PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Digitizing books can spur demand for physical copies

2023-10-31
(Press-News.org) ITHACA, N.Y. – Book publishers cried foul – in the form of numerous legal challenges – nearly two decades ago when the Google Books project digitized and freely distributed more than 25 million works.

The publishers argued that free digital distribution undermines the market for physical books, but new research from Cornell University’s Imke Reimers and a collaborator reveals that the opposite – increased demand for physical books, through online discovery – could be true.

Reimers, an associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and Abhishek Nagaraj, assistant professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, exploited a natural experiment condition to examine the impact of Google’s massive book-digitization project on physical sales.

Their paper, “Digitization and the Market for Physical Works: Evidence from the Google Books Project,” published Oct. 31 in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Their main findings: Digitization can boost sales of physical books by up to 8% by stimulating demand through online discovery. The increase in sales was found to be stronger for less popular books and even spilled over to a digitized author’s nondigitized works.

“It’s always this question of the publishers, of course, being unhappy with people just making their copyrighted products available for free,” said Reimers, who arrived at Cornell this summer after nine years at Northeastern University, in the Department of Economics.

“For us, it’s not obvious that digitization should hurt sales,” she said, “because it can lead to more awareness of certain nondigitized products.”

The Google Books project, launched in 2005, digitized millions of works, and made the text searchable via optical character recognition technology. This allowed users to search through the voluminous set of printed works and find those related to a specific topic or theme.

“Say you search the term ‘photosynthesis’ on Google,” Reimers said. “You might find an excerpt from a particular book, and then you might want to buy it, because you see it on the page and decide that it’s a useful book.”

Reimers and Nagaraj focused on a particular subset of Google Books’ digitized works: those from Harvard University’s Widener Library, which helped seed the project in its early days. The condition that enabled their experiment: Harvard’s digitization effort only included out-of-copyright works, published before 1923, which were made available to consumers in their entirety.

Since the order in which books from the Widener Library were digitized was basically random (by stack location, not by subject), and since popularity of 100-year-old books wasn’t likely to change during the project, “that allowed us to essentially just compare these two worlds – sales before and after digitization, relative to changes in sales for books whose digitization status didn't change,” Reimers said.

The researchers analyzed a total of 37,743 books scanned between 2005 and 2009. They looked at sales for the two years before this digitization period compared to the two years after, and found stark differences in the likelihood of increased sales between digitized and nondigitized cohorts. Approximately 40% of digitized titles saw a sales increase from 2003-04 to 2010-11, compared to less than 20% of titles that were not digitized.

Reimers admitted the findings were a bit surprising.

“We didn’t necessarily expect the positive effect on sales,” she said. “We expected a positive effect on use, because if a book is readily available online, people can find it more easily and naturally they’re going to use it more. But the positive effect on sales was something we didn’t anticipate.”

Reimers said the “discovery effect” – which even spills over to nondigitized books by an author whose digitized works a user is seeking – is a strong driver of increased sales. “It’s not a huge jump in sales,” she said, “but it’s still good news for publishers.”

And book lovers, Reimers said, are known for their affinity for physical books, as opposed to digital versions, which could also play a role. “Whenever I talk to people about my research on books,” she said, “at some point they all say, ‘I just love the feel of a book in my hand.’”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

-30-

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New database shines spotlight on decades of solar mirror research

2023-10-31
The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is preparing to unveil a database containing the results of exposure experiments on solar reflectors conducted over more than four decades. The publicly available Solar Mirror Materials Database (SMMD) will contain information from thousands of solar mirror samples from more than a hundred suppliers that have been subjected to outdoor tests and laboratory environments. Typically used for concentrating solar-thermal power, these mirrors were installed and tested in Phoenix, ...

Human input boosts citizens’ acceptance of AI and perceptions of fairness, study shows

2023-10-31
Increasing human input when AI is used for public services boosts acceptance of the technology, a new study shows. The research shows citizens are not only concerned about AI fairness but also about potential human biases. They are in favour of AI being used in cases when administrative discretion is perceived as too large. Researchers found citizens' knowledge about AI does not alter their acceptance of the technology. More accurate systems and lower cost systems also increased their acceptance. Cost and accuracy of technology ...

Sharper images: A breakthrough in microscopy resolution

Sharper images: A breakthrough in microscopy resolution
2023-10-31
Obtaining high-resolution images in the world of microscopy has long been a challenge. Deconvolution, a method to enhance image clarity, often amplifies noise between the sample and the image. Researchers at Boston University recently developed a novel deblurring algorithm that avoids these issues, improving the resolution of images with photon intensity conservation and local linearity. As reported in the Gold Open Access journal Advanced Photonics, the innovative deblurring algorithm is adaptable to various fluorescence microscopes, requiring minimal assumptions about the emission point spread function (PSF). It works on both a sequence of raw images and even a single image, enabling ...

FSU-led research shows shifting nesting timing not enough to prevent fewer sea turtle hatchlings

FSU-led research shows shifting nesting timing not enough to prevent fewer sea turtle hatchlings
2023-10-31
New research led by a Florida State University professor shows that potential adaptive responses by sea turtles, such as shifting the timing of when they nest, may not be enough to counteract the projected impacts from climate change on hatchling production. Warmer temperatures cause lower hatchling success and a greater percentage of female turtles, both of which can disrupt the viability of a species. Sand temperatures at sea turtle nesting sites globally are projected to increase by about 0.6 degrees Celsius to ...

Study aims to remove barriers to veterans seeking mental health services

Study aims to remove barriers to veterans seeking mental health services
2023-10-31
Suicide and mental health distress disproportionately affect veterans in the United States. According to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 5 million veterans suffered from these adverse behavioral health issues in 2020. That same year, after adjusting for age and sex differences in the population, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimated that veterans were 57.3 percent more likely to commit suicide than non-veterans. While the Veterans ...

The first ‘birder’s guide’ to meteor showers

The first ‘birder’s guide’ to meteor showers
2023-10-31
The First ‘Birder’s Guide’ to Meteor Showers Peter Jenniskens new comprehensive guide describes over 500 meteor showers that appear in our night skies. October 31, 2023, Mountain View, CA -- The SETI Institute is proud to announce a new book by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens. Called “Atlas of Earth’s Meteor Showers,” this comprehensive guide describes over 500 meteor showers that appear in our night skies and adds a wealth of detail to the tapestry of our solar system. “Just as in a birder’s guide, the book describes the outward appearance, ...

Better access to diagnostic tests raises incidence of thyroid cancer in more affluent areas

2023-10-31
The incidence of thyroid cancer in São Paulo State, part of Brazil’s relatively developed Southeast region, varies considerably according to socioeconomic status (education, poverty, wealth, income, segregation, mobility, and access to resources and services) and access to screening, but is highest in higher-income areas and the state capital. Mortality rates are similar across regions and income groups, however. These are the main findings of a study reported in the journal Endocrine Practice by researchers ...

Combining cell types may lead to improved cardiac cell therapy following heart attack

Combining cell types may lead to improved cardiac cell therapy following heart attack
2023-10-31
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Academia Sinica of Taiwan have harnessed a combination of lab-grown cells to regenerate damaged heart muscle. The study, published in Circulation — which addresses major challenges of using heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, grown from stem cells — takes a crucial step toward future clinical applications. Previous research has shown that transplanting cardiomyocytes made from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) can replace muscle in the hearts of mammals. Researchers have struggled to bring the treatment to the clinic, in part because the implanted cells haven’t developed enough ...

Cary Institute to co-lead $4.8 million study on how environmental conditions shape viral outbreaks in wild rodents

Cary Institute to co-lead $4.8 million study on how environmental conditions shape viral outbreaks in wild rodents
2023-10-31
When, where, and why do diseases jump from animals to people? A new project will monitor how changing seasons, land use, and human behavior influence viral outbreaks in wild rodent populations, to identify hotspots with high potential for spillover into people. The project is co-led by Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in an international team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, Royal Veterinary College, Oxford University, and the University of ...

Wiley announces the release of KnowItAll 2024 with new multi-technique quantitation tool and additional advances for spectral analysis workflows

Wiley announces the release of KnowItAll 2024 with new multi-technique quantitation tool and additional advances for spectral analysis workflows
2023-10-31
Hoboken, NJ — October 31, 2023 — Wiley, a knowledge company and global leader in research, publishing and knowledge solutions, today announced the release of the KnowItAll 2024 Analytical Edition, the latest version of its spectral software that offers solutions to analyze, identify, quantify, and manage analytical and chemical data. When it comes to chemical quantitative analysis, researchers often find themselves navigating multiple software packages. Mastering multiple software packages to achieve the same level of expertise, reproducibility, and ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Innovative liquid biopsy test uses RNA to detect early-stage cancer

New quantum record: Transmon qubit coherence reaches millisecond threshold

How Germany’s 2021 floods could have been even worse

Study traces evolutionary origins of important enzyme complex

Tiny antibody has big impact on deadly viruses

Scientists find new way to control electricity at tiniest scale

Heat and heavy metals are changing the way that bees buzz

What’s behind the enormous increase in early-onset gastrointestinal cancers?

Pharmacogenomics expert advances precision medicine for bipolar disorder

Brazilian researcher explores centenarian stem cells for aging insights

Dr. Xuyu Qian's breakthrough analysis of 18 million brain cells advances understanding of human brain development

Gene networks decode human brain architecture from health to glioma

How artificial light at night damages brain health and metabolism

For ultrasound, ultra-strength not always a good thing

Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercising more enjoyable and give you better results

Study shows people perceive biodiversity

Personality type can predict which forms of exercise people enjoy

People can accurately judge biodiversity through sight and sound

People diagnosed with dementia are living longer, global study shows

When domesticated rabbits go feral, new morphologies emerge

Rain events could cause major failure of Waikīkī storm drainage by 2050

Breakthrough in upconversion luminescence research: Uncovering the energy back transfer mechanism

Hidden role of 'cell protector' opens cancer treatment possibilities

How plants build the microbiome they need to survive in a tough environment

Depression due to politics and its quiet danger to democracy addressed in new book 'The Sad Citizen'

International experts and patients unite to help ensure all patients are fully informed before consenting to new surgical procedures

Melting glaciers could trigger more explosive eruptions globally, finds research

Nearly half of U.S. grandchildren live within 10 miles of a grandparent

Study demonstrates low-cost method to remove CO₂ from air using cold temperatures, common materials

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

[Press-News.org] Digitizing books can spur demand for physical copies