If an author does not intend to make much revenue from a book, why not make it open-access?

Question

Many authors do not intend to make much revenue from books (textbooks or research books) they contribute to, yet they don't make it open access. Why?

Answer 1

There are a number of reasons why not to, and they stem from the reasons one might want to publish a book, even if you aren't making much if any money:

• The prestige of the publisher matters. For many tenure committees, professional organizations, etc. "A Book from BigDeal University Press" > "Some Markdown Files on Github" or what have you in terms of evaluation. In effect, you are getting paid, but in prestige and reputation rather than money.
• Publishers take care of a number of things that, if you're self-publishing an open access book you have to do yourself, including copy-editing, layout, and most importantly, finding peer reviewers.
• Seeing a book adopted widely (another part of the whole prestige aspect) will likely be more difficult for an open-access book, at least at present, where they are fairly common. Who is going to do the marketing? Has it actually been properly peer reviewed? Are there nice, hard-bound copies available (some of us like reading things on paper), etc.

That is not to say that there are not some very successful efforts in my field to do open access books. Hernan and Robins causal inference book, for example, has drafts and code available online: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/

But neither one of those authors is in the position to need much benefit from a book publication, and it's still being placed in a traditional press when it's finished.

Answer 2

Many authors do not intend to make much revenue from books (textbooks or research books) they contribute to, yet they don't make it open access. Why?

First, while authors may not "intend" to make much revenue, that still does not mean that they will happily give up whatever revenue they are actually going to make (and keep in mind that the actual amount of revenue is impossible to predict with accuracy at the time an author needs to make this decision). So if an author feels that making their book open-access will lead to a loss of revenue, then unless that author is sufficiently generous, passionate about open-access, and/or financially well-off, not insisting on making the book available as open-access would be a completely rational decision, regardless of whether the publisher would give permission or not.

Second, and more importantly in my opinion, after you have spent a few years and a huge amount of labor and creative energy writing a book, the idea of giving it away for free is simply ... uncomfortable, even for purely psychological reasons. I decided to make my book open access and am quite happy with my decision, but I can completely understand and respect authors who have made the opposite decision, and don't think such a decision should be criticized by anyone who hasn't gone through a similar creative journey themselves.

Answer 3

As the entry level for self-publishing is now very low, there is a whole swamp of the low quality content. Once you join this swamp, it is very difficult to raise above it, as nobody can find you. A good quality content initially belonging to this swamp takes long time to be noticed, if ever.

It is critical to have the public reviewing system not for picking best of the best but first for discarding the really low quality junk. Automated search tools, even Google technologies, cannot do this properly, as the junkwriters are often much more experts in "search engine optimization". Hence they trash with lots of revenue generating ads around somehow always takes if not the first then at least a second place in the search results.

The only way known for me to mitigate this is to link (or publish in) the official website of the notable university. Web search will take this into consideration, but the option is not easily available for all potentially good publishers.

It is the lack of the serious public reviewing system that hinders publishing of the free content.

Answer 4

ff524 basically answered in the comment: publishers don't usually allow it. Just as with journal articles it might be possible to negotiate publishing under an open access license for a fee. Sometimes it is also possible to negotiate being allowed to publish a "preprint" version on your homepage or a preprint server such as the arXiv. Typically this is a version without the editing and layout work done by the publisher.

Of course authors can just decide to not publish with a publisher (or self-publish) and just upload the book to their homepage, as many people do. You will miss out on royalties (not a big deal, as noted in the question) and marketing efforts of the publisher.

Answer 5

There is a point about human nature - people tend to value things according to how much they have to pay to get them. An author might well feel that if people can download something for free from a website that it will not be valued. As a user of some excellent free software and the recipient of some excellent free advice here, I know that this is not always true, but other users and other authors might not agree with me.

There is also the obverse to this - that some people will ask, "If it's that good, why is she giving it away?" This meshes with the belief that anything which is valuable can be "monetized" and anything which cannot have a numeric value put on it, does not have value.

Again, I think that the internet is changing these perceptions, but not for everyone and not in every circumstance.

Answer 6

I'm surprised at all the answers given because they all seem to miss the point.

If you publish something open-access, you need to pay for it. An author publishing a non-OA book receives author royalties. The same author publishing an OA book has to pay the publisher. The price is not cheap. Check out Cambridge University Press's website on OA books.

How much are your Book Processing Charges? Our standard charge for a monograph of up to 120,000 words is £9,500/$14,500/€13,000 (excluding any applicable VAT or local sales tax), and £55/$84/€76 per additional thousand words. We are usually able to offer a discount of £2/$3/€2.5 per page for camera ready copy. We do, however, consider each book individually. Additional fees may apply depending upon the complexity of the work.

It's one thing to write a book and make little/no money. It's another to actually lose money writing the book. Yes, CUP's website also says you will continue to receive royalties, but OA means the content is available for free. How many people will pay for the book when they can already read for free?

tl; dr: authors don't make books OA because it doesn't make economic sense.