by Jennifer Howard | October 2, 2008
Scholarly publishers are well aware that more and more readers and libraries want to get hold of monographs in electronic form. The trick has been how to deliver content digitally without going out of business. Two new models?one with an open-access component, one without?should help publishers test out ways to adapt and, maybe, thrive.
Bloomsbury Publishing
…will make all its titles immediately available online, downloadable and free of charge, using Creative Commons licenses. It will also sell them as print-on-demand books.
University Presses
University presses, meanwhile, now have another cost-effective new model to try out. On September 25, the Association of American University Presses announced that it had struck a deal with Tizra Inc., an e-publishing service provider, to give member presses discounted access to Tizra’s Publisher platform.
Tizra provides what is sometimes called “agile software” or “software as a service.” The company’s Web site describes Tizra Publisher as a “Web-based software service that lets content owners create branded commerce Web sites from existing content, with complete control over branding, merchandising, and sales terms”?a sort of glorified Movable Type for publishers. Content?university-press monographs, for instance?is hosted on Tizra’s servers, but how it looks and how it is distributed are up to those providing the content.
For the full article see:
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/4842n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
