Since books aren't published on the same economic model or platform as journals, they aren't affected by Open Access.
One thing you could do is self-publish a book with a Creative Commons license on it and simply not charge for digital copies. However, this has major downsides:
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Because libraries acquire tens or hundreds of thousands of books a year, books aren't picked title by title. Instead, they submit information about the topics and academic levels in which they're collecting, and the publishers send them books that match that profile. Similar things happen in bookstores. This means that without a publisher, your book won't find a market as easily.
- More importantly for scholarly works, other scholars will look to your publisher to see what your focus is and how "serious" or "reputable" your work is. If you don't have a publisher, the information you're putting out there is either no information, or worse, "I couldn't get published with a real publisher."
So only use this model for creative writing, fiction, and non-scholarly non-fiction when you think you will be able to find your own market online.
The better idea is to choose an appropriate scholarly publisher (a university press) and see if you can negotiate to either
- retain the right to self-archive, just like you would for an article
- put the work in the Creative Commons, which would automatically give you the right to self-archive
You may not get anywhere with this, but it doesn't hurt to negotiate for what you want.
