A nice look at Hol at The Flog. I was particularly taken with Fette's idea of distribution (and also for us, development and marketing) as a social service. Meaning for me, that it's something we now have the power to choose to do for one another outside of, and with reasons and rewards beyond, (though hopefully not excluding) a strictly financial system.

From Artblog.net. Thanks Franklin.

A nice mention of Hol in The Art History Newsletter, whose focus is to "synopsize news and opinion of interest to art historians".

Despite the rather foreboding lead-in quoted above, I was pleased to find this morning that Andrew Berardini has posted about Hol on his blog, The Expanded Field. The central question he asks, and that I think is worth asking is:

"Is it exploitative to have people basically work on a book for free for a company to make profit or is it a beautiful new platform for small innovative groups of people to put together books they really believe in..."

But the one very important point Andrew's question misses is, Hol only makes a profit when everyone else on the team does.

So, I might suggest that the question should rather be, Is it exploitive to have people assume more of the risk in the publishing process?

I've worked to build in rewards for this extra risk -- 1. Having greater control over what gets published and how, and 2. Getting a greater share of the profits when a book does meet with success -- but only as Hol gets of the ground will I know for sure if these benefits are enough. In the end, I find encouragement in Andrew's closing:

"Anyway, check it out let me know what you think. As soon as I saw it, I started to wrack my brain on any book projects."

For those interested, I've been lucky enough to have Eoin Purcell post a rather extended interview with me on his terrific blog.

Peter Brantley, Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation, posting on O'Reilly Radar: "Models in which complex, multi-faceted production systems are involved are still somewhat rare, since they typically require active mediation. One of the few that I have run across is a nascent company called Hol Arts. As it is currently engendered, it represents an intriguing hybrid."

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