Imagine one publisher offering some 100,000 ebook titles and those went back to the 1840s and including authors such as Albert Einstein, Sir John Eccles, Lise Meitner, Werner Siemens, and Rudolf Diesel. Imagine the exercise required to clear all the rights and agree royalties on this volume of titles.
Springer have announced a programme to digitization their complete backlist by the end of 2012 and create Springer Book Archives (SBA). The SBA initiative will include nearly all books that have been published since the 1840s and the archives themselves will contain around 65,000 titles.
Some 70% of the books are in English, with the rest mainly being in German with some Dutch and the ratio between scientific STM titles and professional literature is similar. The archive titles from 17 different imprints, including and medical books account for the largest share with over 20% of the archive.
Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media, made gave the great quote, ‘At Springer, a book will never die, but “out of print” will.’
If Springer can take this bold step will others follow and take control of their assets and be less reliant on others scanning them?
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