Ithaka, a nonprofit research group affialted wiith JSTor and ARTstor, has released a new report, “University Publishing in a Digital Age,” authored by Laura Brown (formerly of Oxford USA), Rebecca Griffiths, and Matthew Rascoff. Based on extensive surveys of and interviews with press directors, librarians, and university administrators, the report argues that universities must renew their commitment to publishing in order to maintain a strong role in the creation and distribution of scholarship.
Read it: http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/university-publishing
Update: The University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office has created an edition of the Ithaka Report in CommentPress, allowing a conversation about the report and its conclusions to take place next to the text itself.
Go to http://scholarlypublishing.org/ithakareport/ to read the report and participate in the discussion.
A Report from Digital Publishing Forums
by Brenna McLaughlin
Unbound: Advancing Book Publishing in a Digital World
What felt at times like a motivational fête for the publishing industry was hosted by Google this January in one of America’s temples to book culture, the New York Public Library. Publishers were addressed by web-savvy authors and gurus such as Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) and Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing) as well as innovative publishers such as Tim O’Reilly and Michael Holdsworth (formerly of Cambridge University Press).
One of the ideas that recurred throughout the day was that trade and scholarly/professional publishing are perhaps two different businesses—”entertainment vs. information —that would diverge even further in the digital world. Interestingly, the authors who presented were mostly trade (fiction and nonfiction) writers, whereas most publishers presented from the scholarly, professional, and education sectors.
The authors provided fascinating case studies of how they and their publishers had put the web and networked communities to work for their books. Several of the authors admitted that they had little concern for any sales revenue that might be lost by free online dissemination of their published book. The speaking and consulting fees they can command are only going to be enhanced by a higher public profile. Several publishers presented valuable details on how large-scale digitization projects and business models, rather than individualized web-based marketing plans, had enhanced sales.
HarperCollins Senior Vice President Carolyn Pittis spoke about their “Digital Warehouse,” whose functions are conceived as comparable to a bricks-and-mortar warehouse: the storage, management, and distribution of content. On top of their digital warehouse, HarperCollins has developed its own “Search Inside” functionality and recently introduced a widget for syndicating searchable book content to users’ web sites. Holdsworth provided a glimpse of how improvements to digital channels—from print-on-demand (POD) programs to Google Book Search—have increased sales of what Cambridge University Press had once called the “Comet’s Tail,” the books that sell less than 50 copies a year. One eye-catching statistic involved more than 1000 POD-available titles that sold not a single copy in 2005, but represented more than $1 million in sales in 2006—sales that would have been lost if those titles had gone out of print in the interim.
Most presenters seemed to agree that giving some kind of content away for free was a no-brainer for selling more content in various formats. What that meant to different folks—be it entire digital copies of a book under loose Creative Commons licenses, free sample chapters, free audio downloads or other ‘extras,’ or free search accessibility and text browsing—was not explicitly debated. The underlying consensus was, unsurprisingly, that publishers by this point need to be digitizing their content and should be able to control that content, but that indexing and search should be widely available through not just Google and Amazon, but through other search engines, libraries, and so on.
Google produced a short video of highlights from the event, which you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsCkAeZaxi8
STM Book 2.01: The e-Book Journey: Current Paths and Future Roads
The STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers) e-book seminar was billed as appropriate for any segment of scholarly publishing—including the humanities and social sciences. The day provided a thorough overview of where e-books now stand in the publishing industry, and the road ahead as perceived by both publishers and librarians.
To get us to today’s leading edge of electronic book publishing, James Gray of the Ingram Digital Group spoke about the massive advances in print-on-demand (POD) technologies and applications by traditional and non-traditional publishers. As well, he indicated the experiments that Lightening Source has been undertaking in producing books in a wide array of POD formats such as large print and other language editions. Such advances in POD capability continue to transform the book production and distribution systems. Michael Holdsworth presented here, as well, focusing on the role that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft LiveSearch may play in the e-book market.
Preparing the book production workflow to take greatest advantage of new technologies and content channels was addressed by Helen Bailey, VP & Pub Director for Content Management at John Wiley & Sons. Bailey spoke about how Wiley has transformed their workflow to create XML digital content that can serve the many new (and potential future) publishing and distribution channels. While post-press XML coding had the initial appeal of speed, Bailey saw that in the long run it would not serve their business needs. From a print-focused process, Wiley is now moving steadily to a digital-first workflow.
