I don’t know the answer, but here are several – contradictory – pieces of evidence.
Darrell Delamaide on the attractions of self-publishing in a world of ultra-cautious conventional publishing. The broad digital highway carries new books to new audiences.
Sam Harris, taking the opposite and pessimistic view that blogging and people’s unwillingness to pay for anything much online are destroying the scope to make a living from writing. And besides, nobody wants to read anything longer than 60 pages anyhow.
The OUP offering its online platform for publishing monographs (Oxford Scholarship Online) available to other academic presses – the first batch includes Fordham University Press (Fordham Scholarship Online/FSO); The American University in Cairo Press (Cairo Scholarship Online/CSO); The University Press of Kentucky (Kentucky Scholarship Online/KSO); University Press of Florida (Florida Scholarship Online/FLASO); Hong Kong University Press (Hong Kong Scholarship Online/HKSO). Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh Scholarship Online/ESO) and Policy Press (Policy Press Scholarship Online/PPSO) are slated for March 2012. And, OUP officials say, additional presses are in talks to participate.
These come after the announcement I noted recently from Yale University Press that it will be publishing physical books derived from free online lectures.
Fascinating (at least for an economist) to watch this business evolution in action.
At a very practical level, the whole ebooks business is built on some very shaky foundations. Rights, formats and readers are still complicated and, in my view, far too restrictive. Jack Schofield did a useful technical survey of formats in the Guardian recently ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack/2011/sep/15/ebook-format-drm-kindle ) that highlights the complexity facing ebook purchasers.
That’s a really useful link, thank you Richard. I have plenty of gripes about e-readers but the main one is how difficult it is for me to share them within my family. The presumption of current restrictiveness is that buying an e-book is actually more like a rental (because availability for all practical purposes on one device means one reader and one read) than a transfer of property (there’s no second hand market in e-books).
The Kindle devices are becoming so cheap now that it will be almost worthwhile owning *two* readers – one to store your library on and the other to carry around, lend to others, etc. without too much concern of it getting damaged. I am especially tempted by the new cheap Kindle ($89; I already own the older version with keyboard) to carry around in my pocket so that I can read on a whim.