Whodunit: What the heck were we thinking?
Marcos Benevides [Guest post by Marcos Benevides]
Since we announced the launch of the CC edition of Whodunit just over a week ago, we’ve received many questions and comments from teachers, authors, and publishers from around the world. We’re really excited by the wide interest this project is generating, because beyond simply publishing another ELT textbook, we had also hoped to push the boundaries of what is possible for educational publishing in the digital age.
So, here are a few of the questions we’ve been asked so far. Please feel free to add yours to the comments section below.
Q: Wait, you’re giving away your book FOR FREE?! What kind of a crazy business model is THAT?!
A: Relax... there is some method to our madness ;-)
First of all, we aren’t giving away the book for free. Not exactly. Yes, you can download the complete PDF version without paying anything. And no, there are no strings attached. We will never chase you down to ask you to pay, and we will never look at you funny if you slink past our booth at a teaching conference without saying “Hi”. Well, we might look at you funny for slinking, but not because you didn’t pay. We promise.
Nevertheless, we think that people will choose to pay a price that they think is fair. Or, that they will order a set of the printed books to use with their students. Or, at the very least, that they will recommend Whodunit to a few of their colleagues, who might in turn order a few copies or recommend it to their colleagues, and so on.
Q: But why would they pay for something that they can get for free?
A: To be honest, we aren’t completely sure that everyone will. We are trying something new. But here are a few good reasons why we think that this will work:
- Because it’s a really good book. We worked very hard on it for a long time and we think it shows. We’re confident that we’ve made a quality product, one that works very well in the classroom, and one that you will agree is worth something.
- Because we trust you. We believe that most people are reasonable and good, that they want to do the right thing, and that they, like us, resent the insinuation that everyone is a potential copyright pirate who must be herded through restrictive and often incomprehensible terms-of-use agreements.
- Because it’s a book aimed at teachers, and teachers love giving lessons that are greater than their classroom. What could be more timely than teaching one’s students, though direct personal example, about how to be a responsible and sustainable consumer in the digital age?
- And because, frankly, it’s a bit of a pain to photocopy a 200-page book for dozens of students every semester. You can do that if you like, OR you can simply order the convenient print edition, which is available internationally through Abax (and which is in colour and includes a couple of nice extras to boot).
But yeah, the bottom line is that we don’t really know how this will turn out. It’s an experiment. It’s entirely possible that we may lose all the time and money we’ve invested. You’ll know if that has happened if the second book in the Fiction in Action series is NOT offered as a PDF download. You’ll really know we’ve failed if no other publisher follows Abax’s lead over the coming months.
But you know what? We’re optimistic. Heck, what have we got to lose? Any book launch is a risk anyway. At the very least, we’ll get everyone talking about us. Hopefully some of those people will think that we’re pretty decent guys to try something like this, and that Abax is a pretty cool publisher to let us do it.
If all else fails, we can certainly settle for that.
Q: Okay, so maybe you’re not completely crazy. What’s a Creative Commons license, anyway?
A: The traditional form of copyright we’re all familiar with is what’s known as “All Rights Reserved”, which is a restrictive, all-or-nothing model. Under this model, either a work is under copyright, which means that the copyright holder maintains all rights to reproduce it or alter it; or it is in the public domain, where no rights apply whatsoever. (Yes, there are so-called ‘fair use’ exemptions, but they are often neither very fair nor useful.)
So basically, if something is under copyright—and every creative work automatically is by default—then the customer is highly restricted in what they can do with ‘their’ copy. They do not have the right to legally reproduce it to share with friends, to use it in the classroom (oh, you think there’s an ‘educational exemption’, eh? Try copying Harry Potter for your students to read, and let us know how that goes). It is also prohibited to remix, alter or adapt copyrighted works without the explicit permission of the copyright holders, who in most cases will not give it.
Creative Commons licenses, on the other hand—and there are several varieties—ensure that artists and producers have some rights while choosing to waive some others. For instance, they might reserve the right to be credited for their work or to profit from it, while allowing users the right to make copies or adapt the work if they want to.
Under our CC license, for example, you may make as many copies of Whodunit as you want and do whatever you like with them—except take our names off the cover or sell them for a profit. Which we hope you’ll agree is pretty reasonable.
Q: Interesting. So, how did you get the idea to do this?
A: I have long been a fan of Cory Doctorow, the bestselling SF author and CC champion. Doctorow publishes all of his novels both as free PDFs and as regular printed books. He has written extensively about his experiences here and here.
In short, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I had already approached my other publisher, Pearson, about offering a full PDF download of Widgets. Perhaps not surprisingly for a major corporation, they were hesitant, and the idea went nowhere. Finally, when we were about halfway through editing Whodunit, I pitched the idea to my co-author, Adam, and to our publisher, Hugh. They went off and thought about it for a day or two and then said, “Sure, why not? Let’s give it a shot.”
And that—win or lose—is certainly a refreshing approach to this business!
[Guest post by Marcos Benevides]
Reader Comments (7)
Thanks both you guys for prompting (and letting) a company experiment this way. It makes business more interesting, trying out new ideas. Here's to an interesting experiment, whatever the outcome.
Well said, Marcos. For me, personally, it boiled down to deciding what my motivation was in writing the book. The materials were developed not because of some book deal that I had in place but because I personally wanted a textbook like this for my English I and Reading & Writing courses. I had used graded readers and other traditional reading textbooks, but what I really wanted - a hybrid of the two - I had never been able to find. So, I wrote the first story and used it in my own classes. I never planned on retiring off of my textbook money. Heck, I never even figured a publisher would pick it up. I just really believe in the book, the philosophy behind the book, and the work that Marcos and ABAX have done.
That said, I would LOVE to retire off of my textbook money. So please, feel free to buy, and feel even more free to share with others. I would love to write more books for this series (especially a lower level book, perhaps in a different genre) and would love to be able to continue to release them as PDFs under a Creative Commons license.
Congrats on this exciting new venture! I'm sure all involved will learn a lot from the experiment. I wish you all great success. I'm comforted in the fact that you've all given this a lot of thought and have put so much effort and care into producing and distributing a great product. When your heart and soul is behind an effort, and you're willing and open to accept whatever results, then you're in a very strong and powerful position. From my own experiences of being in a similar place I've found that what ends up happening is much greater than I every could have dreamed. There's no guarantees in life, but when you're in that "I'll win no matter what" state, you're bound to find true success.
Now on to a more practical question: How is distributing the book for free any different that giving out free inspection copies? Of course you don't have to pay for postage and stuff, but if I were to use this book with a class, I would place an order through my school and then the students would end up paying for it the regular way...
Hi Jerry,
Thank you for the good wishes! As for your question, yes, the free inspection copy aspect is one of the advantages of this model. Abax doesn't have to budget for a certain number of books to give away to teachers, nor does it need to pay to send them by post. Anyone can simply download the book and decide if they like it or not. We hope this will mean that our target market of paying users will be significantly larger than it could be otherwise.
But let me be clear: The book isn't free. It's free-to-share. Free in the sense you can try it out, and that it doesn't have any DRM. It doesn't expire after 6 months, and you can copy it to any format you like, or send a digital copy to your friends. But the PDF version *is* for sale, albeit on an honour system.
Some teachers may prefer to have their students download the PDF to read on a device; others may find it more convenient to print out photocopies; yet others may want to only use half the book, or skip some of the activities. The pay-what-you-want mechanism works for these teachers.
But yes, in the end we are betting that *enough* teachers will like the book enough that they will prefer to order the printed version. What we're selling isn't so much the content, but the convenience of the format (plus a few extras like an audio CD and a student workbook insert).
I had a quick read through of Whodunit and I'm very impressed. Unfortunately it's a bit above my students' level but I'm very interested in when your print copy gets released, and if your ideas about a future lower-level book come to fruition.
The thing is, I probably never would have discovered this book if it weren't for your Creative Commons license. I rarely get the opportunity to examine materials that aren't in use at my school and I don't have the budget to buy something sight-unseen. Thank you for trying this experiement out. I hope it's a complete success.
I was just about to offer to have it reviewed on TEFL.net when I realised that there is little point when people can get a copy for free and see what they think of it. Or is there? I suppose people still could have problems making their mind up about something?? But then we'd need to review every free website along with the paid content ones we already review... It's a confusing and exciting world we're living in!
Thanks for putting me on your blogroll, will give you a mention when I do my "Should TEFL reviews be changing?" post soon(ish, I hope)
Hi Alex, an interesting point. OTOH, people can use reviews to decide whether it's worth their time to have a look and download. IOW, we'd love to have you do a review!
As for the blogroll, are you kidding? Yours was the very first blog that came to mind!