What’s in a name?
Two interesting stories have made me think recently about the value of names in the modern publishing world.
One is the blog post by Heather Morrison:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/01/plos-one-now-worlds-largest-journal.html
discussing the likelihood that PLoS One:
the world’s largest open-access journal, is actually the world’s largest journal, period, as measured by number of papers published per year.
The other was my experience buying a long-out-of-print children’s fairy tale last Christmas. Fifteen years ago, I would have had very little chance of finding this book anywhere, except by chance from a used dealer. Ten years ago, I could have read the full text of the book via Project Gutenberg, but still not have easily obtained a printed copy. Five years ago, I might have found a used print copy on Alibris or ABEBooks.
Today, though, searching the book on Amazon brings up literally dozens of imprints, both print and electronic. It appears someone has digitized the book, and many publishers are reselling the scanned version, either as an e-book or via print-on-demand. Some of the publishers have standard publisher-type names, but others reveal their digital roots with names like lulu.com or CreateSpace.
What these two have in common is the changing significance of names. What does it mean to call PLoS One a “journal”? It publishes as many articles per year as a dozen other journals, and on a wide variety of subjects. Journals traditionally have a particular subject as their focus, and a specific editorial policy. PLoS One has no subject – it says it publishes “primary research from any scientific discipline” – and less editorial control than traditional journals, since it publishes any article “judged to be technically sound”. In that sense, it’s somewhere between a traditional journal and a repository.
Likewise, does a “publisher” name mean less nowadays, if many publishers are printing the same scan of a book, just with different covers attached? Will these publishers develop any sense of “brand” through design elements, or will they all be basically homogenous on the inside?
One of the publishers in this case is advertising its e-books with the distinctive orange-and-white stripe design of old Penguin paperback covers:
It’s apparently aware of the utility of distinguishing its brand through design elements – even another company’s design.
