Open access arrived in journals first and the economics translated badly to books. A monograph is not a longer article, and the funding models that work for a six-thousand-word paper do not straightforwardly scale to eighty thousand words of edited, typeset, indexed prose.
What it costs to make a monograph
Developmental editing, copy-editing, typesetting, cover, index, proofs, metadata and registration. On our list that is a meaningful cost per title before a single copy is printed, and it does not disappear because the final PDF is free to read.
Where funded OA works well
Where a grant covers publication, open access is straightforwardly better: wider reach, faster citation, and compliance with funder mandates. We publish OA on the Institutional plan and register a DOI per chapter.
Where it does not yet work
For unfunded authors in disciplines without book processing charges, mandating OA would simply mean fewer books published. Until that funding gap closes, a mixed list is the honest position.
