4
Inevitably, with big changes come big questions. If the Rebus model is successful, the publishing industry, for textbooks, other academic content and ultimately all kinds of books, will find itself in uncharted territory. Acknowledging that any grand proclamations can only be considered speculation, there are still some lines of reasoning that indicate what the future, or at least a future could look like.
4.1 What is the business model moving forward?
The Foundation is a non-profit organisation and has been able to launch the projects discussed in this report thanks to a US$500,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Other grants are being pursued in relation to other projects, including the Shuttleworth Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation for the webbook format, reader and library. Long term, once the tools and services have been developed, the creation and distribution of Open content will need to be supported by reliable sources of revenue in order to be sustainable but, at this stage, the exact business model remains uncertain. It must be acknowledged that this is the biggest challenge facing the Foundation’s proposed publishing model. The Foundation’s ethos begins with the premise that educational content has value as a public good independent of its value as a commercial product, which conflicts with the current dominant paradigm. However, the Foundation’s position is that there are other people, organisations and state actors who recognise that same public value, who are invested in the same outcomes in education, and as such, will support the Foundation’s work and Open Textbooks generally going forward. While educational content has not traditionally be considered a public good, education has been, as demonstrated by publicly funded education systems. While it may be some time before this approach becomes mainstream, the Foundation’s current funding allows it an opportunity to demonstrate the value of what it does, and there are several avenues to pursue that should allow the value of the work being done to become evident to others.
In the short term, relying on grant funding for the development phase allows for considerable flexibility, responsiveness and the freedom to concentrate on product development without any commercial pressures. The non-profit funding model with a start-up grant allows the direction of development to be guided by the needs of all users invested in the shift towards Open, abundant content, not just those who will be in a position to pay for the added services. This ensures an egalitarian approach and the freedom to remain committed to the social justice mission of Open Education. Another advantage is that this model allows for some measure of uncertainty around which services can successfully be monetised in future. Given that this model is untested for Open Textbooks, the Foundation can only work on “hunches,” and grant-funding allows areas of potential monetisation to emerge from development, rather than di