From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:15:26 -0600

I'd say OUP and CUP are in  category all by themselves, compared with
U.S.-based presses, not only because they are so old and so large but
also because they derive very substantial amounts of income from
publishing types of books that U.S. presses have never published at
all--such as bibles and ESL. Because of the large revenues from these
publishing lines, OUP and CUP could, in part, internally subsidize
publication of money-losing monographs, just as many U.S. presses with
journals programs have done the same with surpluses from that type of
publishing.

There is not so much of a difference between U.S. academic commercial
publishers and university presses as there is between European
commercial publishers like those i cited and U.S. presses both in
their pricing strategies and in their paperback programs. Still,
Greco's studies have shown commercial prices to be higher, on average,
than university press prices.

You are undoubtedly right that the bias toward humanities and social
science publishing rather than STM publishing existed within the
American university press managerial staffs themselves. (One exception
that stands out in this regard is my former employer Princeton
University Press that has consistently been a leading publisher in
science, owing in no small measure to the vision and leadership of its
longtime director Herbert Bailey, Jr., who began his career at the
Press in the late 1940s as its science editor.) But if university
administrations had really felt it to be important for their presses
to be doing STM publishing, they could easily have overcome this bias
by appropriately hiring new staff.  The fact is that they did not, for
the most part.

Sandy Thatcher



> From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 18:33:12 +0000
>
> Sandy
>
> I have to repeat what I said what I said. I did not find OUP different from
> Academic Press in their policies but that being said OUP did have category
> in those days which called "red" from a colour scheme. This was essentially
> for books which were thought to be worth publishing but which would not
> provide a surplus. I did not publish mathematical monographs (my programme)
> in the red category. In mathematics (speaking very generally) an important
> book is likely to have a market. I saw no reason for publish books which
> were not really very interesting. However I believe the category was used
> for books in the humanities. This was back in the 1980s.
>
> I do think it is a little unfair to choose the particular "European"
> examples you mentioned. I think even in the humanities publishers or
> imprints like Sage, Routledge or (Wiley-) Blackwell were and are undoubtedly
> comparable in their pricing and policies where the comparison is with OUP
> and CUP.
>
> I see that you have written elsewhere on the list about the lack of
> investment by universities in the US in their presses. This is indeed sad.
> It is however a pity that so many of them dropped out of journals and
> science so early. This was surely a decision by their publishers. Of course
> also CUP and OUP in particular also had their problems and did not get much
> support either but now (OUP certainly) contribute to their university funds
> quite considerably while remaining highly respected - perhaps as respected
> for their output as any other publisher.
>
> Anthony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
> Sent: 16 December 2011 03:26
> Subject: Re: Future of the subscription model
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:44:46 -0600
>
> Anthony, I agree up to a point, but I do see a fundamental difference
> between a company that ultimately answers to its shareholders, like
> Academic Press, and non-profit publishers that answer to their own
> stakeholders who are mission-oriented.
>
> Just to give you one example of what difference this makes in
> publishing decisions: European academic commercial publishers like
> Brill, Kluwer, etc. have typically priced their monographs very high,
> expecting to recover full costs from sales to libraries without caring
> much whether individuals can afford to buy the books, where American
> university presses have tended to price their monographs much lower
> with the aim of making them available to individual purchasers as well
> as institutions. This difference also explains why American presses
> try to issue lower-priced paperbacks as soon as they can, rather than
> milking the market for every last hardback sale. Their missions
> encourage American presses to maximize the number of copies
> distributed, instead of maximizing the amount of money to be made from
> sales.  You can read the studies published by Fordham university
> business professor Al Greco that document that price differences
> between university press and commercially published books if you want
> documentation. I'm giving you the explanation for that difference,
> which is related to mission vs. profit.
>
> Sandy Thatcher