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Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

I would hazard a guess that, for most university presses, pricing is done more in relation to costs (at least for books) than it is for publishers generally, because presses take seriously their mandate to serve scholarship as their primary mission and keeping prices as low as possible is one way of fulfilling that mandate. This is the reason, for instance, that U.S. presses have not gone the way of European academic publishers and priced monographs very high to cover costs on a small number of sales to libraries alone, instead trying to maximize the number of copies distributed by doing more books in paperback, simultaneously or (more often now, since many libraries have changed to buying papers if available immediately) after a delay. But this generalization does not hold true for all university press books either, but mainly applies to monographs. Other kinds of books that some presses publish--such as poetry, or general trade books, or regional titles--are priced more to the market in the way that Joe indicates but also in the sense that certain markets exert constraints on how high prices can be set. You can't publish a poetry book, for instance, much above about $15 and still expect it to sell.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


I suppose there are some publishers who justify prices based on the costs incurred, but I have never met any of them. Publishers typically justify prices (if they feel the need to justify them) based on the value of the products. The justification is the mechanisms of the marketplace itself. When the marketplace believes appropriate value is delivered for the price, the product is purchased. When the market believes the value is not up to snuff, there is no purchase. The publisher does not set the prices; the market does.

Joe Esposito

On 10/1/08, FrederickFriend <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

 Emily,

 I am grateful to you for providing this information. I could not
 find the FAQs to which you referred; the page
 http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/librarians/faq.asp came up
 with "Error: the page you have requested cannot be found", and
 the closest I could find to a "Transition" site, viz.
 http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-35.html does not have any
 FAQs.

 Of course I accept that the cost of producing the content will be
 the same whether the delivery is print or electronic, because you
 will be producing print copies from an electronic base. You
 appear then to be saying that the cost of delivering the content
 is the same whether it is electronic or print. This contradicts a
 view I have heard from a number of distinguished publishers over
 the years, that maintaining a print production line adds between
 20% and 30% to the cost of a journal. The argument put to me has
 always been that for customers to see the cost benefit from
 cancelling print, the print production line would have to be
 closed down completely, which is an argument I can understand.
 What Wiley-Blackwell appear to be doing now is including part of
 the cost for delivering print (i.e. the cost above the cost of
 producing the content) into the price paid by online only
 customers. This may make some customers think twice about moving
 to e-only.

 The justification you put forward for the pricing of the online
 version is that the online version provides added value. I accept
 that the online version does provide features not available in
 the print version, but I am surprised that the cost of providing
 these features is equivalent to the cost of providing a print
 copy. And one of the added benefits included in the online
 version, i.e. perpetual access rights, appears to customers not

> to be an added benefit at all, because it is included
> automatically in the print copy.
>
> Thomas Krichel wrote in response to my earlier post to Liblicense

 that "the issue for a publisher is to maximise profits, not align

> prices to costs". He may well be right. However, when publishers

 justify the prices they charge, they do so on the basis of costs.
 So what I am calling for from publishers is honesty: either be
 open about your costs, or else stop talking about costs and admit
 that all that matters to you is the "bottom-line".

 Fred Friend
 JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
 Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL