My dissertation is also CC licensed (also following danah's how-do, thanks danah), and I embargoed it from ProQuest because I wanted to put it up on my own website, where it is still freely available. Not only did this NOT hurt me getting a book deal, but I put in my book proposal that the diss. had been downloaded 3,000 times, which helped convince prospective publishers that there was a market for the book. My diss has also been cited a bit, which is great. Now that the book is coming out (November 26, makes a great Thanksgiving gift), I really don't want people reading the dissertation anymore because the book is SO much better. But it's still up there (although I think it's not linked from the front page of my website anymore, but mostly because I forgot the last time I updated the page, not for any great reason) because I don't like the idea of having a fiscal barrier to accessing my work. I did not CC the book, which is a whole other conversation. (Mark, I had my undergrads read parts of Leet Noobs, by the way- it sparked great conversations!) Best, Alice http://bit.ly/StatusUpdateBook
Message: 6 Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:32:03 -0700 From: Mark Chen <markchen@u.washington.edu> To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Advice on dissertation publishing? Message-ID: <CADSSqPh3oP6OKWi+g6-t+2cwKJo6vAJKPFqJVgn0xYc99J095A@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
(resending from uw acct)
My dissertation was on proquest, open, and I threw in a CC license for good measure (after reading danah boyd's how to).
It did not prevent me from getting a book deal (with Peter Lang). A couple of my chapters were published before the diss and became chapters (not verbatim tho), and Peter Lang didn't seem to have a problem with that either. It may have been because I worked with a series and therefore the series editors (who were the awesome Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear).
For a while my dissertation was being sold at Barnes & Nobel as an ebook while my book was simultaneously out on Amazon but wasn't available as an ebook. The book is a much, much better rewrite, and B&N was charging the same, so this pissed me off a bit. I don't think that's happening anymore, but Peter Lang still hasn't released the ebook version...
mark