University Presses Give Short-Form E-Books a Try

Short-form e-book programs have been attracting attention among university presses as a way to provide in-depth, quality content in a brief format. Princeton, following the lead of Amazon’s Kindle Singles format, launched Princeton Shorts last year, with Stanford and the University of North Carolina presses getting into the business this past spring.

It’s hoped the shorter works will hook readers into buying the original, much longer version. The titles could also be a useful format in course adoptions where instructors want to assign chapter-length reading material. Or it may show how university presses can stay ahead of the technological curve, according to a post by the American Association of University Presses.

While it’s still too early tell, short-form e-books have so far not stopped people from buying the complete work. at least not at Princeton.

“The paperback of [best-selling economics book This Time is Different] has been selling well and steadily since its release not long before the release of the short,” said Rob Tempio, editor in charge of the Princeton Shorts project. “Did sales of the Short drive that? Doubtful. Did sales of the Short detract from the sales of that? Almost certainly not.”

Project MUSE Platform Goes Live

Project MUSE's new interface, featuring book and journal content integrated on a single platform, is up and running.  Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content.  The new interface allows you to access over 12,000 scholarly book titles from nearly 70 distinguished university presses and related publishers can now be located and browsed along with the content from MUSE's more than 500 respected journals.

Princeton University Press Enters Digital Market with Princeton Shorts

The Chronicle reports that Princeton University Press will test the digital market with its Princeton Shorts.  Using its back list it will take excerpts and package them as e-books.  Running from 20 to 100 pages in length it will have a price range between 99 cents to $4.99 and unlike Kindle Singles, Princeton Shorts will not introduce new content instead it will take selections and place new titles on them, according to the story.  Douglas Armato, director of the University of Minnesota Press, called it "good, savvy publishing on Princeton's part." In an e-mail, he said he was "interested to hear what happens—particularly if the market for the 'shorts' turns out to be more classroom than general trade."

New Platforms to Access University Press E-Books

Wired Campus reports several online platforms for University-Press Ebooks that are about to be introduced into the market.  These include Oxford Press’s University Press Scholarship Online, ProjectMUSE, JSTOR, and University Publishing Online, a Cambridge University Press’s platform.

Oxford Press announced that its University Press Scholarship Online will includes monographs from the American University in Cairo Press, Fordham University Press, Hong Kong University Press, University Press of Florida, and the University Press of Kentucky, with Edinburgh University Press and Policy Press scheduled to join the project in March 20.

According to Wired Campus ProjectMUSE Ebooks will include more than 14,000 titles from 66 university and scholarly presses.  JSTOR, has more than 20 publishers that are participating and expects to reach 30 by the time  it goes live in the summer of 2012, says the article.

University Publishing Online, Cambridge University Press’s has publishers on board like  Books India, Liverpool University Press, and the Mathematical Association of America, as well as Cambridge University Press.

Crowdsourced Book

Hacking the Academy that represents current practice in developing and testing ideas about new publishing models. It was made possible through an innovative partnership between the University of Michigan Library and the University of Michigan Press with the intent of modeling library-press collaboration at U-M.

Hacking the Academy is a book compiled from a single week of blog posts and tweets soliciting ideas for how the higher education could encourage positive change using digital media and technology. The project was headed by Dan Cohen and Tom Scheiunfeldt, of George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media, as research designed to question the conventional university-press system. Within a span one of week they received 329 submissions from 177 authors with almost a hundred submissions written during the one week span. Subjects covered in the book include educational technology, tenure, lecture, curriculum, and libraries.

The E-reader Effect

[Note: Sorry for the lack of extensive posting lately, the last week has been particularly busy].

There was an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed this week on how the shift to digital is beginning to affect university presses. The article opens with a reiteration of how ebooks in higher ed are off to a slow start, compared to trade books. This is not surprising to most of us who follow the ebook business. Trade books, in many ways, are easier to render to devices -- and devices like the Nook or the Kindle are designed to support trade book reading. However, we still lack an effective device and reading environment that effectively supports the more complex engagement patterns that surround textbooks or other course materials.

What was of interest in the article was the reporting out from a recent survey of AAUP members. Citing the study, the piece notes that, "As of last December, e-book sales or licenses accounted for less than 3 percent of total revenue for the overwhelming majority of university presses." Interestingly, this is nearly equivalent to the percentage of ebook sell-through that the college stores see on average. However, the piece goes on to note that, "60 percent of respondents expressed “serious concern” about the viability of their current business models" as a result of declining print sales.

The article points out that ebooks are one of the only segments of the university press business that is growing, and that the rate of growth has increased since the original study was deployed. University Presses are also seeing particular success in making backlisted titles available to consumers.

University presses add e-books to stay in the game

To position themselves as scholarly alternatives to Google Book Search’s 12 million-book archive, university presses and academic content aggregators, acting singly or in partnerships, are rushing to create or expand repositories for digital long-form texts. As detailed in this Inside Higher Ed article, JSTOR, the University Press eBook Consortium (UPeC), and Oxford University Press have all recently announced projects aimed at preserving their revenue streams from scholarly content and keeping themselves from being marginalized by the search giant.

Since these groups will target college and university libraries, rather than individual consumers, via the sale of access licenses, they won’t present any actual direct competition to Google. The addition of e-texts to their archives will, as one university press director noted, enable academics to cut through the “fog” of nonscholarly content that results from any Google Books search. With college stores representing a significant portion of University Press sales, perhaps there are ways for the two constituencies to work together on some of these initiatives.

Digital Happenings

While the blog highlights many of the digital happenings affecting our industry, there is often more going on than we have a chance to cover. Here are some links to related stories that might be of interest.

• Campus Technology has an interesting article about the colleges that are remaking their campuses and designing learning spaces to accommodate student interaction and technology.
• CNET recently featured an interview with Ian Freed, Vice President of Amazon Kindle. Freed says that Amazon believes it has 70-80 percent of the e-book market.
• An article from eSchool News discusses the new copyright law that lets students and faculty in film or media studies courses legally “rip” movie excerpts to make commentaries, compilations, and other works.
• An article from Campus Technology discusses the news that Ohio’s Board of Regents will be working with Blackboard to create a statewide online learning clearinghouse.
• A recent article from NYU Press says that fifty-five university presses have expressed interest in participating in a University Press EBook Consortium to sell collections of e-books to academic libraries. The consortium will launch in fall 2011.
• A press release from the University of Scranton features praise from recent graduates for the university’s successful online learning program.
• A recent article from The NY Times compares the iPad (a multitasker device) to the Amazon Kindle (a specialist device) and says that early evidence suggests that some Kindle owners are also purchasing iPads and moving some of their e-book purchases to the Apple iBookstore.

Cambridge University Press to make titles from the Cambridge Library Collection available for print-on-demand

According to a recent press release, Cambridge University Press has launched a new scanning initiative that will make 475 rare and out-of-print titles from the Cambridge Library Collection available for print-on-demand. Some of the titles in the collection are so valuable that they are no longer circulating and can only be viewed in the vault.

In an article from Inside Higher Ed, Erin Igoe, library sales and marketing manager for Cambridge University Press, commented on how they are increasing the accessibility of these rare books, “Some of these are titles that weren't available in the free domain. By making them available, we are creating a demand. Because they are scanned and available, people know they're out there.”

Cambridge University is one of several universities that have recently embarked on scanning and print-on-demand initiatives to make their rare books available to more customers. Other universities include: University of Michigan, Cornell University Library, and University of Pittsburgh Press. Cambridge University plans to expand their offering to include over 1,000 titles by the end of 2009.

University presses work together to explore collaborative e-book program

A recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses how four university presses - New York University Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, Rutgers University Press, and Temple University Press - are working together to research the idea of a collaborative e-book program. According to Marlie Wasserman, director of the Rutgers University Press, the idea came about after realizing that many university presses were having separate conversations on how to make the transition to digital. Wasserman commented, “No one was really harnessing the power of numbers.” The research is being funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and aims to determine the cost and technical requirements associated with producing and selling e-books. The group would like to be able to provide a one-stop site that offers e-books from many university presses and also gives individual scholars and institutional buyers a place to purchase e-books. Wasserman added, "If we come up with a solution that works for us but not for anyone else, it will fall flat." The article notes that since this project was announced, many university presses have inquired about how they could become involved.

Indiana University Press launches IU Press Online

Last week, Indiana University Press launched IU Press Online to allow users to read portions of their books and journals for free and to purchase the full texts at a discounted rate. The site currently includes 200 back, mid, and front-list books and 75 themed journals. Initially only single-title pricing is available but the university plans to add timed subscriptions of varying lengths for individual libraries, any combination of libraries, and to the entire database. The site is also accessible via mobile devices.

University of Pittsburgh Press to make 500 out-of-print titles available

According to a recent press release, the University of Pittsburgh Press along with the University of Pittsburgh Library System and the Chicago Digital Distribution Center (CDDC) will make 500 of their out-of-print titles available through the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program. The out-of print titles were added to the program after sufficient interest from scholars and students. The program will allow users to access the library system to read and search the full text of the titles online. Printed copies can also be purchased and within the year, the CDDC will offer paperback editions of the titles.

Scholarly presses benefit from digital publishing

An interesting article by Scott McLemee on Inside Higher Ed discusses the recent move towards digital publishing and some of the advantages that it has provided for scholarly presses. The article begins with a telling quote from an observer of trends in the industry that reads, “We’re going to see a 15 year leap in the publishing industry in the next two years.” Interestingly enough, that comment was made last summer when the economy was in better shape and “before trillions of dollars starting vanishing into the ether.” The piece goes on to discuss an article written by Sandy Thatcher, director of Penn State University Press and past president of the Association of American University Presses entitled “The Hidden Digital Revolution in Scholarly Publishing: POD, SRDP, the ‘Long Tail,’ and Open Access.” In the article, Thatcher discusses how the small market for scholarly titles has actually given university presses an advantage because they have been able to experiment with and benefit from short-run digital publishing and print-on-demand while others in the industry are continually trying to reduce their costs through economies of scale. Additionally, university presses have been able to publish more scholarly works and distribute them to a broader audience through digital publishing. In the coming months, we can expect to see more acceptance of and experimentation with digital options as the industry struggles to find a more profitable business model during these tough economic times.

University of Michigan Press goes digital

Earlier this week, the University of Michigan Press announced that they will be moving to digital format. According to an article from Inside Higher Ed, the majority of the monographs published will now be released in digital form but readers will have the option to use print-on-demand if they choose. This announcement differs from other recent news because the University’s decision was not based on a cost saving initiative and no jobs will be eliminated, the shift is purely to take advantage of the ability to publish more books and distribute them to a broader audience. Phil Pochoda, director of Michigan press explained. “I have been increasingly convinced that the business model based on printed monograph was not merely failing but broken. Why try to fight your way through this? Why try to remain in territory you know is doomed? Scholarly presses will be primarily digital in a decade. Why not seize the opportunity to do it now?” As we begin to see more scholarly presses transition to digital for distribution or cost saving purposes, college stores should also consider seizing the opportunity to provide digital content.