Content and Digital Asset Management

Making a Case for Open Access
January 6, 2015

Depending on the audience, the case for open access (OA) varies. Opponents of intellectual property, for example, may favor OA simply on principle. To a researcher you might argue for a broader dissemination of his or her own work. A funding agency may accept the dissemination premise as well and tie it to an exercise in branding, where each published OA article becomes an ambassador for the sponsor of the research. A librarian may be persuaded on the basis of cost

Argentina’s La Bestia Revives English Authors in Spanish
December 23, 2014

Earlier this month at a writer's panel at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), Argentine poet Mempo Giardinelli lamented the current state of publishing in Argentina. Argentina, Giardinelli recalled, used to translate, edit, and publish mass volumes of foreign literature. That Argentina, he insisted, doesn't exist anymore. But a brief stroll down the aisles of Guadalajara suggested otherwise. Independent presses like Eterna Cadencia and La Caja Negra seem to carry equal parts literature in translation and Spanish language titles while one press, La Bestia Equilatera, is almost unilaterally focused on publishing literature in translation.

Why Copyright Needs to Be Defended
November 25, 2014

There has been some kind of book fair in Frankfurt since the 15th century - almost as long as books as we know them today have been printed. For much of the time since, we have been arguing in one way or another about who has the right to print them and profit accordingly. This year I made a modest contribution to this debate in a dialogue with Olav Stokkmo, CEO of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), and I wanted to share some in print as well.

William Boyd Writes Land Rover-Sponsored Book
November 14, 2014

Soon after turning out the latest James Bond novel, British author William Boyd agreed to write another thriller based on a world famous brand. The Land Rover. Boyd's nearly 17,000-word story, "The Vanishing Game," coming out Wednesday as a free download through Amazon.com, Apple and www.thevanishinggame.com , tells of a 35-year-old British actor named Alec Dunbar and the troubles he encounters when a pretty young woman convinces him to deliver a flask filled with clear liquid from London to Scotland. His transport is a certain four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Press Release: HarperCollins, Penguin Young Readers, Random House Children’s Books Among Publishers to Add Lexile Measures for Its Books
November 3, 2014

Today, MetaMetrics®, developer of the widely adopted Lexile® Framework for Reading, announced that HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Young Readers (a U.S. division of Penguin Random House) and Random House Children's Books (a U.S. division of Penguin Random House) will be providing Lexile® measures for many of their titles. With MetaMetrics' existing text measurement agreements with Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishers, MetaMetrics has now secured text measurement agreements with four out of five of the major trade book publishing companies in the United States.

Content Reuse: 5 Key Questions to Consider
October 27, 2014

In the print-only days, once content was published it was rarely considered for reuse. Sure, there were the occasional "greatest hits" or "all-in-one" products, but for the most part the original content was published and forgotten about.

In the digital era it's a lot easier to redeploy content and drive more visibility and revenue with it. Every piece of content doesn't lend itself to reuse, of course, and there are several factors to consider before launching a reuse campaign. Here are five questions that can help you formulate a content reuse strategy:

Academic Publishers Win Reversal of Court Ruling That Favored ‘E-Reserves’ at Georgia State
October 23, 2014

How much copyrighted material can professors make available to students in online course reserves before they exceed the boundaries of educational fair use? That's the essential question at the heart of a long-running copyright-infringement lawsuit that has pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University.

The answer matters not just to the parties to the case, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Carl V. Patton et al., but publishers, librarians, and professors at many other institutions. It's already been more than six years since Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications sued Georgia State

Press Release: MPS Acquires Electronic Publishing Services
October 17, 2014

MPS North America LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of MPS Limited, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of EPS, a leading US-based, full-service editorial, content creation, art rendering and development, design, research and permissions, and production service provider to the Higher Education and Professional publishing markets.