New Science Books To Be Available Free Online

fm6 writes "Bloomsbury Publishing, best known for the Harry Potter books, has announced a new series of science books that will be available for free online. Bloomsbury thinks they can make enough money off of hard-copy sales to turn a 'small profit.' The online version will be covered by a Creative Commons license which allows free non-commercial use. They've already had some success with the one book they've published this way, Larry Lessig's 'Remix: Making Art and Commerce thrive in the Hybrid Economy.' The series, 'Science, Ethics and Innovation,' will be edited by Sir John Sulston, Nobel prize winner and one of the architects of the Human Genome Project."

Comments

Undercutting Bloomsbury

[telchine]

Unless I'm mistaken, the Creative Commons Noncommercial licence allows you to charge a fee for the printing and distribution costs as long as it's not for profit. What's to stop some ant-capitalistic individual from setting up a non-commercial organisation to distribute the texts cheaper than Bloomsbury, thus preventing them making a profit?

Re:Undercutting Bloomsbury

[JesseMcDonald]

What's to stop some ant-capitalistic [sic] individual from setting up a non-commercial organisation to distribute the texts cheaper than Bloomsbury...?

What about this do you consider "anti-capitalistic"? Actions need not be motivated by currency to be compatible with capitalism; rational self-interest includes such factors as goodwill and self-esteem in addition to the direct and indirect exchange of material goods and services.

Re:Undercutting Bloomsbury

[fm6]

Nothing, I suppose. But why would they bother? To punish Bloomsbury for making free copies available?

Besides, it's not as easy as your making it sound. Bloomsbury does this stuff on a huge scale, so their costs are lower. And that's assuming the other version is printed using traditional methods. Unless your hypothetical economic terrorist was willing to spend a lot of money up front for a print run, they'd have to rely on a print-on-demand system, which has pretty high unit costs. Not break-the-bank high (POD has gotten pretty cheap) but not low enough to compete with a regular printer, never mind undercut them.

It's amusing: all the technologies we're such geeks about rely on economies of scale. Yet nobody around here really seems to understand the concept.

Quality?

[mc1138]

I really like this, and shows that this company has a better understanding of the big picture when it comes to the dissemination of ideas. My question though is to the quality of these books. I've found often times text books to be poor presentations of science, either making it boring, inaccurate, or just a poor presentation in general. Though quality aside, I still applaud their efforts to make knowledge more freely available.

Re:Anything like this for maths?

[Hatta]

Go to any used book store and grab an algebra, calculus, whatever textbook for $5. Basic math hasn't changed in a hundred years, so it's not like you're getting out dated material. In fact, text books have been dumbed down in recent years, so you're probably getting a better education that way.

This is how I learned calculus in high school, and then totally slept through it in college, making As.

Re:Anything like this for maths?

[basementman]

You're post was doing okay until your true motives of bragging about how great you are were revealed in the last sentence.

Re:Sudden breakout of common sense

[brasselv]

Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] has the complete works of Shakespeare [gutenberg.org] online, a text in the public domain that anyone can print. Yet thousands of print copies of these works are sold through bookstores every month.

This is indeed true as of now, because many DO see some value in having a printed copy of Shakespeare (myself included).

Think of a different scenario.

You have two buttons on your Kindle. One buys a copy of The Tempest from Amazon or iBooks, for 2$. The other button downloads The Tempest from Gutemberg - for free.

Assuming that you don't own Amazon stock, and that everything else is equal (format, download speed, etc.), which button would you press?

Any work put on a Creative Commons license today, won't make any money in the future, once digital is king.
As publishers want to make money, I believe this model, while interesting, can't take off.

We desperately need a realistic, viable business model, rethought from the ground up, that faces the digital distribution reality - and that at the same time avoids the publishing industry to fall in the same trap as the music industry.

Unfortunately, I have not seen such model just yet.

Buy these books

[shaitand]

If you really and truly support open access to books and information then buy these books.

This is the content industry finally hearing those of us who have protested to the industry attempting to lock down content and refuse to update their business models to embrace modern copying technology instead of fighting it.

If you don't recognize this as a pilot project to test the waters you are a fool. Everyone buy at book in this series, even if you don't really want the thing. Consider it a donation to the principle and vote with your dollars.

Re:Sudden breakout of common sense

[shaitand]

You are aware that usage of italics, bold, and all caps is a question of style and not consistent from book to book in the first place?

Seriously, who cares? Once you can distinguish between narrative, dialog, thoughts, and inner monologue then what difference does it make?