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Re: ebook acquisition collectives

I would question Joe's figure of 75% sales to individuals. That may be the case for trade books published by some of the larger presses like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and it no doubt is even at the low end for sales of regional titles. But I very much doubt that it is anywhere close to being accurate for sales of scholarly monographs, even those published by the largest presses. It is no accident that Baker & Taylor remains the largest customer for most university presses, and even though Amazon is in a strong second place for many presses, we know from an AAUP marketing survey that libraries also purchase through Amazon. If I were to hazard a guess based on my experience at Penn State, I would say that 75% represents the proportion of sales that go to institutions, and for many titles it would even be closer to 90% (especially those that never make it into paperback).

In the scenario I depicted, the originating publisher would not give up the right to provide POD editions even though the monographs would be made available as OA ebooks. That is still a service the publisher could provide and derive income from. The publisher could also use a Creative Commons "non-commercial" license to preserve rights for commercial re-use (though I have my doubts about the conceptual basis for the distinction between "commercial" and "noncommercial").

In talking about "sale of a piece of the publisher's company," Joe obviously has commercial academic publishers in mind. University presses are not in this sense "for sale." And those who "own" university presses are not driven by profit motives and do not generally think in terms of ROI. So there is no "asset" involved if the books are being purchased from university presses.

Sandy Thatcher


At 5:28 PM -0400 8/12/10, Joseph Esposito wrote:
With scenarios like this, it's often useful to put oneself into
the position of people on the other side of the arrangement.

The primary side in this example is that of the librarian.  The
librarian is asked to contemplate an *outright* purchase of a
book or books.  We will have to think about what an outright
purchase means, but the benefits to the library are clear, if the
price could be met.

On the other side of the arrangement is the publisher.  This
publisher sells books that have little or no market outside of
libraries. (There are fewer such publishers than many people
believe.  Books are not humanities journals.  Even university
presses sell 75% of their books to individuals.)


From the publisher's point of view, the proposal is not to sell

copies but the right to make copies.  This is effectively the
sale of an asset; it is a liquidation strategy.  After the sale
of the asset, what is left?

Thus from the publisher's point of view, the outright sale is
tantamount to the sale of a piece of the publisher's company.
This may not be how it looks to the librarian, but it is how it
looks to the publisher.

I doubt many publishers would participate in such a program.
Books are for sale, companies mostly are not.  On the other hand,
a financial owner--that is, an owner who is not an operating
executive but who views the publishing company simply as an
investment--may take a different view (and demand for the sale of
the asset a huge multiple, perhaps 8-10 times the projected
lifetime cashflow of the asset).

And that's the key:  to buy an asset, you have to pay asset
prices, not the sum of all the book prices.

Let's go back to publishing good books, buying them, and, hey!,
maybe reading them as well.

Joe Esposito