Jennifer Howard of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the conference of the Association of American University Presses, which was recently held in New Orleans [!]. The theme of the conference was “Transformational Publishing: Lessons, Tools, and Strategies for Scholarly Publishing in the 21st Century.”

The upshot: the spring has been “dismal,” with low sell-through rates. Worst of all have been textbook sales:

Participants in a session on “The Future of Books in the Classroom” echoed those concerns. “It’s the used-textbook market that’s really draining us,” one said.

Peter Givler, the association’s executive director, said in an interview that one particular focus at the moment is the use of e-reserves, in which professors make required reading material for their courses available online. Although “the pedagogical capability of that sort of material is a significant advance,” Mr. Givler said, “the problem is there’s a tendency among some of the faculty to use e-reserves as de facto course packs. … What I’m hearing from my members is that they’re seeing a real decline in permission rights.”

Remember Kevin Kelly essay’s “Scan This Book” ($$)? The one John Updike heaped scorn upon? Well, so much for the “reign of the copy,” as Kelly referred to it. If you remember, Kelly predicted that the courts will see long, bitter battles for years to come.

In the next few years, lobbyists for book publishers, movie studios and record companies will exert every effort to mandate the extinction of the ”indiscriminate flow of copies,” even if it means outlawing better hardware. Too many creative people depend on the business model revolving around copies for it to pass quietly. For their benefit, copyright law will not change suddenly.

No, copyright law won’t change suddenly. But in the meantime, professors are busy bypassing copyright: “using e-reserves as de facto course packs.”

The publishers seem resigned:

At times the over-all mood of the conference echoed that of one attendee, who said: “The lessons I seem to be taking from all of this is that we’re screwed. But the old model wasn’t working anyway.”

Really? Who knew?

One publisher advises his fellows to open their eyes to our brave new world and to Set Books Free (TM):

At Friday’s plenary session on “Changing Systems of Scholarly Communication,” Stephen Rhind-Tutt, president of Alexander Street Press, described the new online environment — the world of open access, and of Web communities like Flickr and MySpace.com — which he characterized as more participatory, interactive, and democratic than earlier versions of the online world. He cautioned the audience that “tomorrow’s students aren’t going to care about the printed artifact the way we care about it” and that “if you hold onto your content tightly … you will be shut out of this economy of links.” [emphasis added]

Sounds familiar, no?

Joel L. Hartman of the University of Central Florida described the new world:

This Net Generation’s expectations are defined by Google, Amazon.com, and eBay, he said. “They expect everything to be online and everything to be free,” he said. “They have become a visual culture. They’re moving away from text.”

He advised his audience to “accept that the traditional model will not be viable long term” and “that the authors and consumers of the near future will prefer interactive, collaborative environments and network search tools.” But he ended on a hopeful note with a quote from programming pioneer Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”