RE: Digital publishing and university presses

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

What everybody knows is that the cost to the publisher is less 
than the cost to the consumer.  The publisher pays the cost of 
manufacturing (Sandy's
figure), the consumer pays the cost of the publication (Kevin Smith's
figure).

Joe Esposito

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin L Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 8:25 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Digital publishing and university presses

I think we need to be careful about what we claim that "everyone 
knows." For a three hundred page book to cost just a few cents a 
page would require a retail price around $10 - $15.  It has been 
many years since academic books cost so little.  A quick check of 
five titles selected randomly from the web site of Penn State 
University Press yielded an average per page cost of .23 -- far 
more than the expense of local printing.  There may well be good 
reasons for this, but we should base the discussion on a 
realistic view of prices.

Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
Scholarly Communications Officer
Perkins Library, Duke University
Durham, NC  27708
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/


Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu> wrote:

> 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.