I'm in discussions with a press about a second edition of a 100k word edition of an Old English poem. I'm pushing for an open, on-line release of the text with Print-on-Demand and ePub sales from the site. Since the introduction is frequently cited, and is available in part on Google Books already (ironically for a print-and-CD-ROM digital edition, Google just scanned the print copy), my argument is the following:
1) People who are really in the market for a 100k word book on a 9-line poem are going to want to buy a copy in a format they can annotate, read off line, and that is generally more pleasing on the eye than a standard web-page (you'd be surprised how many people have wanted a copy in the last 8 years!)
2) People who are prepared to put up with poorer-quality, long-form presentation because they can get it for free on-line are basically already being lost to the Google Books site
3) Putting the whole argument and text out on the web will help keep the book central to debates in the field, presumably increasing the number of people buying copies under argument 1 above.
4) Reprinting a book+CD-ROM digital text today captures the worst of all worlds: we miss the exposure on-line publication provides via search engines and we lock the most flexible format (the digital) in a medium that is increasingly difficult to use and is certainly not multi-platform.
I can think of one somewhat parallel case that seems to show these arguments: Peter Baker's Introduction to Old English which, I am told, has sold very well through the years even though it has always been freely available on-line in a version that, if anything, is actually more feature-rich than the print copy. Does anybody know of any other examples?
Some background: the edition was published in 2005 in a Print-and-CD-ROM, where the CD-ROM contained the full text of the print book and additional views, tools, and features. The edition itself has done better than you might think for a pretty long edition of a 9-line poem (I believe it sold through 3+ print runs) and it was runner up for MLA's best edition in 2007 (first medieval edition and I believe first digital to be so recognised). What I want to do now is publish a revised version of the contents of the CD-ROM to the web and offer POD copies and ePubs of the book content for sale from the site. My theory is that they are likely to sell for much the same reason the book sold in the first place: people use digital texts but given the choice they are still happy doing long-form reading in a format that is better suited to it that the browser.
Any advice? Parallel examples? Other ideas?
