See discussions, st ats, and author pr ofiles f or this public ation at : https:www .researchgate.ne tpublic ation275201469 [620215]

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Digitize This Book: The Politics of New Media or Why We Need Open
Access Now
Article    in  Learned Publishing · April 2010
DOI: 10.1087/20100219
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Thad Mcilr oy
The F uture of Publishing
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to see that they advised negotiating
for more free copies, as there isnothing more disheartening thanhaving to buy copies of your ownbook, even if at a discount. Therefollows a very well-considered chap –
ter on promoting one’s own book –
something that introverted aca –
demic authors often neglect. As
publishers quickly lose interest innew titles after they have been outfor six months, the authors remindus that it is really up to the author toget his or her book out there. Jack –
son and Lenstrup provide many
useful suggestions here, from arrang –
ing a wine-and-cheese book launch
to writing a press release.
Getting Published is well organized,
clearly written, and reasonablypriced; it should be on the academicauthor’s bookshelf.
Anna Marie Roos
Research AssociateWellcome Unit for the History ofMedicineUniversity of OxfordEmail: [anonimizat]
© Anna Marie Roos 2010
doi:10.1087/20100218
Digitize This Book: The Politics ofNew Media or Why We Need OpenAccess NowGary HallMinneapolis, University ofMinnesota Press, 2008, 312 pp.ISBN 978 0 8166 4871 9, $19.95, pbk
The concept of open access publish –
ing, primarily an issue for scholarly
journals, has been very well coveredin numerous books and articles,including an excellent article bySally Morris and Sue Thorn, ‘LearnedSociety Members and Open Access’,which appeared Learned Publishing ,
22: 221–239. The open access com –
munity is extremely well served on
the W eb, in particular by the organi –
zation Directory of Open Access
Journals (www.doaj.org), which as ofthis writing has 4,297 journals in its
directory, all of them ‘exercis[ing]peer-review or editorial quality’.
Gary Hall’s Digitize This Book
makes for painful reading whencompared to the clarity of so manyother available sources on the topic.I have read the book, and feel thatthe text on the back cover perhapsbest illustrates the challenge: ‘GaryHall presents a timely and ambitiouspolemic [emphasis mine] on the
potential that open access publish –
ing has to transform both “paper –
centric” humanities scholarship and
the institution of the universityitself.’
The book is extremely specialized.
It is also preachy, pedantic, andobtuse. The footnotes amount tosome 25% of the length of the maintext (which, on the plus side, pointsto the likelihood that the author puta great deal of work into the book,making it far more painful to dismissit so completely).
I do not see this book as having
any interest whatsoever to the read-ers of Learned Publishing ,u n l e s s
possessed with a very deep obsessionwith all aspects of open access pub-lishing. In fact, it’s beyond me toimagine it reaching any significantaudience at all.
Thad McILROY
The Future of PublishingEmail:[anonimizat]
© Thad McIlroy 2010
doi:10.1087/20100219
The Brave New World ofPublishing: The SymbioticRelationship Between Printing andBook PublishingManfred H. BreedeOxford, Chandos Publishing, 2008,210 pp.ISBN 1 84334 439 4, £39.95 pbk,£59.95 hbk
The Brave New World of Publishing isreally two books in one. At its core is
a clearly written and well-illustratedhistory of book printing methodsand technologies. Although thebook was published in 2008 it suc –
cessfully manages to bring the reader
up to date on the latest digital printtechnologies, including print-on-demand (POD), W eb-to-print, andmore. There are other books thatcover this subject, but as a broadoverview of the history of printingand a more in-depth view of currenttechnologies The Brave New World of
Publishing is clear and concise
(although exceptionally expensivefor a 200-page book).
The other part of this book, found
mostly in the introduction and theconcluding section, is an impas –
sioned argument for the value of the
book in its physical rather thanelectronic form. Author ManfredBreede, ‘involved with printing andbooks through his professionalcareer’, states his proposition clearlyin the last sentence of the Conclu-sion: ‘The most fertile environmentfor the book trade is a free andvibrant society; for our sake and thatof future generations, let us hopethat the physical book prevails foranother 2,000 years.’ W ell, perhaps.
In his introduction Breede exam –
ines e-books and onscreen reading
(on non-dedicated devices). He firstdelineates a wide range of disadvan –
tages of these emissive display
t e c h n o l o g i e s ,s u c ha sh i g hh a r d w a r ecosts and competing data standards,and then admits that addressingthese challenges can probably beachieved over time.
Next he moves onto dedicated
reading devices, including the SonyReader and Amazon’s Kindle. Headmits that the reflective E-ink‘electronic paper’ technology usedby both devices is easier to read forextended periods than computerLCDs, and that these devices pos –
sess ‘unquestionable advantages of
text search capabilities, inbuilt dic -172 Book reviews
LEARNED PUBLISHING VOL. 23 NO. 2 APRIL 2010
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