RE: OA monographs

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> There are some people who might reasonably worry that putting 
> books online will hurt their sales: if a book is not 
> worthwhile, and reading a few pages is the most anyone will do, 
> then those who have looked at it online will certainly not buy. 
> If it were print only, they might, and then regret it. If an 
> author writes a good book, encourage her to post it.

It's not only "bad" books that would likely suffer in sales if 
made freely available online.  Any book, good or bad, that is 
likely to be used as a research or reference tool rather than 
read from cover to cover is going to have hard time selling in 
print if a free copy is available online.  (Making a good novel 
available on an OA basis may drive print sales, because who wants 
to read a whole novel on their computer?  But putting a good 
research monograph or reference book online will probably hurt 
print sales, because people will be able to search its content 
online and get all the information they need that way.)  Ask 
yourself how many people would buy a copy of the OED if the 
online version were open access.  Some would, of course, but far 
fewer than now pay for their print or online copies.

Remember: people don't pay for something just because it's good; 
they pay for it because it's good, because they need it, and 
because paying for it is the only way to get it.  Given the 
choice between paying for good stuff and getting it for free, 
people have a marked tendency towards the latter option.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu