Re: Digital publishing and university presses

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

If we indeed see the leap envisioned in Scott McLemee's article, 
it will significantly increase the cost to the university press 
system.  The American university presses (that is, leaving OUP 
and Cambridge out as special cases) have combined book sales of 
just over $300 million, which requires a subsidy from their 
parents of around $35 million/year.  Most of the digital plans 
that I have seen will likely increase the need for subsidies by a 
factor of about 3--that is, to around $100 million/year. Where 
this money will come from in these economically depressed times, 
I do not know.  The most likely outcome is that the presses' 
activity will be reduced, thereby further limiting the number of 
publishing options available to scholars, especially in the 
humanities.

As for why the costs will rise, the reasons are various, but the 
principal one is that most (75%) university press books are 
purchased by individuals, not libraries.  For individuals the 
preferred format remains print.  People who argue that POD 
(really SRP) solves this problem overlook the fact that all the 
presses have SRP systems in place and have had them for some 
time, usually with vendors such as Ingram, BiblioVault, IBT, and 
CodeMantra.  An enlarged digital program thus adds little to the 
core market of individual scholars, though it may add some heft 
to library sales, assuming the libraries will purchase electronic 
aggregations of books just as they are cancelling electronic 
subscriptions to journals.

It is simply wrong to make an evaluation of any publishing 
process based on the medium of publication alone.  Electronics do 
great things, print does great things, but they don't do the same 
things, and one is not a substitute for the other.

Joe Esposito

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 6:08 PM, B.G. Sloan <bgsloan2@yahoo.com> wrote:

>>From insidehighered.com, discussing a Sandy Thatcher article in
> "Against the Grain."
>
> "It's clear that the recession is accelerating the shift to
> digital publishing. 'With the economy shaping up as it seems to
> be,' one astute observer of trends in the university press world
> told me last summer, 'we're going to see a 15 year leap in
> publishing in the next two years.' And that was well before
> trillions of dollars started vanishing into the ether."
>
> Full text:
> http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee237