Publishing scholarly e-books, lessons from OECD's experience in making the transition from print.

What is it about?

OECD Publishing was one of the first scholarly publishers to make the transition to e-publishing from print. In 1998 OECD started releasing e-books via its online bookstore. By the end of 2000, OECD had succeeded in publishing its entire frontlist as e-books and launched a digital platform offering collections on subscription - the first publisher to do so. This paper tells the story of how OECD Publishing made this transition.

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Why is it important?

At a time when many scholarly publishers were struggling to find a sustainable business model for e-books, OECD's bold move to offer collections of e-books on an all-you-can-eat subscription model (like journals) was not only revolutionary, it became the norm in the industry.