HarperCollins digital initiatives

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/books/03book.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

Announcement in today's NY Times (link above) about HarperCollins 
new electronic initiatives.  This is an important announcement, 
as it marks the first major initiative in the book industry for 
large-scale digitization, effectively challenging the dominance 
of Amazon and Google in this regard. This will not be the last 
such announcement.  We should expect to see an entire ecosystem 
of suppliers and value-added marketers spring up, in large part 
because the numbers are so big in consumer publishing, thereby 
inviting investment.

One implication for the academic community is that the cost of 
digitization and conversion is poised to plunge, as services now 
can be built to industrial scale.  A lot of libraries and 
academic publishers who have chosen to do this work internally 
may find themselves with substantial sunk costs and high ongoing 
operating expenses. This may not be a pretty picture because, as 
a rule, it is a lot harder to walk away from a capital investment 
than to make the investment in the first place.

For planning infrastructure investments, even research 
universities should abide by the principle to always, always 
attempt to piggyback on infrastructure built for consumer 
services because the size of that segment drives scale and scale 
sharply reduces unit costs.

Joe Esposito