From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2015 09:22:02 -0500

That is a very critical consideration. At the press I used to head,
Penn State, fully 40% of our revenue came from sales of paperbacks,
and the largest portion of that revenue by far came from sales of
monographs in paperback for course use.  If those titles were
available for multi-user access in a JSTOR aggregation, those
paperback sales would dry up and the press would be in dire straits. I
frankly don't know how presses predict which titles will have such
use. In my experience some of the best-selling paperbacks were revised
dissertations that were case studies of single countries. like Peter
Evans's Dependent Development (1979), which sold well over 20,000
copies in paperback for course use for Princeton University Press. Who
could have predicted that kind of sale for that kind of book? And I'm
wondering what kind of monitoring JSTOR could possibly do that could
"ascertain the impact . . .  on usage and sales."  If a press is
experiencing good classroom sales for a monograph in paperback, why
would it risk making it an ebook for multi-user access in a JSTOR
program? And if it was not in paperback first but immediately put into
the JSTOR program, what evidence could there be that sales in
paperback were sacrificed?

Sandy Thatcher



> From: Valerie Yaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 21:15:02 +0000
>
> It's great to see discussion of ebooks and various models.  One point
> I would like to clarify is that the Books at JSTOR program does
> include frontlist titles.  We currently offer more than 7,000 ebooks
> with a copyright year of 2013 or later; of those, 1,700 have a
> copyright year of 2015.  Because all ebooks on JSTOR are 100% DRM-free
> and available for ILL (as Scott noted), some publishers have elected
> to leave some of their newest books out for now.  These publishers are
> concerned about the possible impact of these models on revenue they
> generate from sales of titles adopted by professors for classes. We
> understand this concern and will continue to work with publishers and
> libraries to develop sustainable access models that broaden and
> increase the value of monographs by making them much easier to find
> and use.  In fact, our publisher partners have moved more than 7,700
> single-user titles to JSTOR's unlimited-user model since we
> transitioned to offering the unlimited model exclusively earlier this
> year. We are monitoring these titles to ascertain the impact of this
> change on usage and sales.
>
> If anyone has questions about our program and the content available, I
> would be happy to talk with them.
>
> All the best,
>
> Valerie
>
> Valerie Yaw
> Senior Marketing Manager
> Books at JSTOR
> 2 Rector Street, 18th floor
> New York, NY  10006
>
> http://books.jstor.org
>
>
>
> Sent: Monday, September 28, 2015 10:04 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: academic e-book vendors
> From: Scott Stangroom <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:25:35 -0400
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> I am not sure I can give any advice or deep insight on this issue. It
> is still a bit of a new frontier for most of us.
>
> JSTOR Books seems promising. Pricing seems reasonable. Terms of use
> (including no DRM) are reasonable. ILL is permitted, but on the
> chapter level, not the entire book). We've just begun a "pilot" DDA
> program at UMass Amherst with our Five College consortium partners.
> The books in JSTOR Books are not front list, but are from reputable
> scholarly publishers. Mind you, I am telling you this prior to our
> having fully assessed the product - we've just signed a license in
> August and we're now in the process of loading discovery records.
>
> We of course have purchased or licensed many e-books from a variety of
> vendors, all of whom have up and down sides. We have a DDA program
> with EBL, we subscribe to  ebrary academic complete (and purchase
> ebrary books too), we also "purchase" and license Wiley, Springer,
> Sage, Elsevier, Cambridge, Oxford books from the respective
> publishers, etc. I can't say that I'm ready to wave the flag for any
> of these vendors/publishers too wildly, but the books they offer serve
> their purpose and seem to meet some of the immediate needs of our
> users as they fulfill assignments and do research.
>
> Not sure it this is helpful.
>
> ~Scott
> ______________________
>
> Scott Stangroom
> Acquisitions Coordinator
> University of Massachusetts, Amherst
> W.E.B. Du Bois Library
> Amherst, MA 01003-9275
> [log in to unmask]