I noticed an interesting article recently called:

At SPARC-ACRL Forum, Reality Check on Open

Access Monographs

Go check it out.

First Monday just published an article that David Wiley and I wrote. We are currently working on an expanded version of this article now that we have access to an additional year’s worth of data. Flat World is certainly an interesting company! Here’s the abstract:

“Many college students and their families are concerned about the high costs of textbooks. E–books have been proposed as one potential solution; open source textbooks have also been explored. A company called Flat World Knowledge produces and gives away open source textbooks in a way they believe to be financially sustainable. This article reports an initial study of the financial sustainability of the Flat World Knowledge open source textbook model.”

You can find the full article here.

I was honored to give a speech at the BYU McKay School of Education Commencement today. Below is the transcript. It was connected to my dissertation and is titled, “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

Those not familiar with the mission of Brigham Young University or its sponsoring institution, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, may be surprised by the religious overtones in the talk. Given the nature of the university, I felt it was appropriate.

“Freely ye have Received, Freely Give”

(Matthew 10:8)

2010 Commencement Address

Greetings Administrators, Professors, family members, friends and fellow classmates. I am honored to speak with you today.  My message is a simple one; I will introduce it with a story.

On my mission [for the LDS Church], my companion and I were [going door to door] one evening when we came to a home with a fence around it. There was a sign on the fence that said, “Beware of Dog.” We rattled the gate to see if a dog would bark. Nothing happened. We rattled the gate even louder but no dog came—so we opened the gate and walked inside.

The gate swung shut behind us as we walked towards the door. I was a couple of steps in front of my companion when we heard a loud barking noise. A giant dog came running around the side of the yard.

My companion turned and ran for the fence. He began climbing it and the dog was jumping up trying to grab his feet. But my companion made it over the fence and was safe. I on the other hand was in trouble. The dog was between me and the fence. I could see no other escape so I ran towards the front door and (without knocking) opened it.

“Help!” I yelled. “Help!”

A large man came running down the stairs yelling at the dog.

When the dog calmed down the man turned and yelled at me, “What are you doing in here?”

I said, “Well we were just trying to share a spiritual message…”

He cut me off. “I’m not interested!”

And that was fine with me because I was just happy to get out of there alive. Then the man said, “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you read?”

And he had a point. The sign “beware of dog” was clear, but my companion and I chose to ignore it, thinking that we knew better.

I share this story with you because I feel that this is a “beware of dog” message. It is simple and easy to overlook. But I think it is important.

My simple message to you today is summed up in brief statement made by the Savior. He said, “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

As students we have freely received in so many ways. We have received from our classmates, from our professors and from our families. Freely we have received, freely we must give.

First we have received from our classmates. We have participated in study groups, shared notes and ideas, prepared each other for tests, and given each other feedback. I’m sure you have had classmates like I had where some of the best learning came as we heard from one another. As we move forward we will have many peers who depend on us for support. This might take place in a school setting as we assist a fellow teacher needing help on a lesson plan. It could also take place as we reach out to brothers and sisters in our wards through home and visiting teachers. As we have gone through school we have gained from our peers. Now we have the responsibility to give back to our peers. The Savior said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

Second, we have received from our professors. Have you ever had professors so caring and focused on mentoring as those at the McKay School of Education? I want to speak a little bit about my experience, which I am sure you have shared. When I was just beginning my program a professor emailed me and invited me to participate in a special project he was working on. His reaching out to mentor me changed my life as he introduced me to ideas, people and opportunities that I otherwise never would have had.

I think of another professor who when I asked for his help agreed to assist me. I knew that this professor had a large work assignment, and on top of that had just received a heavy church calling. So when I went to his office I expected only a few minutes of his time. After we had visited for a couple of minutes about my project he began to teach me about other interesting things he was working on. We spent over an hour together and I learned so much. As I left I was astonished at how such a busy man could be so generous in giving his time to me.

Another professor helped me during a time in his life where he was going through serious struggles. Another smiled and gave me friendly encouragement whenever I saw him. I could go on and on.

As future teachers we will have many opportunities, in like manner to give to others. These opportunities will come in many ways. Some of us will teach students in a classroom setting. There will be lonely students who want to talk to us before or after class. Will we take the time to help them? Will we go to our students’ choir concerts, or write notes of appreciation? One of the most important things we can remember is that we are not teaching classes – we are teaching students. Individual students. President Howard W. Hunter said, “I…encourage you to think about the students you teach and try to reach them on an individual level.…You must remember that you are teaching and trying to reach individual students… The very best teaching is one on one and often takes place out of the classroom” (President Howard W. Hunter, “Eternal Investments”, address to CES, 1989).

