A Model of E-Publishing in the Public Interest and Comparison With Some

In the field of e – publishing, Slovenia lags behind more developed European countries and even many Balkan and Latin American countries. It is so despite the fact that Slovenian Book Agency financially supports 544 books and 100 periodicals (figures for 2010). The task of the project was to propose a model of e – publishing for publicly – funded books. The requirement for open public Access on the Internet is not necessarily in conflict with the business practices of publishers, if one takes into account a certain time lag. Commercial interests in publicly – funded books are exhausted for some years after their first appearance, and only a few books have a “long tail” that is to be sold over time, but even in this case only small number of copies.

The project (May – October 2013) prepared a comprehensive analysis of the publishing system, the terms of creating new works and a system for maintaining these works in public collections. A model took into consideration all specificities of the local publishing system in order to be successfully implemented.

Project leader: Maja Breznik
Project coworkers: Aldo Milohnić and Tomaž Trplan



Project execution

The project team conducted semi-structured interviews with (1) publishers , (2) public libraries, and (3) some early –
birds in e – publishing that are already selling e – books on the Internet or made them available free of charge. The team also carried out a survey among publishers. The project activities have concluded and the final project report was submitted.

Results

  • Maja Breznik, Tomaž Trplan, Aldo Milohnić, Model razvoja e – založništva v javnem interesu v Sloveniji ter primerjava s stanjem in podatki iz primerljivih evropskih držav [The model of e – publishing in the public interest , Mirovni inštitut, Ljubljana, 123 p.
  • Maja Breznik, Kaj je kultura? [What is Culture?], Ars & humanitas, No. 1, 2013.
  • Maja Breznik, Umetnost v kapitalizmu [The Arts in Capitalism], Mediantrop, No. 3,2013, Beograd.
  • Maja Breznik et al., Splošni skepticizem v umetnosti [General Scepticism in the Arts],Ljubljana, Založba Sophia, 2014 (e – book).

Partners:

Slovenian Book Agency

Funders:

Ministry of Culture RS