One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from writers is, "How do I convince my publisher to release my book under a Creative Commons license?" It's a hard question to answer well, and luckily from now on I don't have to, because this amazing post at Digital Foundations has done a totally kick-ass job at it:
4. Pitch it with facts
Use case studies to argue with facts. It also helps for them to see that other reputable publishers have licensed books Creative Commons. O'Reilly has some a study on an Asterisk book that we used very effectively.
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/06/free_downloads.html
The Asterisk book sold 19k copies over two years (about what comparable books from O'Reilly were selling), but was downloaded 180,000 times from *one* of the 5 sites that mirrored it.
Also consider google as arbiter:
Results from google search breakdown of references to the two books in the oreilly case study (at the time of negotiation, early 2008):
asterisk: 139,000 references in 2 years (2005-2007), or 70,000 per yearunderstanding the linux kernel, 42,000 references in 7 years (2000-2007), 6,000 per year
So there was 10x the press/blog/reference/hits for the CC licensed book.
HOWTO Negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten Steps
(via O'Reilly Radar)
