RE: Business models for U. presses

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

Among comments I made on the report to the AAUP listserv was 
this:

6) The report makes no mention of what I think will develop into 
a major challenge for presses in the next few years, viz., PDA 
(patron-driven acquisitions), which is fast displacing the 
traditional approval plans in academic libraries and can have 
significant effects on cash flow and possibly overall sales of 
hardbacks for presses. Against the Grain will include a debate 
between PDA advocate Rick Anderson and me in an upcoming issue.

Sandy Thatcher


>In Contoocook, New Hampshire
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contoocook,_New_Hampshire), a small
>cadre of very passionate book people have been committed to
>providing service to academic libraries since 1971 (the same year
>in which Project Gutenberg was founded).  The spirit of
>innovation has been pervasive and their work with libraries has
>always been collaborative.  Many of the Contoockonians have read
>the AAUP report (http://bit.ly/e89vfe) and have indeed been
>following the UPeC initiative with great interest.  They are
>greatly cheered to see the UPs rallying.  And yet they are
>confused that in the 'Publishing e-books for Sale' discussion on
>page 19, for example, no mention of ebook integration into print
>approval plans or Patron-driven integration into print workflows
>are mentioned, despite their on-going efforts over the past 5-6
>years to support library needs for eContent.  In fact,
>consideration of library workflows from point of discovery and
>duplication control, through cataloguing and electronic invoicing
>is hard to find.  In the 'Metadata' section, no mention is made
>of book-in-hand (including ebooks) profiling and the value this
>provides to libraries in sifting through massive amounts of
>information, whether for ebooks, approval plans, patron-driven
>selection pools, series, etc....  Even for National Academies
>Press, a very innovative press and rightly pointed to as a model,
>these Contoocookites have delivered nearly 60,000 bibliographic
>notification slips since July 1, 2010, for 160 unique titles
>(some in print and others in digital format), to librarians who
>have developed specific 'profiles' for this content (this number
>of notifications is similar for many of the university presses).
>The question being raised in the little hamlet of Contoocook is
>whether the business models discussed in the report will cause
>the university presses to be excluded by libraries on their
>profiles later this year?
>
>(The Contoockskies are by nature a curious lot and have other
>questions and wonder at some assertions such as: "if libraries
>begin to purchase e-books instead of print - and there are
>indications that this is already happening - there might well be
>further erosion of revenue" (p.20), for they have dedicated
>painstaking effort in developing their systems for 40 years to
>prevent duplication for libraries... - they guess that perhaps
>this was in regard to public libraries, but this is another
>discussion.  Time to get back to processing those UP ebook orders
>for Hong Kong libraries so they can make the morning UPS 
delivery
>
>:-)
>
>Michael Zeoli
>YBP Library Services