What’s Next For OA?

Apr 29, 2015 | Copyright, Events

Open Access publishing models are a business reality in 2015 for an ever-growing number of scientific and scholarly publishers. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are making OA possible, but the revolutionary changes propelled by Open Access business models touch every...

From STM, Tech Trends for 2015

Apr 26, 2015 | Events

At its annual spring conference in Washington last week, the STM Association launched Technology Trends for 2015. Members of STM’s Future Lab Committee earlier had met to identify issues and challenges in scholarly and scientific publishing, then forecast areas of...

Indie Authors Get A Bookstore

Apr 24, 2015 | News

In 2015, the opening of an independent bookstore is an event rare enough to attract attention from bystanders – rather like spotting a vintage automobile with shiny chrome bumpers and flashy fins sailing through your town’s streets. When the Gulf Coast Bookstore flung...

The Copyright Conundrum

Apr 19, 2015 | Copyright, Events

Publishing today confronts a paradox: The digital revolution has transformed the act of copying from complicated to commonplace; yet authors and publishers must rely upon copyright – essentially, control over copy-making and distribution of their works – as the...

Amazon Fear

Apr 17, 2015 | News

It’s a sunny afternoon, but no yet summertime as The Kinks sang – it’s April, of course – and publishers are hardly complaining about the nice weather. The London Book Fair opened on Monday under blue skies, and even as the sunlight streamed through the arcaded...

Indie Publishing: Who Holds the Power?

Apr 12, 2015 | Events

Once upon a time, authors and publishers – along with readers and booksellers – knew their separate places in the book world, and stuck to them. The distribution of power was uneven, maybe even unfair, but the pecking order seemed to make sense. Then, the revolution...

The Case For Libraries

Apr 10, 2015 | News

Publishers bemoan the dwindling of retail space, but they could just be looking in the wrong place for shelves to display their titles. An abundant supply of shelfspace exists in the 16,000 public library branches in America, according to David Vinjamuri who teaches...

On Double Duty: Open Standards & Open Access

Apr 8, 2015 | Copyright

In laboratories and universities, Open Access can make for a two-headed menace.  Funding mandates for publishers and authors that require Open Access policies feed one head of this double dragon. Compliance reporting obligations for institutions feed the other. “We...

Rights On The Money

Apr 5, 2015 | Copyright

In the book world, the shoeboxes are legendary. They are where so many authors’ contracts and other legal instruments often ended up – an ad hoc filing system that worked reliably well, at least in the days before digital. Rights and permissions staff long struggled...

Amazon V. Books, Round 2

Apr 3, 2015 | News

In one corner, the publisher – a world champion, and over nearly two centuries of existence, the original house for Mark Twain, the Bronte Sisters, and Agatha Christie, among many others. In the other corner, the online Leviathan that dominates the digital...