From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 21:04:28 -0400

I wish there were a neat solution to this one, but there isn't.

Some academic publishers make money, some do not.  To accuse a
publisher that operates at a loss (typically with a subsidy from its
parent institution) of price-gouging is harsh, in my opinion.  Most
American university presses receive such subsidies.  There are
exceptions.

DDA is something that I personally believe is going to become even
more widespread.  A couple years ago I worked on a project with Terry
Ehling of Johns Hopkins and Kizer Walker of Cornell to study the
impact of DDA/PDA on U. presses.  You can find that report linked
through the Scholarly Kitchen:

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/10/16/pda-and-the-university-press-final-study-now-available/

Among the predictions in that report was that DDA, which was
principally developed to lower costs for libraries, would result in
price increases as publishers sought to recover the margin they had
lost through DDA.  How much have they lost? It's too soon to say, but
anecdotal reports suggest drops in library revenue between 10-30%.

You can't squeeze water from a stone.  While some book publishers make
hefty profits, and a handful of U. presses do as well, for the most
point we are dealing here with a zero-sum game.

Those prices will continue to go up until nobody buys the books any
more.  Then they won't be published.  That's where we are heading.

Joe Esposito


On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 8:23 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 17:29:29 -0400
>
> As a number of libraries are becoming concerned about these pricing
> increases (as are university press publishers?) the letter below
> should be of wide interest. Ann
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> As many of you know, the BLC was quite distressed with the recent
> increases in short-term loan pricing by a number of publishers
> [primarily commercial].  It prompted us to look more closely at
> pricing across the publishers in our ebook DDA program [9 of the BLC
> libraries participate].  The Board then requested that we publicize
> our concern and a letter was drafted to The Chronicle of Higher
> Education and published today -
>
> http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/ebook-pricing-hikes-amount-to-price-gouging/
>
> I am glad to discuss further with anyone interested.
>
> Best,
> Susan
>
> Susan M. Stearns
> Executive Director
> Boston Library Consortium
> Boston, MA  02109