From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:10:37 -0700

Amazing how poor and incomplete the data for this industry is (or
are).  I saw a blog not long ago which said that STM publishing was
$20 billion and that Elsevier had 25% of it.  I'm sure the people at
Elsevier would like that to be true.  Another canard is that journals
have profits of 37%, which is an extrapolation from the industry's
largest player.  Or we had the recent news that Harvard spends between
$3 and $4 million a year on journals, but that's only what they spend
with the biggest publishers.  Etc.  And lots not even get into PIRG's
figures for college textbooks.

This is more than the devil quoting scripture.  It belies a real lack
of understanding of the markets and businesses that operate in this
segment.

It would be interesting to have a list of all data points that we
would really like to know, but can't, at least not at this time.  Here
is my candidate:  What is Amazon's market share for all formally
published books sold to academic libraries?  I have heard a figure of
8-10% from someone who is careful with numbers, but there is no way to
corroborate this that I am aware of.

Joe Esposito


On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 7:03 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:36:58 +0100
>
> There are no accurate estimates for the global value of the total scholarly
> journals market (believe me, I've looked!).  In 2010 Simba estimated the
> market for English-language journals in STM (the largest sector) at
> $8.147bn.  This is pretty small in the overall scheme of things - in the
> same year the market for chocolate and confectionery in the UK alone was
> approx $7.72bn, according to KeyNote!
>
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:23:00 -0700
>
> This is all very helpful.  And it supports the view that no number about
> publishing can be taken at face value.
>
> Now for another number:  Where in the world does that $19 billion figure for
> worldwide STM journal sales come from?  That's a huge number.  What could
> possibly be in there?  Add up the journals businesses at Wiley, Elsevier,
> Springer, T&F--and throw in Kluwer, Sage, ACS, and some others, and you
> don't get near that figure, or near 50% of that figure.
>
> Joe Esposito