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Simply put, we live in a digital age. I type this on my laptop which sits next to my Android smartphone. Today I am reading chapters of a book that were posted online by my professor. Everything is great… not. See, the problem is the ominous pile behind me. It is a large mountain of books I have had to purchase throughout my years in college. They have cost me possibly a thousand dollars and are an eyesore. This is one of the many problems with having to buy print books.
In his book, Gary Hall believes that much could be accomplished if academic books could be put online. Firstly, he negates the problem of copyright. He reasons that copyright is not such an issue because most academic writers “tend not to be concerned about getting paid a fee for, or receiving royalties from their research publications” (Hall, 46). Hall also proves how easily accessible digital copies of a book are versus the print one. He does this by noting that most cultural studies journals only have approximately 400 to 600 copies internationally. Hall’s own co-founded Culture Machine which is an open-access online journal “was able to achieve a circulation of 6,500 in the first ten months of its existence” (Hall, 47). John Willinsky too notes that journal publishers are not out looking for profit and therefore should be willing to submit their work online where the masses can easily obtain it.
All in all, everyone would gain for academic books to be put online. This would help not only help lower student debt but would also publicize the book more so than if it was kept in print. We are in a digital age, there is no reason our books shouldn’t be here also!
aharonsblog 
I also thought of the potential reduction in the cost of education as result of the open access. But do you think that big publishing corporations even think about that?! For them maximizing profit is the ultimate goal at all costs, and this is evident in the fact that as you mention most academic writers are not concerned with being compensated monetarily for their research. As Hall says in his book and it makes sense, it seems like the benefits of offering open access for their work is much higher than the one time fee that they might receive and that is if their work is worthy of publishing. So publishers are the ones who are profiting at the authors and the readers cost! So in a sense they are controlling transfer of knowledge by putting a price on it!
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I can agree that getting access to digital copies of a book is far easier than tracking down a printed copy. Finding a local bookstore these days is hard enough, but they may not even have what you’re looking for. I can much more easily find classic to obscure literature on a kindle.
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I guess you could call me old fashioned, but I still (mostly) prefer a printed copy of a book over a digital copy. But I support the idea of getting more information out to more people in a more efficient manner. One thing that doesn’t seem to have come up in the comments is why it is expected that the journal publishers would provide anything for free? There are costs involved even in the production of digital only materials and yet it seems everyone has their hand out for the free stuff!
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