From: ANTHONY WATKINSON <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 11:04:38 +0100

I agree very much with Rick's last sentence. Back in 2001 I wrote a
report (available still) on Electronic Solutions to Problems of
Monograph Publishing. One idea was that e-only books would save enough
money (no print) to make some books publishable on economic grounds
which could not be published in a print version. Many of us at that
stage were over-optimistic and in any case no-one was doing e-only and
no authors wanted if unless they were very desperate indeed and there
was the question of tenure committees sniffing at e-only. As we know
and as Sandy would/will point out most of the costs are before print -
and POD is much more developed than it was then though even then Sven
Fund announced POD as the way of the future.

However I was once a research student in the humanities in a sub-sub
division of history. If I had finished by dissertation (instead of
becoming a librarian and then a publisher) my book would have been
difficult to place - even if it was good scholarship. The numbers
interested would have been too low. A specialised book is not the same
as an unscholarly book. I have a feeling that some of the librarians
posting have conflated poor books with books that have a small
audience. I suspect that they cannot judge the difference (usually)
but it is important in my view to make the distinction.



From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 14:24:51 +0000

>If that were the case, then some books presumably would have sold ONLY
>to libraries.

No, that doesn¹t follow. A book that "virtually no one needs to use or
wants to read" may be purchased by a bunch of libraries and a handful of
individuals. "Virtually no one" is an intentionally imprecise phrase. The
question isn¹t whether these books are completely useless to everyone in
the world. The question is whether they offer enough value to a large
enough number of people to justify the cost and effort of publishing them
in the traditional way.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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