Tomorrow the Texas Court of Appeals will hear arguments on behalf of author Carla Main and publisher Encounter Books, seeking to dismiss a defamation suit brought by Dallas develop H. Walker Royal. Royal’s suit has asked for a permanent injunction against further printing and distribution of the book. When the suit was first before a Texas judge, George F. Will wrote a column about “bulldozing freedom of speech,” saying the court was “being asked to collaborate in the suppression of a book.” He added: “Indeed, so slapdash are Royall’s accusations against Main that his suit seems to reflect nothing more […]
Textbooks
eNews: Rice Digital Press Experiment Folds, As Inkling Launches to Adapt Textbooks to iPad
University press publishing can be difficult regardless of the medium, and Rice University has decided to end their four-year experiment with a digital-only press. The former provost who authorized the venture originally Eugene Levy says, “The hope was that, without the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand book sales. Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow, and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that could materially cover even minimal costs of operations.” The press had closed once before, in 1996.http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Rice-U-to-Close-Its-Digital/26342 […]
More Action in Online Textbook Rentals
Following yesterday’s announcement from Barnes & Noble College, Cengage Learning announced that their site CengageBrain.com is renting over 1,200 of the company’s textbooks at “up to 70 percent off the suggested retail price.” And they say they will add another 1,500 titles to the program by July 2010. Just as importantly, Cengage’s site already sells electronic textbooks and echapters, too. Inside Higher Ed suggests that a transition to a Netflix “play instantly” model is not far off in the textbook market: “Just as Netflix has begun making more and more of its inventory available for users to stream instantly on […]