Not all of us will be classroom teachers. But all or most of us will have opportunities to serve as teachers in the church. What will we do to reach into the hearts of the people we will serve? Will we use the skills and attributes we have developed at BYU to make a difference in the lives of the individuals we are called to serve? I believe we will. We have been given much, and much is required of us. The Savior said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

Third, we have received from our parents and other family members. From the thousands of meals that mom prepared to all the times dad helped us with homework, our family members have loved and supported us. The most important role that we will have in our lives is that of husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. President David O. McKay, for whom our college is named said, “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” It will not be easy for us to give our families the priority they deserve. Some of us may need to adjust our careers, or quit a hobby. There will be diapers to change, chores to be done, and service to give. But with all that our families have given us, can we do any less? As the Savior said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

The wonderful book In His Steps [get it, it's free]contains the account of people who chose to do what the Savior did. He is the master teacher. We can follow his steps. He said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

I am sure that you have contemplated that today is not an end, but a beginning. During the past years we have been given so much from our classmates, our professors and our families. Although the Savior’s message is simple I hope we will not neglect it. He said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.”

Thank you.

The very first academic article I worked on has been published by Tech Trends. It’s called Free: Why Authors are Giving Books Away on the Internet. For the article, David Wiley and I interviewed ten authors who had made some or all of their books available for free on the Internet. Most of the authors we interviewed also used Creative Commons licenses. Our purpose was basically to get the authors’ opinions on five questions:

1. What motivated you to provide free digital versions of books?
2. How did free digital distribution affect the distribution of your work?
3. How did free digital distribution affect the impact of your work?
4. Are you glad they made your books freely available?
5. What effect (if any) do you think does free digital distribution have on print sales?

The authors we interviewed were:

1. Hal Abelson (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Blown to Bits)
2. Yochai Benkler (The Wealth of Networks)
3. James Boyle (The Shakespeare Chronicles, The Public Domain)
4. Cory Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom , A Place So Foreign and Eight More, Eastern Standard Tribe, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Little Brother, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, Content).
5. Leander Kahney (The Cult of Mac, The Cult of iPod).
6. Chris Kelty (Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software and the Internet).
7. Lawrence Lessig (Code, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas).
8. Kembrew McLeod (Freedom of Expression).
9. Eric Schulman (A Briefer History of Time).
10. Eric Von Hippel (The Sources of Innovation, Democratizing Innovation).

The authors’ responses are (in my opinion) extremely interesting. Major motivations for making work freely available include “to increase visibility,” “to increase sales,” and “it’s a moral obligation.” All of the authors were glad that they had made they work available for free, and most reported that they thought it had increased the reach of their work. Nobody perceived that sales had decreased as a result.

A few excerpts:

“I think that openness has extended the long tail of my book. It may not have sold a large amount when it was first released, but it continues to sell well. I think part of that is the visibility that open licensing created and the good will it has created.” — Kembrew McLeod

“The number of people who tell me they would never have seen the book had it not been freely licensed is extraordinary.” –Lawrence Lessig

Eric Von Hippel reported that sales of his book were double the publisher’s initial estimates. In addition to these sales, Von Hippel’s book was downloaded 90,000 times from his website.

“The number of people who wrote to me to tell me about how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper book far exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, “Ha, ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I’m not gonna buy it.”” –Cory Doctorow

Another facet of paper was a two year case study looking at what happened to sales of Lessig’s The Future of Ideas over the year following it being made available for free. We compared sales of The Future of Ideas with sales of Lessig’s Free Culture (which had been free from inception). I won’t give any spoilers here as to what happened.

I personally gained a lot from talking with these authors and am very grateful for the opportunity I had to work with them. They were kind and gracious in sharing their knowledge and insights.

Special thanks to Tech Trends for honoring the Sparc Addendum, and allowing the article to be placed in BYU’s Institutional repository. You can access the article here.

I’ve posted on my dissertation before. The full version is now available here. Here’s a little summary of what the dissertation is all about.

What

Deseret Book placed eight books online for free download. All of these were “backlist” titles. This study tracked what happened as a result of those books being available.

When

The books were placed online September 9, 2009. This study compares sales of these books the ten weeks before they were available for free with the ten weeks after.

Results

During the ten weeks of the study the books were downloaded 102,556 times. Collectively, the books sold 68 more copies in the ten weeks they were online for free versus the ten previous weeks. This was an increase in sales of 26%. Over the same period of time in 2008, sales of these same books decreased by 38%. Furthermore, a study of comparison titles that were not put online for free found that sales of comparison books decreased both in 2008 and 2009, as illustrated below.

Thus the increase in sales of the eight featured books in 2009 seems attributable to their being available for free.