By far some of the most interesting information presented was market research on how libraries use and what they want from e-books. Elsevier (Science Direct) shared data from their pilot e-book project, which experimented with various subscription and sales models. A science librarian, while recognizing that a print book would always be needed for the library’s core collection, looked forward to a day when they would be able to collect e-books broadly. From his perspective, this would be feasible when publishers made e-book versions available with no time lag, with greater functionality (more than just a copy of the print book), with flexibility of use, and when e-books can be integrated into the catalogue (through MARC records).
Linda Bennett, of Gold Leaf Consulting, had earlier confirmed many of these recommendations. Bennett recently conducted a survey of librarians on use of e-books and opinions of publishers’ business models. Some of the problems that librarians see with current e-book options are rigid usage restrictions, the wide variety of platforms, the lack of MARC records, lack of searchability, and price. After reviewing several publishers’ e-book models, Bennett noted that librarians were split on preferred models themselves. Fifty percent of surveyed librarians preferred to directly purchase content, and fifty percent preferred a license arrangement. An AAUP member got top marks in that survey—the librarians interviewed appreciated the Oxford Scholarship Online model, and, perhaps just as importantly, recognized the brand with approval.
For more detailed information, several presentations from this seminar are available online: http://www.stm-assoc.org/presentations/2007-presentations-book-201london/
As another useful reference on this topic, Springer has publicly released a study of their e-books’ usage in libraries: http://www.springer.com/ebooks
Digital Asset Distribution for Book Publishers: An Emerging Infrastructure
One of the newest acronyms in electronic publishing is DAD, for digital asset distribution—a new name for the electronic storage and distribution infrastructure that’s been developing in the industry over recent years. Klopotek brought together presenters from a number of DADs, including codeMantra, BiblioVault, Value Chain, HarperCollins, and Ingram Digital Ventures, to give publishers a crash course on DAD.
Each DAD representative took 15 minutes to present their services and opinions about what publishers could and should expect from a digital asset distribution partner. The vendors ranged from LibreDigital, a book-focused division of NewsStand, which manages electronic newspaper content for media companies around the globe; HarperCollins, which is now offering their digital warehousing services (described at the Books Unbound seminar, see above) to other publishers; to the familiar nonprofit BiblioVault, which is evolving into a full-service DAD.
Many presenters also had general advice for publishers, regardless of what service provider one might choose. Kate Davies of BiblioVault reminded the audience that working with a DAD can’t mean walking away from digital content distribution tasks entirely—strategic publishing decisions remain with the publisher. Choosing a vendor you can build a relationship with is vital. LibreDigital’s Craig Miller’s mantra was “convert once, publish many”—publishers should aim for a solution which ensures that content need be digitized only once for all of the many new content distribution channels available.
The day was extremely informative, presenting a wide array of options to consider as publishers search for the right—scalable, flexible yet stable—infrastructure for new electronic publishing models. Most usefully, however, the presentations from each DAD are now freely available online for publishers’ review. A white paper on the topic, prepared by Kloptek for Mike Shatzkin of Idea Logical and Mark Bide of Rightscom is also available for purchase.
Presentations and white paper are available here: http://www.klopotek.de/en52235.htm
The New Imprint of the University of Michigan Press
by Michael McCutcheon
As digital technologies transform traditional business, publishers of all walks are being swept up in the shift. It is against this backdrop that current debates over the future of scholarly publishing are set. In the words of Phil Pochoda, Director of the University of Michigan Press, “We are on the verge of a paradigm shift in publishing…. Although difficult to forecast concretely, it’s important that presses play a significant role in this transformation, otherwise we’ll be left out of building our own future.” This thinking is the impetus behind the University of Michigan’s latest online project—digitalculturebooks.
The new imprint, affectionately known as dcbooks, employs a partnership between the University’s press and library in pursuit of a more advanced online publishing model. Developing this relationship between the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) at the University of Michigan Library has been a great advantage for the Press. The partnership allows for the pooling of resources and sharing of technical expertise that is vital to an online project. Maria Bonn, Director of the SPO, explained that, “[The SPO and the University of Michigan Press] have had a long history of friendly but generally non-productive overtures toward each other, looking for collaboration opportunities that really made sense…. This time the idea took.” Pochoda wrote the initial proposal and discussions played out over the course of the next year to determine the form and content of the imprint.
