Re: ebook acquisition collectives

[Eric Hellman <eric@hellman.net>]

There's also the question of buying patterns, i.e. who buys what 
when.

Suppose that Joe's 25% estimate is correct. Then divide the sales 
between the first year of publication and all subsequent years. 
If libraries front-load their purchases, and most of non-library 
purchasers don't, then it would be very hard to make the 
economics of library collective rights acquisition work. This 
could change if libraries shift to just-in-time purchasing.

Similarly, if the libraries are mostly buying ebooks, and others 
are mostly buying print, then library collective acquisition of 
ebook rights only could look extremely attractive to both 
libraries and publishers.

If there are libraries or publishers that would be willing to 
provide access to relevant data, I would be very interested to 
talk with you.

Eric

Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar, Inc.
eric@hellman.net


On Aug 16, 2010, at 4:29 PM, Mary Murrell wrote:

> I second Joe on this. Although there may be exceptions, I think
> most university presses would cringe at a description that has
> them publishing books mainly to be bought by libraries. They
> would associate that with the a prior stage in their development,
> some twenty years back. They, I believe, now see themselves as
> publishing to the trade and to students and individuals in the
> academic penumbra. And the idea that they might sell off a large,
> contested bundle of rights to libraries strikes me as unlikely,
> especially given that their boards are full of trade folks. I,
> however, can imagine them managing their truly specialized
> monographs via electronic databases with a print-on-demand option
> because (1) such books are precisely what they are *not* focused
> on and (2) it might be a way of lowering overhead on the
> monograph publishing.