From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2014 13:54:41 -0400

For U. presses, libraries make up a minority of purchases.  Current
estimates put that at about 20-25% of total volume.  Your mileage may
vary, of course.  The prudent path for  U. press is (a) to keep books
out of library aggregations and (b) to build their direct-to-consumer
business.

Joe Esposito


On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 12:05 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 11:19:11 -0400
>
> I don't think most of us are confusing specialized with poor quality.
> I work in classics, so I see a lot of very good work with a very
> limited audience. In general, there is a fair amount of mediocre and
> some outright bad scholarship floating around (just look at all the
> retractions in peer-reviewed science/social sicence journals in recent
> years).  But for monographs, the problem really is that they have
> become too expensive and too specialized for the current distribution
> system.  It doesn't make economic sense for 100-200 libraries all to
> buy monographs that might only be used in 5-10 of them.  The U presses
> have largely been supported on the library side by approval plans and
> standing orders that bought first and asked questions later.
> Shrinking budgets require asking the questions first.
>
> Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
> Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
> University of Dayton Libraries
> Dayton, OH 45469-1360
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:18 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > 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 which could not be published in a print version.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
> > [log in to unmask]