Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Self-publishing and widespread access to publications is encapsulated
by Scribd (www.scribd.com/about), 'the place where you publish,
discover and discuss original writings and documents'. 'YouTube for
documents' is the term used to describe Scribd, with more than 50,000
new documents being posted daily at the time of writing (Flood, 2009).
If new modes of publishing take off, then the opportunities for authors,
through wider web distribution, could lead to significant shifts in the
marketing of and access to book content. A relevant point in this
context is that most authors, despite being the content creators, receive
relatively little financial reward for their books, as well as limited print
life. If digital distribution and preservation patterns change, then the
author's lot can be improved in terms of both remuneration and access.
And whither unpublished academic research? Alexander (2009)
claims that 'keeping in mind that university presses publish roughly
10,000 new books annually, and assuming that they publish only 1 out
of every 10 manuscripts, that means university presses are filtering
100,000 manuscripts per year. Of those, probably 15,000-20,000 get
sent out for peer review.' There is a huge amount of unproductive
academic time going into publishing processes, with limited outcomes.
Would it be better to re-engineer resources in the press context, perhaps
to establish a Scribd-type environment for academia via cross-
searchable institutional repositories?
Digital POD futures
While most books are created and published digitally, distribution
patterns reflect the pre-internet era. Even if the text is transmitted
digitally across continents, as is the case with many fiction books in
Australia, physical books are still then shipped to customers via
bookshops from publishers' warehouses. On average, books remain for
shorter periods in bookshops, where it is not unknown for publishers to
pay for premium space at the front of the shop. Books unsold are
returned and subsequently either remaindered or pulped. So in effect
the customer is paying for both the creation and the destruction of a
book. This is an increasingly uneconomic and inefficient distribution
and stock control process, which will eventually be overtaken by digital
delivery directly to bookshops and libraries within e-preservation
frameworks and print-on-demand (POD) options.
