RE: Digital publishing and university presses

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

What makes you think the "leap" will result in lower costs? All 
the experience we have so far is that we are just exchanging one 
type of costs (printing, binding, warehousing, etc.) for another 
type (server maintenance, IT investment, licensing transactions, 
etc.). Basically, monographs are unlikely to sell more no matter 
what format is used; their audience is necessarily limited by the 
very nature of these works as highly specialized. I predict that 
presses will continue to need subsidies indefinitely into the 
future.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>It will require many of the university presses to change the way
>they operate - including their end-to-end publishing processes -
>to make the leap and grow stronger.  Otherwise they will require
>increased subsidy, as Joe contends, even more so if they do not
>make the shift.
>
>Nawin Gupta
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
>Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 4:05 PM
>To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>Subject: Re: Digital publishing and university presses
>
>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