Other interesting findings include the following: Visits to the online product pages of the free books increased 1,085% during the study. Some weeks, hits to http://deseretbook.com/free represented almost 3% of total traffic to http://deseretbook.com. (note: the books are still available, but now require registration. They did not during the experimental period of the dissertation). During the ten weeks of the study more people entered http://deseretbook.com through http://deseretbook.com/free than any other page (except the home page). All this happened with very little advertising.  Though the impact of this additional web traffic was not quantified, it seems that the value of increasing awareness of http://deseretbook.com could be significant.

There was a moderately strong correlation (r=.65) between downloads and Internet print sales (the more books that were downloaded, the more books were purchased online).  Thus if more books had been available and downloaded the number of additional books sold would likely have increased.

Another interesting point is that the authors of the books made available seemed very pleased with the additional exposure their books received. One of the eight books studied was out of print. This book was downloaded 14,914 times and its product page received 834 hits. This may indicate a lingering interest in out-of-print books, and may validate a “long tail” approach to book sales.

Limitations

One limitation of the present study is the relatively small number of books studied, and that the sales of these books were relatively small. The study could also have been strengthened if it were of a longer duration.

One area that remains to be researched is the perspective of the authors whose books were downloaded. In informal conversations with the authors whose books were used in this study, they expressed positive feelings about their work being disseminated more widely. It may be that authors, particularly those with books that are not currently selling well, would desire the increased exposure to the work that free digital downloads might bring.

Although this study provides some interesting results, there are many other questions to be considered. One question that might arise is, “What would have happened if the e-books had been for sale for 99 cents each?” If 10% of the people who downloaded the books for free would have paid 99 cents for the e-books, that would have provided a nice profit for Deseret Book. While it is possible that some people would have paid 99 cents for the e-books, it seems likely that people would have been less inclined to e-mail friends and blog about a “99-cent” offer than a “free” offer.” Future studies are needed to determine how many downloads would occur if they were very inexpensive instead of free.

Another aspect that should be considered is how much the popularity of electronic book devices (such as the Kindle or iPad) will change people’s proclivities to read digital books. Perhaps most important, if publishers made all or most of their books available for free digital consumption, would that have an overall negative effect on sales? In other words, in the present study the seven books saw increased sales, likely due to the special attention they received from being downloaded 102,556 times. If all books were available for free online would they see this same sales benefit? Obviously not.

So, much more to think about and explore! Hopefully this dissertation will be a part of an ongoing conversation. They said nobody ever reads dissertations…prove them wrong…go read it!

For a long time I’ve been hopeful that people would read some of the academic research I’ve been working on. Although I’m new to academia, I’ve heard that one of the dangers of academic publishing is that it’s very possible that nobody will read what you write. Then again, if people will read what you write, chances are they will try to poke holes in it. And that’s not bad — feedback often helps us to refine our thinking–such has recently been the case for me.

“The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales”, which was recently published by The Journal of Electronic Publishing, has received a lot of coverage. Simon Owens wrote a story about it, Boing Boing mentioned it, and Wired featured it as well. Those reports were mostly positive, although some people in the comments brought up important issues about the methodology of the study. This post, coming from Kent Anderson at the Scholarly Kitchen was pretty negative. An author whose book sales were part of the study gave his thoughts as well. I wanted to take a moment to respond to some of the feedback that’s been given on the article, all with gratitude for those who took the time to read and think about the article.

Many people gave encouraging words, saying something to the effect of, “It’s nice to see a study that actually attempts to measure a broad swath of books as opposed to just one author sharing his or her experiences.” Thank you!

Here are some of the objections that have been raised, along with my responses.

Objection: Outside events (e.g. additional marketing, book sales, etc.) were not controlled for. This is true. Given that this study featured the work of multiple authors and publishers it was not feasible to try to account for all the variables that could have existed. Our hope was that studying multiple books would mitigate this weakness. Future studies could be strengthened by working more closely with a publisher who could inform us of abnormal events surrounding the book.

Objection: The study only accounted for 70% of book sales. Although this statement is true, I don’t think there is anything that can be done about it. This study used the best tracking system for book sales that is in existence – sadly, no system is in place that tracks 100% of book sales.

Objection: Correlation was claimed but none was present. We should have explicitly stated that we did not find a statistically significant correlation between free e-books and print sales of those books. When we referred to a correlation in the article we were referring to the fact that when the Tor books were excluded, 13 of the 17 books saw increased sales. As a side note, one commentator on the article pointed out that this lack of correlation could be viewed as a finding. The fact that there was no negative correlation may indicate that under current conditions book sales will not collapse if e-versions are made available for free.

Objection: A few of the weeks studied were around the Christmas holidays when sales are normally higher. This could have skewed the results. This is true; however only a few books were affected by this. Excluding those books (which were part of the Tor series) would also have been problematic. But we should have at least mentioned this weakness in the article.

