RE: ALPSP statement on e-publishing.

[Eric Hellman <eric@openly.com>]

I assume McGraw-Hill has internal measurements of productivity- do they
bear out the "MIT Econ Crowd"? (Which, if they're like any economists I've
ever met, will have twice as many projections as participants.) Never
believe an economist unless his data is better than yours.

At Intel, everything we did was measured and projected and analyzed, and
our bonuses depended on whether, for example, the fab throughput or the
yield went up.

It's certainly true that adoption of digital product has occurred much
faster for journals than for books.

Perhaps book publishing is not a technology business as (I argue)
journal publishing has become.

Eric

>Hi, Eric--
>
>Better check with the MIT Econ crowd on the reality of productivity
>increases due to technology -- particularly as applied to information
>creation and processing industries -- in the last 20 years.  Not
>statistically significant.  (We just think we're more productive.)  Also,
>the trend on salaries and outsource rates in the last 5-6 years (the
>immediately applicable period) is not in the direction you suggest -- at
>least according to the InformationWeek and ComputerWorld surveys.  The
>dotcom bomb still has not driven down the prices as much as you'd think it
>would.
>
>Change the business model?  In response to the promise of "Sounds Good
>Maybe Later" technology?  I agree with you on the need to focus on cost
>reduction, too bad it hasn't shown up yet from that quarter.
>
>Market adoption of digital product is still glacial (also applies in
>spades to the market for repurposed content, that other over-hyped promise
>from the SGML/XML community), and for most book publishers, it still does
>not represent a significant enough stream of revenue relative to the
>inordinate incremental cost.  That, in turn, puts an upward pressure on
>prices, as we saw with the CD debacle in the mid-90s.
>
>Nevertheless, we will slog on.  It's still fun trying to get it right.
>
>BobB