Against the Grain

Volume 28 | Issue 2 Article 7

2016 The uB siness of Academic . . . and Buying Bob Nardini ProQuest , [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Nardini, Bob (2018) "The usineB ss of Academic Bookselling . . . and Buying," Against the Grain: Vol. 28: Iss. 2, Article 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.7306

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28, number 2 APRIL 2016

ISSN: 1043-2094 “Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians” The Business of Academic Bookselling … and Buying by Bob Nardini (Vice President, Library Services, ProQuest Books)

othing makes you feel smarter than good enough start, nothing to be ashamed of data” together with “efficiency” a little further being invited to write an encyclopedia there. Maybe I should have quit while ahead. on in another sentence. Narticle. So I felt awfully smart while Instead, I concluded with a section called, “The So, I wasn’t completely off base. But how writing the entry for “Approval Plans” in the Future of Approval Plans.” That’s where I ran would I know that the world of academic Encyclopedia of Library and Information into trouble. bookselling was about to change radically, Science, which CRC Press brought out back Approval plans would spread to overseas and that the new centerpiece would be usage? in 2003. That was the second of a libraries, I predicted. Small libraries would That aggregators would arise, first to venerable work that had first come out in 1968. begin to use approval plans. Why not? Ap- challenge book vendors and then to merge with And then last year, when asked to revise my proval plans were already, for many libraries, them in part so as to be more able to compete entry for the third edition (still forthcoming), “the centerpiece for the of mono- and cooperate, simultaneously, with publishers I felt smart again. graphs.” Didn’t happen, either prediction. and with one another? That so many publishers Until I re-read what I’d written that first Many libraries who’d had one, in fact, had would merge as well, that some publishers time. Can you retract an encyclopedia article? trimmed or even done away with their ap- would become aggregators, and that all would Probably not. Too bad for me, since some of proval plans. were not doing well at be challenged to attract readers, let alone what I’d said didn’t belong in any encyclo- the time, but I did mention them at least. And buyers, for the parallel streams of new books pedia. Most of what likewise, I mentioned in two formats (or more) that they continued I wrote was fine, and teaching faculty in to release in great number? That academic some of it, to tell the one sentence and us- libraries would start to use terms like ROI and truth, I enjoyed ers more generally become as businesslike as the businesses that back to myself. “An in another, devoted a served them? That academic librarians would approval plan is an ac- couple of sentences continued on page 14 quisitions method under to metadata, and fol- which a library receives lowed that by refer- regular shipments of ring in a vague way What To Look For In This Issue: new titles,” I began, a to “the immediacy of Charleston Conference 2016...... 8 & 65 Not Nobel But Noteworthy...... 51 If Rumors Were Horses Q and A with Jon Baumgarten...... 52 HathiTrust Launches Its Shared Print arch and April have been busy! Even though it’s hard to have anything new to say Monograph Archive ...... 72 these days with the Internet so pervasive, there is some big news in our industry. I Laws that Affect the Life of Americans Mhope you are keeping up with the ATG NewsChannel posts which Tom Gilson crafts from Slavery to the 21st Century...... 82 so thoroughly every week. Also, Erin Gallagher from Adventures in Fine Reading...... 86 Rollins College keeps us up-to-date weekly with her Hot Topics! www.against-the-grain.com Interviews Rosann Bazirjian...... 40 YBP has bought Ambassador Book Services’ library customers. Your YBP representative will be in touch N V Sathyanarayana...... 43 shortly to assist with the transition if not already. https:// Laura Brown...... 47 www.ebsco.com/promo/ambassador-book-services Profiles Encouraged Moving right along, Follett, the family-owned UNC-Greensboro...... 42 bookseller, has acquired Baker & Taylor. Reportedly Informatics (India) Limited...... 45 this will boost sales by almost 40 percent and strengthen Follett’s presence in a number of markets, from public Plus more...... See inside libraries to foreign countries. