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New Science Books To Be Available Free Online

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the free-as-a-business-model-not-dead dept.

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."

4 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Undercutting Bloomsbury by telchine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Undercutting Bloomsbury by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  2. Quality? by mc1138 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    The musings of just another geek and his junk.
  3. Re:Anything like this for maths? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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