With James Steinberg officially receiving the nod as Deputy Secretary of State (along with Jacob Lew), I spent some time poking around the Brookings web site to see what he'd written for them during his fellowship there. And hey, paydirt! On November 1, he published a book entitled Difficult Transitions, arguing that "presidents have no honeymoon when it comes to foreign policy" and exploring and setting down an outline for how the "incoming president [should] prepare for the foreign policy challenges that lie immediately ahead." Should be a good guide to his thinking. I can read the table of contents for Difficult Transitions online. I can read seven pages of the first chapter online. I can see that the book only has 150 pages of actual content. But to actually read the book, I'd have to pay $26.99, and wait a couple of days while it ships. But why? Surely they're not making much money from Difficult Transitions. The book's Amazon page has no reviews and gives it a sales rank of 214,877. It has no backlist potential, nor any relevance after the first year of the administration. This isn't a lucrative enterprise. Presumably, Brookings would defend their decision to publish the book on grounds of influence: It's important that those who want to read it and could benefit from it have that opportunity. But then why not make it maximally and rapidly accessible? They have the technology: They posted a sample chapter online. There are few overhead costs to recoup when producing a pdf. And it's not like this model hasn't been tried: The Center for American Progress does it regularly, most recently with the book The Health Care Delivery System. So c'mon Brookings: Set your content free!
