purchasing the reduced-price version, and if they do, won’t the economics of this approach be unsustainable, just as simultaneous cloth/paper publication has become? Many academic libraries these days will prefer a cheaper version if it can be obtained on publication.

Sandy Thatcher, at 8:10 am EDT on April 9, 2008

Why not affordable for libraries?

The article notes that “many presses want to keep publishing hardcover books so that they can be sold to libraries — an important source of income — but need to find ways of making the titles affordable to students for use in courses.” How telling. There is no interest in keeping titles affordable for libraries — they are supposed to be nothing but a cash cow that is there to be exploited at will.

Peter Hirtle, at 10:05 am EDT on April 9, 2008

DIrectText

These are all good comments that deserve clarification. DirectText is genuinely being offered as the first university press model that provides an affordable e-book edition that has immediate online access, downloading and printing, when only a frontlist hardcover exists. SUNY Press also applauds the other publishers and university presses that offer different models or media for e-books. DirectText is a single user model, where the purchaser has username and password access to the books in their account for 180 days. They may access their books on up to three registered machines (say their home and laptop computers), and can download and print the book from those registered computers during that time. While DirectText makes a book available and affordable and perfect for classroom use, it is limited to 180 day access, which is not suitable for library collections. SUNY Press does provide libraries with various e-book models that allow them to choose the best model and value for their patrons, and can own the e-book forever.

Dan Flynn, SUNY Press, at 4:20 pm EDT on April 9, 2008

Books Unbound

This is interesting to me in terms of the economics. How many people will be willing to pay $20 for a temporary e-book? Is this truly making the text affordable? Yale Univ. Press is also planning on making its scholarly frontlist available in ebook format at the same time as print publication. However, we’ll be selling permanent downloadable copies of each book. It’s still an open question as to how desirable a pdf-based searchable ebook may be to scholars—particularly if it’s not available on a permanent basis. I think that there’s definitely value in the searchable ebook format—it just doesn’t seem to be that radical a departure from the traditional publishing model in terms of actual use. Also, a lot of the value to me seems to be in the aggregation of disparate content across books and regardless of publisher. That being said, the DirectText model is definitely an interesting new way of getting books to students in a timely fashion and I’d like to see how well it’ll catch on.

For Yale’s own version of Books Unbound, check out http://yupnet.org launched just last month. Right now, there’s limited content, but we’re hoping to grow out substantially in the coming year. Readers can read Jonathan Zittrain’s entire new book on the Future of the Internet online as well as comment on each paragraph of the text. The intent is to start an ongoing conversation around the book between author and readers. More to come.

Daniel Lee, Yale University Press, at 10:15 am EDT on April 10, 2008

E-Textbooks and textbook prices

The greatest foes of reasonably priced textbooks can be found on our campuses. Many textbooks have annual or semi-annual “editions” which are basically reprints of existing editions with a different publication date and ISBN. Hence the students don’t buy used copies from other studnets or bookstores. I can understand how some faculty members could use some extra income, but defrauding and robbing your students seems unethical at best and criminal at worst. No more faux “editions!”

Jim Dwyer, Bibliographic Services Librarian at CSU, Chico, at 7:55 pm EDT on April 10, 2008

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