The division of labor is traditional yet collaborative. The Press plays the primary role in acquisitions, while the SPO office manages the online portal. However, as Pochoda says, the “idea is that neither [the Press or the SPO] are treated as a service agency. Both are fully informed and involved in all phases of the publication process. The relationship is fully transparent.” This ongoing consultation means, for example, that the Press discusses the online functionality of projects with the SPO, while the SPO consults on titles selected for publication. There is some tension between the two cultures, as Pochoda describes, “[The Press] has to be a revenue producer and the Library less so. They get much of their revenue upstream, and we get it downstream.” In light of this difference, one of the goals is to develop a “revised business model with which both sides can be comfortable.”
The imprint debuted online with The Best of Technology Writing: 2006, edited by Brendan I. Koerner. Comprised of twenty-four articles, the series lends itself well to the online model. On a single web page the articles are listed with hyperlinks that take the user to another HTML page where they can be read for free. In this fashion one could read the entire book without ever having to open a wallet. A link at the top of the screen allows the user to add it to their “bookbag” if they would like to purchase it in print. Currently, the book is not offered in PDF format, although the HTML allows printing and cut-and-paste. Operating under a Creative Commons non-commercial, non-derivative license, both the press and the authors agree that there must be a free version of each title available to readers.
In some ways the dcbooks model is similar
to other endeavors in online publishing, such as those at the National Academies Press. The NAP offers many of their books for purchase in hardcopy, as a PDF (including single chapters), or to be read online for free. In a study published by the NAP in 2003, they note that, “A cursory analysis of the sales figures…suggests that online print orders have grown steadily since free browsing became available. However, it was not clear whether the increase could be attributed to free browsing or the increased presence of consumers on the web.” Good news for online publishing, with the caveat that more research is needed.
Part of the purpose of dcbooks will be to collect qualitative and quantitative data from users, to better understand “how reading habits and preferences vary across communities and genres.” The data will be helpful in better understanding the online reader—who they are and how they would like to see online models develop. It will also be beneficial in investigating the economics of Open Access publishing. All of this data will contribute to the discussion over the future of scholarly communication, and the question of how presses are to remain both financially viable and true to their purpose of disseminating quality scholarship far and wide.
As the entire project is relatively new, there are a lot of people waiting to see whether the model being tested is a viable one. Bonn described the feedback she’s received thus far as “limited but positive. Authors are intrigued, libraries and publishers are interested, and administrators are tracking to see if we develop a successful publishing model.” It seems it will be a success if the free, online component helps to generate buzz and interest in the print versions, which will drive up revenue. This would allow for the model to be both financially stable and lead to increased access. Pochoda says, “There is no question in my mind that sooner rather than later university press publishing will migrate to primarily online dissemination. We’re testing that proposition somewhat with dcbooks, but being very cautious at first.”
The imprint’s reception among authors may be divided depending on their area of scholarship. When asked how she would like to see the project develop, Alison Mackeen, Acquiring Editor at the University of Michigan Press, said, “I would be thrilled if it helps to expose otherwise reluctant scholars to the advantages of online publishing, and thereby improves the visibility and prestige of online publishing, among humanists in particular.” And here is perhaps where the division is most clearly seen. “It is nevertheless clear that humanities authors are more conflicted about the possibility of a parallel online edition than, say, academics in information schools or media and communication studies.”
Over the course of the next year the imprint will be publishing at least eight titles, and in the process testing the economics and viability of the model. The recently launched New Media World Series is edited Professor Joseph Turow of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication. A Digital Media and Youth series will be launched in August, to be edited by Mimi Ito and Ellen Seiter of the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
As dcbooks continues to develop definite outcomes remain up in the air. Pochoda says, “When the dust settles, the press won’t be the press we knew and the libraries won’t be the libraries we knew. We’re curious to see where we turn out, and no one can predict that yet—meanwhile, we’re enjoying the ride.”
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and the Green Press Initiative (GPI) have launched the first survey of the environmental impact of the full U.S. publishing industry.
AAUP is a supporter and sponsor of this effort. The survey results are scheduled to be published in December 2008.
Read more about the survey: http://www.bisg.org/publications/environmental_benchmarking.html