In a digital marketplace, the cost of manufacturing is zero. Once you have created your “prototype,” you also have your product. A movie studio doesn’t need to manufacture DVDs, because the original digital file can be used directly.

There is a very low cost of distribution, which amounts $0.43 USD/person if you decide to use Amazon S3 (cloud computing). And this amount includes storage costs as well. But that costs would still be $0.43 if the TV and movie studios where to sell a movie instead of renting it.

However, the technical requirements for renting content are enormous. You have to add some kind of DRM to prevent content to be played 48 hours later. It has to work even when you are not connected. You have to create databases that tracks each transaction etc. All which costs money to make?

So what exactly is the renting business model solving?

» via Baekdal.com

Rice University will close its press in September, the university confirmed today. The move ends a high-profile experiment in digital university-press publishing. Closed once before, in 1996, the press was reborn in 2006 as an all-digital operation. But it had proven too expensive to sustain even in its new form, according to a statement by Eugene Levy, a Rice professor of astrophysics who stepped down as the university’s provost in June. As provost, Levy authorized the money for the press’s rebirth four years ago.

“The hope was that, without the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand book sales,” Levy’s statement said. “Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow, and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that could materially cover even minimal costs of operations. Combined with pressures on the university budget from the broad fiscal crisis of recent years, the university concluded that it could not continue indefinite subsidy of the RUP experiment, as painful budget reductions were being absorbed across the entire university, including in the core of Rice’s educational and research mission.”

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

“The times are changing,” said President Dan Kinney. “Colleges must adapt.”

With the fall semester ready to start, Iowa Western students will use the resources found in the cyberlibrary in the new student center.

“There are no books,” Kinney said. “Everything will be on databases online. We are not going to buy any more books.”

The existing books are being distributed to their respective academic departments.

» via Omaha.com » via TeleRead

Two hours into another day of his family’s beach vacation, Brandon Hubacher had sent 50 text messages to his friends in Fairfax County.

“Chillen on the beach,” the 16-year-old messaged a buddy at 12:04 p.m., the ocean surf beckoning mere yards away.

“Luckyy” the friend zipped back.

Unplugging could not have been further from the teenager’s mind. “I wouldn’t think about it,” he said as he eyed the ocean, a Redskins cap turned backward on his head. Only for a swim would he and his cellphone part ways, he said.

Thus is digital technology making an indelible mark on the long tradition of the American family vacation.

» via The Washington Post

At the age of 92, Robert Katz is enjoying an unexpected scholarly renaissance. The emeritus professor of physics retired from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln 22 years ago. Lately, thanks to the university’s institutional repository, called the UNL Digital Commons after the software that runs it, people all over the world have been finding and downloading papers Mr. Katz wrote years or decades ago. His work on the biological effects of radiation has found a new and far-flung audience, making him the most-downloaded Nebraska at Lincoln faculty author represented in Digital Commons.

There’s been a lot of hoopla about institutional repositories in the last few years, as Harvard and other universities have adopted open-access policies and set up IR’s into which faculty members could deposit their work. That includes not just journal articles but so-called gray literature: working papers, data sets, lectures, and other material that publishers usually don’t touch.

The heady rhetoric of the early days—that the repository model would help spread the gospel of open access and end publishers’ stranglehold on scholarly output—has not quite panned out. After a period of uncertainty and angst, repository managers have been turning to a quieter, more practical emphasis on serving scholars, making their work accessible, and preserving it for the long term.

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

But the digital revolution sweeping the media world is rewriting the rules of the book industry, upending the established players which have dominated for decades. Electronic books are still in their infancy, comprising an estimated 3% to 5% of the market today. But they are fast accelerating the decline of physical books, forcing retailers, publishers, authors and agents to reinvent their business models or be painfully crippled.

“By the end of 2012, digital books will be 20% to 25% of unit sales, and that’s on the conservative side,” predicts Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Co., publishing consultants. “Add in another 25% of units sold online, and roughly half of all unit sales will be on the Internet.”

» via The Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required)