Electric Book Company delivers educational resources that include reformatted segments of textbooks published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY), an arrangement that allows remixing the content for use in other commercial products so long as the distributor provides clear attribution to the original authors.
Creative Commons is only one organizational entity that is engaged in a broader initiative known as Open Educational Resources, or OER. Generally speaking, organizations that adhere to the OER philosophy work to develop instructional content licensed in a form to encourage the ‘5Rs’ which grants the public rights to a) retain ownership and control over, b) re-use, c) revise, d) remix and e) re-distribute content.
There is a wide range of opinions regarding the nature of Creative Commons licensing, many critical of the value proposition that such arrangements offer authors. OER is, in itself, a grassroots movement to break down cost barriers that inhibit access to otherwise costly instructional content.
Distributing content that costs little to nothing to consumers doesn’t appeal to creators who have bills to pay.
Given the altruistic ambitions of OER, content providers such as authors and artists may be forgiven if they ask the question, ‘why would anyone create a work that could be re-used by someone else to make money?’
Let’s consider why, under some circumstances, free-access makes sense, and how potential re-mixes of content can lead to new products.
Why give some stuff away? If you don’t, someone else will.
A gross simplification of the value proposition behind CC-BY licensing is that such a license provides authors with expanded reach of works that enhance their reputation as authors and researchers. Give stuff away for free, and, potentially, a lot of people will see your stuff and want to pay you for some other stuff.
But to an author, the idea of giving away a work that took years of effort is, well, insulting. A product is worth the price people pay for the it, isn’t it? The thought that consumers must pay for content that entertains, enlightens, or educates is something that makes far more sense than giving it away.
But that is not the perspective of the content consumer.
When it comes to the post-secondary environment, it is no secret that the selection and purchase cycle for academic textbooks isn’t what it used to be.
One survey indicated that while 68% of higher education instructors require textbooks, only sightly more than a third of faculty members report that 9 out of 10 students actually purchase the required textbook[1]. Many of those students who turn to alternate sources of instructional content resort to renting/buying used textbooks that may not be the edition suggested by the professor, using smart-phones to capture images of pages from friends’ books, or making use of no-cost online resources – everything from free e-books to YouTube videos.
Are such free resources of the quality and relevance that a course instructor is expecting? Maybe. Maybe not. But the student who doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on recommended texts will never know the difference --- as long as they succeed in the classroom. And the more students who succeed without the recommended text in tow, the more that other students will consider such alternatives.
The fact is that regardless of the quality of an author’s ‘traditional’ content, chances are that someone is distributing something similar for free.
That may not bother authors who are comfortable with the existing publishing model that allows writers to focus on content while publishers take care of sales and distribution. It still works, for the most part, as traditional print publishers move increasingly to digital products.
But other content creators, especially those new to the profession who are still building their careers, may choose to publicize their skill by introducing some titles into that same open-access environment as their ‘freebie’ competitors. The upside to such a choice is that such a free sample builds the author’s reputation not only as a writer, but as a subject matter expert, a reputation that may eventually lead to other revenue generating projects.
Why give stuff away to folks who may make money on your stuff? Consider it a form of R&D.
The CC-BY license allows other companies to re-mix content into derivative products, even products used for commercial (money making) purposes.
But in order for those downstream distributors to make money, the licensed content must be re-purposed into some other setting that generates revenue. That ‘other setting’ can provide the original content provider with an idea of the interests and needs of consumers who wouldn’t otherwise hand over cash for the original work.
In the case of academic textbooks, authors who watch a ‘freebie’ edition of a textbook wired into tutoring websites could be inspired to deliver newer works designed for use by tutors. Licensed content distributed to sites that encourage consumers to vote for (or grade) chapters by usefulness could provide insight that would result in improved content design for newer editions. Even looking at the advertising content on sites that re-distribute materials can give the original author better insight to the demographics of users, information that would be increasingly valuable as the marketplace of learners grows beyond traditional college and university settings.
It is easy enough to obtain data about existing customers who pay as they go. But using commercial partners can provide a glimpse into untapped markets that may be served by the same talents and resources that would otherwise remain locked to legacy content forms.
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Developing high quality instructional material is a demanding, sometimes grueling process. The production of good content requires dedication and commitment. Such a vocation is not for the faint of heart.
Clearly, no one should give away all their work and expect to make money. But it is a noisy world in which consumers are immersed in today’s access everywhere-anytime-at-no-cost content mindset. Content providers are well served to consider innovative tactics to gain visibility in a crowded field, and to use commercial partners to go beyond the ‘pay as you read’ business model in order to gain insights about one’s customers that would otherwise go unnoticed.
[1]Seaman, Julia, Seaman, Jeff. ‘Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2017’. Babson Survey Research Group, retrieved Jan 4, 2020 from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2017.pdf