RE: Digital publishing and university presses

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Everyone in publishing knows how highly inefficient it is to use 
local printers to produce hard copy. The per page cost to the 
consumer for most academic books ranges from under a penny to a 
few cents, whereas using a standard desktop printer probably 
costs twice that amount.  The shift to having people print out on 
their own, or library, printers adds significant costs to the 
entire process--which, of course, are rarely tallied when one 
hears about the supposed lower costs of publishing online.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Pess


>Joe, always good to read your postings as ever, here's an
>additional point to put forward and consider.
>
>I was at an advisory board meeting last week with publishers,
>librarians and researchers, one of the questions asked to the
>researcher was how many times a day/week would he print out
>locally an article from an e-collection to read, add comments on
>(it seemed to be agreed that for in-depth reading and research,
>it was better not to read the whole article on screen).
>
>The answer was quite surprising, (to me anyway), the researcher
>said he would print out 5-15 articles a day, if you multiple this
>over a week, month, year and add in another 10-20 researchers,
>one could easily see how a million pages a year are printed out
>locally in the institution. This institution covered all the
>printing local costs, I know other libraries will make the
>students contribute to printing costs. This question all came
>about because the researcher had said he had to cancel a $70
>subscription to a print journal he read. I'm not quite sure of
>the exact costs to print this number of pages locally at an
>institution, a quick look online at the HP printer costs for 5000
>pages ranges from around $600 to $1400 depending on the model of
>printer, that would be at least $200,000 a year for the above
>researchers, and that is not counting the switch to online
>collections and how this may affect their reading and printing
>habits. I'm not saying this researcher is going to be a role
>model for all researchers, but it did make me think what the
>implications might be if this were the case, and more local
>printing will occur in libraries, the environmentalists may also
>raise an eyebrow or two as well.
>
>With the possible move to more online only collections, and
>reduction in libraries buying printed copies as some suggest may
>be a way to make decisions on budget cuts, my question or comment
>is; is the local printing cost at a library or institution going
>to increase, and is this cost some what hidden and pushed outside
>of collection and purchasing decisions ? I was wondering if any
>study or research has been done on this area. Alternatively an
>additional point is how many of the on-screen reading platforms
>and devices will allow comments and highlights to be added and
>saved locally by the researcher, so they don't have to print out
>paper copies. Is this an area being actively looked into and
>developed ?
>
>Looking forward to hearing replies, best wishes.
>
>Adrian Stanley
>Chief Executive Officer
>The Charlesworth Group (USA)
>Web:  <http://www.charlesworth.com> www.charlesworth.com
>
>-----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 5:05 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