FW: November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Forwarded on Ann's recommendation. I hope it as equally fascinating for
you!

Toby Green

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Okerson [mailto:aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu] 
Sent: 03 November, 2004 4:11 AM
To: GREEN Toby, PAC/MKT
Subject: RE: November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Is this a message you'd also be willing to forward to
liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu?  I think you are a member of it... it was a
fascinating message.  Cheers, Ann Okerson

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:39:00 +0100
From: Toby.GREEN@oecd.org
Reply-To: ssp@lists.sspnet.org
To: ssp@lists.sspnet.org
Cc: ssp@lists.sspnet.org
Subject: RE: [SSP-L] November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter 

Peter,
 
Just read your latest newsletter with my usual interest. Thought I'd make
a comment about your Google Print piece. We've added our books to Google
Print in the hope that it will generate more interest and awareness in our
books, but we're under no illusions that it will drive sales of printed
books. In fact, we're pretty certain it won't.
 
Why are we so certain? Putting our books 'out there' for free online
browsing is not new to us. Via our online bookshop, readers have been able
to download browse-only copies of our e-books since 1998. They can
download the complete e-book in PDF format, but we've disabled the print
and copy/paste function (a primitive form of protection we know). This
means we've now got nearly six years experience about what happens to
print sales (at least for our kind of books). [I should tell you that,
from our online bookshop, we provide our print purchasers with a free PDF
e-book (so they don't have to wait to start using the book) and the option
to buy the PDF e-book at a 30% discount on the print price.]
 
To begin with, nothing much happened. Print sales remained unchanged when
we launched our Browse_it service. This was a puzzle and somewhat
disappointing, especially because at that time National Academies Press
was making much hay about their print sales rising after they had put
their books on the web for free (I don't know if this is still the case).
Since then, we've seen a steady decline in the number of print sales, and
they have not been offset by additional sales of e-books via our online
bookshop. We've also found lots of copies of our Browse_it files popping
up on websites around the world.
 
It is difficult to draw conclusions because this 'experiment' with our
online bookshop is not running in a vacuum. In 2001 we launched an
e-library of all our e-books (with print as an optional add-on) to
institutional libraries. We charge an annual subscription fee and readers
at subscribing institutions have unlimited access and download rights (a
business model copied from e-journals, and I make no apologies for that!).
This has been a big hit with librarians since subscribing saves them a
large amount of administrative hassle and cost when compared to buying
books one-by-one, and value for money is better since readers can access
our books 24/7. Users seem pleased too, after a slow start, downloads
picked up and total dissemination of our books (print + online combined)
is rising strongly. This means that there are now lots of copies of our
fully-functional e-books 'out there'. (What's interesting is that we're
not finding them popping up on websites.) One further point: a lot of
librarians are now choosing not to take our print service any longer,
they're happy with the e-library service only.
 
The numbers are interesting: we expect to close 2004 with total sales of
around 96,000 printed books, down from around 120,000 last year (on
roughly the same number of titles published). On the other hand, downloads
will reach around 165,000, up from 120,000 last year. So, total
dissemination from paid-for services will be around 261,000 this year,
compared with 240,000 last year. Good news, we're heading in the right
direction as far as access and reading is concerned, but revenues will be
lower which is a problem.
 
So, from what we've learned in an environment where we've got plenty of
e-books in circulation, your proposition that an OA approach to specialist
books of our type would lead to increased print sales is unlikely. Maybe
it'll work better for publishers of other kinds of books.
 
yours sincerely,
Toby Green 

ps - OECD is funded by the taxpayers from 30 nations (and on some
projects, as many as 40 nations). It may be worthwhile stating, before OA
advocates start writing, that representatives from the 30 member
governments agreed in May 2004 to continue the policy of charging for
publications in order to re-coup the cost of publishing in both print and
electronic forms. This policy is reviewed every two years.

Toby Green
Head of Marketing 
OECD Publications 
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate 
http://www.oecd.org/Bookshop 
http://www <http://www/> .SourceOECD.org 
http://www.oecd.org/OECDdirect 
+33 1 45 24 94 15 (phone)/ 53 (fax)
2 rue Andr� Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France 

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Suber [mailto:peters@earlham.edu] 
Sent: 02 November, 2004 4:01 PM
To: ssp@lists.sspnet.org
Subject: [SSP-L] November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter 

I just mailed the November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. In
addition to the usual round-up of news from the past month, it gives a
brief update on the NIH open-access plan, makes the case that journals
should post their access policies to their web sites, summarizes the
Citicorp report on Elsevier and open access, and reflects on who should
control access to publicly-funded research.
	
	November issue
	http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-04.htm

	Peter Suber
	Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
	Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
	Author, SPARC Open Access Newsletter
	Editor, Open Access News blog
	http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/
	peter.suber@earlham.edu