#ioe12 Open Business Model

The next topic in David Wiley’s Introduction to Openness in Education course is Open Business Model. It focused briefly on OpenCourseWare, but mostly looked at business models for free ebooks.

The paper A Sustainable Model for OpenCourseWare Development (Johansen and Wiley, 2010) described the cost involved to publish courses openly. Some of these costs include the labor to convert courses to an OpenCourseWare format, scrubbing to remove copyrighted material, hardware and software needs, and other supplies. One big question is how would opening up courses effect paid enrollments. Johansen and Wiley (2010) found it would be sustainable, however there was no data on attrition of paid students due to the courses becoming open.

The remainder of the articles to explore were based on open textbooks or other ebooks.

Free: Why Authors are Giving Books Away on the Internet  (Hilton and Wiley, 2010) looked at the effect of free books on sales of non-digital version. Interviews with authors showed that they are happy with open publishing . Many see it as providing a wider range of access to their works. The free version can also act as an enticement to buy the print version. Regardless of technological advances, people still like to have paper books. Giving away ebooks provides access and exposure, but may not necessarily reduce the number of people who purchase the book.

The Short Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books or Print Sales (Hilton and Wiley, 2010) used Bookscan Data to examine the relationship between ebooks and the subsequent sales of the paper versions. With the exception of Tor Books, sales increased. It is important to note that Tor Books used a different model than the others. The free ebook was only available online for one week.

Hilton's dissertation (2010) looked at whether book sales of religious books were affected by the digital versions. Hilton found that sales increased 26% for the titles that had ebooks released.

A Sustainable Future for Open Textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge Story (Hilton and Wiley, 2010) Used Flat World Knowledge (FLK) as a case study to examine the sustainability of the business model being used. FLK functions similar to traditional textbook publishers only they are free. Another unique feature is instructors can remix easily. Titles have the  creative commons licensing of BY-NC-SA.
For students they can access the free book online and they can also purchase other versions if they want to. Authors get 20% of sales. Authors are also able to share their work with their students freely (what a concept, instructors being able to share their knowledge!). FLK completed alpha tests that included a faculty review of the business model, faculty review of prototype, and student review of approach and prototype. During beta testing 6 books were used in 27 classes with 750 students. 442 students ordered additional resources or the print book.

It is clear that both faculty and students have interest in open textbooks. The bigger question to me is not only how to sustain this movement as a business model, but how to grow it. Open Access Textbooks and Financial Sustainability also looked at FLK. concluding that the open textbook market has not been growing as fast as predicted in the sales of electronic textbooks. Why is this? I know as a student, an electronic version of a text for me, would not be worth the money. I want both! I need to hold my textbooks, flip through the pages, take notes on them. However, I also want them on my iPad. I want to be able to annotate digitally. I do this for journal articles, why not my texts? I think this is where the business model that FLK is using has substance. I can access texts electronically and have a hard copy to hold. I think the next big hurdle for this type of model is to be able to increase the number of books available before people look elsewhere. I was disappointed at the small number of science, math, and professional titles for example. Looking at the costs associated with each book to produce, being able to do this may take more time and support.