Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

["Paul N. Courant" <pnc@umich.edu>]

And here we have the difference between non-profits and 
for-profits.  Joe Serene sets prices to cover costs, including 
paying the folks who do the work.  Joe Esposito says the that the 
market sets prices, which can't quite be entirely true, because 
the quantity demanded of any title will depend in part on the 
price. As long as the price is high enough to cover costs, The 
publisher has a choice of prices. The obvious price for the 
publisher to pick (or at least to guess at and try to pick) is 
the profit-maximizing price, which will depend, per Joe E., on 
the market.

Paul N. Courant
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
Harold T. Shapiro Professor of Public Policy
Professor of Economics and of Information
The University of Michigan

On 10/3/08 6:31 PM, "Joe Serene" <serene@aps.org> wrote:

> The American Physical Society is one such publisher; that's
> exactly how we set prices, and have for many years.  We do our
> best (not always as successfully as we would like) to estimate
> our expenses over a year in advance, and then set our prices to
> cover these estimated expenses plus a small fixed percentage
> return.  The results for 2009 can be found at
> http://librarians.aps.org/pressrelease2009pricing.pdf .
>
> We don't sell print-only subscriptions.  We regard print as an
> optional add-on to the primary online subscriptions, and we
> ascribe to the online journals all production costs except those
> specific to print. We then try to set the additional charges for
> print to cover just these specific print expenses.  This of
> course means that the cost of the print add-ons will grow as the
> number of print subscribers decreases.
>
> Joe Serene
> Treasurer/Publisher
> American Physical Society
>
>>>> "Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com> 10/02/08 12:28 PM >>>
>
> 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