From: Michael Magoulias <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 01:10:30 +0000

Hi Ann

Regarding the assumptions below here are some general answers:

1. STM is predominantly journal-focused, but plenty of societies do a
small number of books as well. As with everything in this area, things
are very discipline specific. I know that some book publishing is part
of many medical societies, for example.

2.  This is correct, though the book publishing aspect is not as large
as it used to be. Societies tend to find external publishing partners
for these as well as their journals.

3.  They outsource when they can both to commercial firms and
university presses. Every situation is different -- sometimes it makes
sense for the same press to do the books and the journals, sometimes
these go to different presses. There are always economic and peer
review considerations that can make the book publishing program
unattractive for publishers. If a society has an ongoing series, for
example, in which the quality of some volumes is in question, a press
may feel that it can't commit in advance to publishing every future
volume in the series.

Also worth remembering that there are some societies that still
self-publish, though this group shrinks every year. To my knowledge,
there haven't been many, if any, cases of a society that has gone back
to self-publishing after moving to an established press.

Hope this helps,

Michael Magoulias
University of Chicago Press


Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 13, 2016, at 5:38 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 13:40:46 -0500
>
> Hello, liblicense-l colleagues.  Here some assumptions arising several
> times at ALA-Boston last week.  I realized I don't have enough depth
> to validate them (or not).
>
> 1.       Assumption:  STM societies don’t publish many (if any?)They
> books, mostly journals.
>
> 2.       Assumption:  HSS societies do publish books/monographs, as
> well as journals.
>
> 3.       Assumption:  Societies (both STM and HSS) don’t outsource
> book publishing to commercial publishers the way they do journals
> because there isn’t a big enough margin in it for publishers to want
> to do it.
>
> Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Best regards, Ann Okerson