Springer To Be Never 'Out of Print'

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?

Springer Has the Largest eBook Offer?

There are only a few publishers who can boast a significant ebook catalogue and Springer is clearly at the front of the list. Today they offer access to the largest collection of eBooks, more than 1,500 peer-reviewed Springer journals and 18,000 protocols for laboratories. Springer has continually increased the volume of titles and since starting its digital collection in 2006 and now has some 30,000 eBooks and plans to continue to increase this by some 5,000 titles each year.

Springer operates an open and liberal digital access programme for its library community , allowing unlimited simultaneous access, to fully searchable books that can be downloaded and printed. Importantly once purchased Springer's eBook Collection content, is owned by the library in perpetuity.