(12 April 2016, Raleigh, NC) – Lulu, the world’s first and largest independent publisher, announced at the London Book Fair the launch of Glass Tree, an online publishing site dedicated to meeting the needs of academic and scholarly authors and communities.
“The knowledge that academics can share with the world is of phenomenal consequence to society at large and the benefit of sharing that knowledge should go right back to the source of its creation — the author, the university, or the academic institution — not into the pockets of publishing houses and their shareholders,” said Nigel Lee, CEO of Lulu Press. “The purpose of academic publishing is to share knowledge in an effort to educate and advance society. Glass Tree is the most ethically correct, sustainable and equitable way to achieve this goal.”
Glass Tree challenges the traditional academic publishing model by placing academics in complete control of their content, accelerating time to market, providing transparency into the works published, and reversing the revenue model to allow academics to realize 70% of the profit from sales of their work.
“For years academic communities have suffered under the exploitation of major publishing houses,” said Daniel Berze, Vice President of Academic Publishing at Lulu Press. “Scholars researched, wrote and edited their work with little, and in many cases no, financial reward. This outdated model will soon change with the introduction of Glass Tree, a new publishing platform from which academic authors can publish, share, and actually profit from their work.”
Glass Tree will provide free tools for book publication, extensive subject matter taxonomies, complimentary promotional tools and free distribution to a global network of online bookstores. Additionally, authors will also have access to an array of competitively priced supplementary services including book editing, translation, peer review and marketing assistance. Through the use of print-on-demand technology and Lulu’s global network of printers, Glass Tree minimizes production costs resulting in a high-quality, affordable product that can be printed and delivered anywhere in the world in a matter of days rather than months — regardless of the quantity needed.
Most importantly, you as the author control your work. You own your copyrighted material and choose the license under which it is published. You determine the publication date, set the retail price and, as mentioned above, earn 70% of profits from the sale of your work. When discoveries are made in your field that warrant a new edition, you choose when to update, revise and republish ensuring your content is always up-to-date in the ever-changing academic environment.
Berze goes on to say “We are constantly engaging with our academic ambassadors to ensure that the tool we are developing is what they want. Glass Tree will be an academic-centric publishing site that will continue to evolve as the needs of academics around the world evolve.”
Glass Tree will launch in three phases. The first phase encompassing scholarly publishing of books and eBooks will be publicly available in the 3rd quarter of 2016. Publication of conference proceedings and journals will follow.
About Glass Tree (http://www.glasstree.com/):
Since 2002, Lulu Press has enabled authors in more than 225 countries and territories to self-publish over two million publications. With the introduction of Glass Tree Academic Publishing, we bring our print-on-demand publishing expertise to academic communities around the world. At Glass Tree, authors are in control. They own the rights to their published work, set their own retail prices and keep 70 percent of all profits earned from the sale of their work.
The announcement is here.
