Re: ebook acquisition collectives

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Mary is correct that it was decades ago when libraries 
constituted the principal market for university presses, but in 
those days back in the 1960s one could sell around 3,000 copies 
of a typical monograph to libraries. The erosion of sales to 
libraries became recognized in the early 1970s after a famous 
1975 NSF study by librarians Bernard Fry and Herbert White 
documented the beginnings of the "serials crisis" that resulted 
in a dramatic shift of library acquisitions away from books 
toward journals (as reflected in the many ARL charts over the 
years since).

It was as a result of that shift that presses began making major 
changes in their operations and editorial programs, as recounted 
in a series of articles in Scholarly Publishing by the managers 
of Princeton University Press where I was a junior editor at the 
time. (All of this is described in some detail in my article 
here: 
http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/specscholmono/thatcher.shtml.) 
Among the editorial changes were moves to diversify the mix of 
books presses published, adding paperbacks, reference books, 
regional titles, trade books, and even fiction and poetry, so 
that presses would be freed from total dependence on the vagaries 
of library budgets.

This tactic certainly succeeded for a while, and through the 
1980s presses expanded their lists considerably, adding these new 
types of books while not cutting the numbers of monographs. 
(Herbert Bailey, Princeton's former director, did a study for the 
AAUP that documented this trend in the 1980s: The Rate of 
Publication of Scholarly Monographs in the Humanities and Social 
Sciences 1978-1988 (AAUP, 1990).

However, as I revealed in a follow-up mini-survey, "Scholarly 
Monographs May Be the Ultimate Victims of the Upheavals in Trade 
Publishing." Chronicle of Higher Education (Oct. 10, 1990): 
B2-B3, that trend was beginning to change, as presses continued 
to diversify but not expand further, with the result that fewer 
monographs were being published as more presses picked up the 
"mid-list" trade books that commercial publishers were 
abandoning. (Trade books, to answer Joe's question, are defined 
by the discounts assigned to them, though a few presses, like 
North Carolina, have a mid-range discount between short and long 
that might muddy the waters for those presses in defining which 
titles are which.)

At the same time, there was considerable enthusiasm for seeing 
university presses as having a larger cultural role to play, and 
among the most outspoken champions of this cause was Ken Arnold, 
then director of Rutgers University Press, who boasted that his 
press would soon be publishing no monographs at all!  I tried to 
raise an alarm about the consequences of this "cultural 
revolution" in an address to the AAUP annual meeting in 1991 
titled "Back to Basics" (the text of which may be found here: 
http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html).

University presses got excited about more trade possibilities, 
however, when the chain superstores entered the scene in the 
mid-1990s and lots more shelf space became available. But it soon 
became apparent that this was more illusion than reality as these 
stores would not stock any short-discount books and would recycle 
unsold trade books every 90 days, resulting in much waste in the 
system and a large hike in returns. Amazon and then Google also 
came upon the scene in the late 1990s as game changers, but over 
time it became apparent that their effect was more on the "long 
tail" than on trade books.

Meanwhile, independent bookstores--long the best friends of 
university presses as they had stocked many short-discount 
titles--continued to close down, and newspapers began to drop 
their book review sections. By 2005 general trade titles from 
university presses were no longer viewed as the path to salvation 
they had once been dreamed to be (with the exception of regional 
titles, which have continued to do well for university 
presses--but that's another story). Mostly, the high costs and 
high risks of trade publishing meant that only the largest and 
wealthiest presses could successfully play in this space.

At the same time, with budgets tightening everywhere, 
universities began to re-examine the roles that presses play. The 
2007 Ithaka Report should have made clear to every university 
press that if its mission was not well aligned with its parent 
university's, its argument for subsidization could be in 
jeopardy. A press not publishing many monographs or academic 
journals--the raison d'etre of university press publishing from 
earliest days--would be asked by its parent university what it 
was doing for the advancement of scholarship; the general 
enlightenment or entertainment of the broad public would no 
longer suffice as a satisfactory rationale. I give you the fate 
of SMU Press, heavily involved in fiction publishing, as exhibit 
A.

This is a long preamble as a further response to Joe because, 
despite Mary's protestations, I do not think most university 
presses any longer see trade publishing as a viable way out of 
economic difficulty, and many--chastened by the Ithaka study--are 
retreating to a more traditional role of publishing scholarly 
work, which depends on the health of the library market to 
survive--even though that market is now one sixth of what it was 
back in the 1960s (500 copies instead of 3,000).

In the study Joe cites, he does not reveal the identities of the 
30 presses where he did his interviews. He does acknowledge four 
press directors from California, MIT, Michigan, and Rutgers. If 
this reveals the nature of his sample, it is heavily skewed 
toward presses that still engage in a lot of trade publishing 
(though Michigan less so than the others).

