Alternative Business Models in EM

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Models with Books in Public Domain

  • Authorama
    Authorama is a project by German blogger and programmer Philipp Lenssen to create a non-comprehensive repository of public domain books in "easily readable HTML format" (Lenssen). Using textual sources such as Project Gutenberg, Lenssen formats a more or less random assortment of public domain fiction and non-fiction works into XHTML 1 Strict and chapterizes them for easier reading through the Authorama website. The status of the project is unknown. Lenssen, who appears to be the sole maintainer of the website, has a full list of his projects and websites at http://www.outer-court.com/ and can be contacted at info[at]authorama[dot]com.
  • Literature.org - The Online Literature Library
    Similar to Authorama, Literature.org is a project run by enthusiasts to provide "full and unabridged texts of classic works of English literature", already in the public domain ('An Online Library of Literature'). The project uses previously transcribed content at such sites as Wiretap and Project Gutenberg ('Literature.org FAQ'), re-formatted in HTML and cataloged according to author's name. The status of the project is unknown. The Literature.org domain name is registered under Peter Galbavy and supposedly supported by Knowledge Matters Ltd. (also run by Peter Galbavy), whose contact is listed as peter[at]literature[dot]org.

Models with Copyrighted Books

Startups

  • BookBoon
    BookBoon.com is an online publisher of free ebooks, downloadable in PDF format, and containing "relevant advertisements on every third page on average" ('About BookBoon'). "The books are targeted at engineering students, IT students, and students of economy and finance" (ibid.). All titles are written for and only available from BookBoon. BookBoon.com is owned and run by the Danish company Ventus Publishing ApS; the website claims that it is the fastest growing publishing house in Europe, that 2 million of their books are downloaded a year, and that a maximum of four advertisers will be in any single ebook ('Information for advertisers'). They also offer free travel guides.
  • Flat World Knowledge.
    Flat World Knowledge is a publisher founded by Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstad, which commissions, edits, and peer reviews textbooks to be given away free on the web. Students can order relatively inexpensive paper copies in color or black-and-white (black-and-white softcovers for under $30) ('Our Story'); and the site also sells a number of other formats like audio and Kindle, and supplementary study guides, flashcards, and services. Additionally, faculty using Flat World's textbooks for their courses can "edit, delete, and remix textbooks so that the books precisely match the teacher's approach to a course" (Anderson 2008, 1). This is facilitated by Flat World's use of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses on all of their textbooks. Students can also take advantage of the "Open Textbook" model to creative custom books from various chapters, editing books down to the sentence level in coming iterations of Flat World's website ('Our Story'). As of the publication of Anderson's 2008 article, Flat World Knowledge was actively courting known textbook authors to build credibility and "already [had] 17 books under contract and [hoped] to have that number up to 22 or 25 by the end of the year" (Anderson, 1). Flat World pays textbook authors a 20% royalty, compared to traditional industry standard of 15% on net sales (ibid., 1). Furthermore, authors retain royalty rights on any remixed versions of their content that are sold (ibid., 2). Flat World is also planning a series of college textbooks done as graphic novels (ibid., 2).
  • Pharmpedia
    Pharmpedia is a commons-based peer production wiki attempting to assemble a set of free-content, open-source educational resources for pharmacists, including the Pharmpedia pharmaceuticals encyclopedia, Pharmpediabooks, and Pharmpediaversity. The website was founded by "Raja Vege [..] and a few enthusiastic pharmacists in Canada, USA and India" ('Pharmpedia:About' 2005). All content appears to be under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license, although the Pharmpediabooks page says "the site's content is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License". It is unclear whether the Pharmpediabooks are meant to be under the GNU FDL, versus the CC licenses used on the rest of the site. The main page of Pharmpedia features seven Pharmediabooks, "free pharmaceutical science [related] textbooks with supporting book-based texts, [...] being written collaboratively", each one appears to be attached to a primary, expert author ('Pharmpediabooks' 2005). The wiki is still active according to edits made on April 1, 2009 logged in the site's recent changes activity; however, the single Pharmpediaversity course Stability of Drugs does not seem to have been updated since 2006. Raja Vege can be contacted at Pharmpedia[at]gmail[dot]com.

Established Publishers

  • SafariU
    • "SafariU is a new custom publishing service offered by O'Reilly Media, Inc. and The Pearson Technology Group. An alternative to expensive print textbooks or print-on-demand services, this innovative Web-based education portal allows academic instructors and corporate trainers to create custom print books, build online syllabi, and share learning objects for Computer Science and Information Technology courses. Educators can easily compile and publish just the information they choose to teach—in print and online—and save students a good bit of money over the cost of primary and supplementary texts." (https://safari-u.dev.java.net/)
  • HarperStudio
    • Not EM, just alternative publishing ideas
    • 50/50 royalties scheme with authors
    • Bundling: physical book + free audiobook and ebook versions
    • Selling iTunes-like gift cards for ebooks at physical bookstores
    • See relevant blog post + comments!!: Why E-Books Cost Money to Publish

Independent Publishing

In general association or author experimentation

  • Principles of Marketing
  • Making Photographs
  • Math Open Ref (geometry)
  • Psychology 101
  • The Open Life: Philosophy of Open Source
  • The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/07/18/textbooks_free_and_illegal_online/

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/19/1316227

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-textbook18-2008aug18,0,4712858.story

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3375/textbook-marketing-radiohead-style

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