My experiences...
1. I've just bought a book from big academic publisher Wiley. In its favour, the ebook was cheaper than the paper book. Against that, it was not in epub format and requires specific software to be downloaded in order to read it (vitalsource). Worse, this information wasn't disclosed until *after* you bought the book. I knew beforehand having read comments by other students but it is not revealed on the site until you've paid. It's also not a straightforward process - worse than Adobe DRM if you can believe that!
2. There are a few academic ebook libraries - my organisation is subscribed to CRC and Safari that I can think of offhand. There's not a huge selection and you have to read them online. There's also NAP, although their selection is underwhelming.
3. Most journals that I have access to through work are electronic, which is good as I don't work at Head Office. Back issues are gradually being brought online which is even better. The upside is that anyone can buy single articles or subscribe. The downside is that it's prohibitively expensive for private individuals. Having said that, anyone who needs it for work will probably have organisational access. The best part is that they are in pdf format and are actually downloadable into an epub reader - I have read a few on my sony.
So, in terms of academic ebook publishing, there are a few moves, but thus far not much for e-ink readers. It's much more geared towards tablet users.
|