Objection: There was no data on how many times the book was downloaded, and there was no historical data. True. These weaknesses will be remedied in a study to be released shortly. Once again, particularly when it comes to have data on downloads, the participation of publishers is vital.

Objection: There were no comparison books. This objection also highlights the need for publishers to participate in this kind of research. Because we were not intimately acquainted with each of the free books we studied, nor the markets to which they are a part of, we were not in a good position to judge what good “comparison” books will be. The study I’m about to release includes comparison books, but it was difficult to find good comparison books even in a genre with which I am very familiar. Ideally publishers would be partnering on this kind of study so that they (with strong knowledge of the genre) could help select comparison titles.

Objection: If Tor was trying to get emails it was an expensive way to go about it. Not necessarily. In total Tor sales decreased by 5,268 copies. We did not look at dollar figures, but even if one states that Tor lost $2.00 in revenue per book, we are talking about $10,500. If 100,000 books were downloaded (a figure that seems reasonable based on other studies I’ve done) we would be talking about ten cents per contact collected. That seems like pretty cheap marketing to me.

Objection: If everyone made e-books available for free any effect would be greatly diminished. Agreed. As we stated in the article, “As books increasingly become available in digital formats, the effects of free distribution may rapidly change. The explosive growth of Kindle and other e-book formats could dramatically impact how free distribution affects for-profit sales and even alter the relative importance of print sales. As the electronic publishing industry matures it will be increasingly important to research the effects of free distribution of electronic books.”

Objection: This study is interesting, but I’d like to see more studies like it that have a longer duration. Amen!

Once again, I would like to thank those who have shared their insights about this article. My thought processes have been refined, and I’ve made some new friends along the way. I agree that there is much research to be done in this area and hope that this study can be a helpful part of the conversation. Although it had its weaknesses, it is to my knowledge the first of its kind. I hope that future studies will build and improve on it. In fact, if there is one thing that I hope happens as a result of this study, it is that it encourages more people to research and publish about the effects of making free e-books available. One area I think will be particularly interesting to study is this: Outside of the financial implications, what are the educational implications (if any) of making e-books freely available. Onward!

It’s here.

The article I’ve been so excited to see published. David Wiley and I wrote this article and  I am grateful to The Journal of Electronic Publishing for publishing it. Although there is much to be done in the area of how giving away digital copies influence print sales I think this article makes a contribution to the discussion. Special thanks to JEP for making this article available in advance of the full issue coming out.

The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales is available here.

I welcome comments, questions and suggestions. The basic idea of the article is as follows:

A vital question for those with a commercial stake in selling books is, “What happens to book sales if digital versions are given away?” We tracked 41 books for which we could identify the date when the free digital versions of the books were made available to determine whether the free version affected print sales. We analyzed book sales for the eight weeks before and after the free versions were available.  Books were placed into four categories; three of the four categories of books had increased sales after the free books were distributed.

I mentioned previously that David Wiley and I had an article published last month. A version of this article is now available through BYU’s Repository.

It’s available here.

Citation for article:

Hilton, J. Wiley, D. (2010). “The creation and use of Open Educational Resources in Christian higher education.” Christian Higher Education, Volume 9: No. 1: pp. 49-59. The official published version is available here.

Abstract:

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources (OER). By “open” it is generally meant that the resources are freely available to others to reuse in different contexts. These resources could include books, lesson plans, syllabi, slide shows, etc. There are several examples of individuals and institutions providing open educational resources; this openness is also specifically manifest in the field of Christian higher education. Different levels are discussed in which OER can be “open” and the implications of these levels when creating OER. Common motivations and obstacles to creating OER are also discussed. A particularly significant issue regarding openness concerns copyright issues. Finally, discussed are copyright implications both in terms of reusing resources others have made (resources that may or may not be copyrighted), and using Creative Commons licenses to license OER so as to give the desired level of copyright protection. Although OER are not appropriate in all situations, they can be an important part of improving pedagogy and increasing access to education.

I’m happy to report that two articles I have helped write were published this past month. The articles were:

• Hilton, J. Wiley, D. (2010). “The creation and use of Open Educational Resources in Christian higher education.” Christian Higher Education, Volume 9: No. 1: pp. 49-59.

and

• Hilton, J. Wiley, D. Stein, J., Johnson, A. (2010). “The four R’s of openness and ALMS Analysis: Frameworks for Open Educational Resources.” Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, Volume 25: No. 1: pp. 37-44.

Unfortunately (and ironically), neither of these articles are open access (though we did try using the SPARC addendum). Our contract does allow us to post versions in BYU’s institutional repository, which we are in the process of doing. More on that when it happens.

If by chance you already have access to articles via Informa World you can find the articles here and here.

Special thanks to my coauthors in these articles who have added so much to my thinking.