I checked with the now retired business manager at Penn State 
Press (who had been in the business for over 35 years) to confirm 
my recollection that 45% to 50% of our sales (in dollars) were to 
Baker & Taylor (thus mainly to libraries), with about 30% to 35% 
to Amazon (an indeterminable number of which were resold to 
libraries), 25% to college stores (mainly paperbacks for course 
use), and less than 5% direct sales to individuals. Perhaps Penn 
State was a bit ahead of the curve in retreating from the trade 
market, but I would argue that for presses below the top two 
tiers, library sales will become a greater proportion of overall 
sales, not less. Perhaps Joe could give us more data about which 
presses were included in his sample, at least by AAUP tier, so 
that we can judge how representative his figures are compared 
with mine.

There is one statement in Joe's report that I found quite 
surprising:

>Amazon is the single largest element in university press 
>publishing today. To recap some of the "statistical snapshot" in 
>Part One, based on the information provided by the presses, 
>online booksellers (principally Amazon) now comprise about 25 
>percent of total dollar volume for the presses. That figure 
>includes estimates of the sales that the presses make to 
>wholesalers (primarily Ingram and Baker & Taylor) that are then 
>shipped to Amazon (and Amazon then sells these books to its 
>customers). The significance of this figure (that is, the 25 
>percent of total volume) is that ten years ago, Amazon's sales 
>of press titles were literally zero. During that decade, the 
>total press sales, when adjusted for inflation, probably have 
>not grown at all. Thus Amazon has gone from 0 to 25
percent in ten years in a flat market.

What surprises me here is the claim that one can estimate what 
proportion of sales to Ingram and B&T are resold to Amazon. Penn 
State's former business manager confirmed my impression that this 
is information that would be impossible to know, even as an 
estimate, without being privy to the internal sales reports of 
these two major wholesalers, and to my knowledge, no university 
press has that kind of access.

I think the figures Joe reports, then, need to be taken with a 
certain grain of salt. Absent more disclosure about his sources 
and insider knowledge of other businesses that I doubt anyone has 
outside those companies, his figures are at least reflective of 
only a segment of university press publishing.

Sandy Thatcher

P.S. As for selling assets, yes, sometimes a press will sell a 
journal to another publisher, or even a set of books in an area 
where the press no longer actively publishes, but these are 
marginal and infrequent activities. And it is extremely rare for 
a press itself to be sold by its parent university, though 
examples do exist, as with Iowa State Press, sold by the 
university to Blackwell Scientific a decade or so ago.

****

>I second Joe on this. Although there may be exceptions, I think
>most university presses would cringe at a description that has
>them publishing books mainly to be bought by libraries. They
>would associate that with the a prior stage in their development,
>some twenty years back. They, I believe, now see themselves as
>publishing to the trade and to students and individuals in the
>academic penumbra. And the idea that they might sell off a large,
>contested bundle of rights to libraries strikes me as unlikely,
>especially given that their boards are full of trade folks. I,
>however, can imagine them managing their truly specialized
>monographs via electronic databases with a print-on-demand option
>because (1) such books are precisely what they are *not* focused
>on and (2) it might be a way of lowering overhead on the
>monograph publishing.
>
>>  Sandy and I are not in agreement here, though some of the
>>  difference may be matters of definition.
>>
>>  First, though, let's be clear that even university press assets
>>  may sometimes be offered for sale.  When I was working as a
>>  consultant, I was asked to advise on such matters.
>>
>>  But as to the numbers, my comment was for books from U. presses.
>>  Sandy introduces an important distinction:  monographs vs. trade
>>  books.  Of course, if you can tell me what is a monograph and
>>  what is a trade book (besides the discount schedule it is offered
>>  under), we might be able to resolve this.
>>
>>  Two years ago I worked on a project, funded by the Mellon
>>  Foundation, that involved my surveying U. presses.  I conducted
>>  50 interviews, covering 30 presses.  The public version of that
>>  report can be found here:  http://j.mp/8TWlC8; see in particular
>>  Section II, Statistical Snapshot.  What the survey revealed,
>>  among other things, was the extent of the erosion of library
>>  sales.  I would say that it is a stretch to think that libraries
>>  comprise more than 25% of U. press sales.  No two presses are
>>  identical, of course, but my notes are pretty clear about this
>>  the market percentages.
>>
>>  Of course, if you are able to separate monographs from trade
>>  books, you might get a different answer.  On the other hand,
>>  this still wouldn't change the thrust of the argument, because
>>  trade books are part of the revenue picture for many presses.
>>  I would add that making these kinds of distinctions introduces
>>  bizarre exceptions.  For example, one of the most important
>>  titles from an economic point of view for the entire press
>>  community is the Chicago Manual of Style. Monograph?  No.
>>  Trade book?  No.
>>
>>  No matter how you slice it, if publishers switch from selling
>>  copies to selling copyrights, as Eric's proposal suggested, the
>>  economic ramifications are very large and entirely negative from
>>  the point of view of the publishers, who are required to earn the
>>  bulk of their income from revenue.
>>
>>  Joe Esposito