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. http://www.4-traders.com/BARNES- NOBLE-INC-11858/news/Barnes-Noble-Blockbuster- Rita and Willie Ricketts with book-deal-Follett-buys-Baker-Taylor-22193388/ their grandchildren. continued on page 6 1043-2094(201604)28:2;1-O libraries held too many print books that rarely about every aspect of academic book publish- The Business of Academic ... circulated, or didn’t circulate at all. They built ing: total output, consolidation, the long tail, from page 1 their new business on that insight, and in his pricing, models, eBook business Against the Grain contribution, Rick first models, open access, non-library markets, dis- become much more attentive to their users than provides a recap of how the academic book- covery, DRM, analytics, and more. Read it and to their book collections? And that those books selling business has evolved since the 1980s, you will feel like you’ve taken a short course would, as often as not, be seen as a problem as and then presents data on book circulation that in today’s academic book publishing business. much as an asset? can’t be ignored. SCS, now a part of OCLC, is If Mark Sandler had been a baseball player Approval plans are all about buying books an example, as Rick puts it, of “what the next and not a librarian, right about now his number on the chance they might be used. They contin- generation of vendor intermediary might look would be retired, a monument erected in the ue to make sense for libraries with the mission, like,” companies who bring analytics to bear on outfield, he’d be shaking hands in a home plate and corresponding budget, to build research the books and other resources that publishers ceremony, and soon, would be on his way to collections. Fewer and fewer libraries, however, produce and that libraries buy. Cooperstown. Instead, Mark is retiring as can claim that mission, or count on that budget. But today’s libraries don’t simply “buy Director, Center for Library Initiatives, at the Instead, the same profiles that fueled approval resources.” Librarians realize that another Committee on Institutional Cooperation plans are now the engines beneath the hood for factor that can’t be ignored in the market is the (CIC), a position he held for some ten years, Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) programs, purchasing power they have. When academic apprenticed with for twenty years working in generating MARC files under subject and other librarians speak up, publishers, vendors, and Collections at the . parameters that can provide patron access to aggregators are wise to listen. Stephanie Among Mark’s grand slams were his roles more books than approval plans ever did. Or, Church, of Case Western Reserve Universi- in ’s digitization projects, in the Text many of these same profiles have been retooled ty, is a librarian with a lot to say. What she says Creation Partnership, in shared print, in gov- for approval plans where no books are bought is that assessment is “no longer a buzzword” ernment documents digitization. I could go on, until a librarian has first reviewed and autho- for academic libraries. A library’s importance but best to stop and simply say that anyone who rized them online on their vendor’s interface, to a university is no longer assumed. Libraries has ever heard Mark speak, or read something almost like a firm order. How many new books must prove it, and usage data is one of the ways he’s written, knows that they are in for some — and which ones, and under what conditions to “strengthen the story.” Stephanie also has laughs that won’t diminish the thoughtfulness — will academic libraries buy without good things to say about print and eBook prefer- of his contribution. What Mark is thinking evidence their patrons will discover and then ences; DDA, eBook pricing models, DRM about in this issue of Against the Grain is the open them? Those are the questions faced today policies, and user authentication hurdles; and future of the book itself in academic life. On by everyone in the business of academic books. other questions too. Readers will be thankful that topic, let’s just say that Mark isn’t san- This issue of Against the Grain isn’t about that Stephanie has chosen to speak up in this guine. He says a lot more than that, as well, approval plans. Approval plans, for the past issue of Against the Grain. and all of us with our hand in that book culture thirty years or so, have simply been my own What if DDA went away? While the model as it exists today would best pay attention. usual vantage point on the academic book has become widespread among academic librar- All of us in the business of academic book- business. In fact the five contributors to this ies, one major aggregator has questioned the selling might prefer that things were different issue, from their own vantage points — three logic behind DDA.1 Publishers have recently — the book unthreatened, library collections librarians, a publisher, and a consultant — bare- pulled back or have changed their terms. Wake revered and not questioned, usage one of those ly mention approval plans. Just a few years Forest University’s library provides “an all- “nice to haves,” budgets strong, approval plans ago that wouldn’t have been the case. It’s a you-can-eat smorgasbord” of books through a soaring, eBook models settled, assessment telling sign — as if we needed another — that large DDA program. WFU’s Carol Cramer and analytics merely words in the dictionary. the business of publishing, aggregating, selling, conducts a “thought experiment” in this issue, Instead, whether publisher, vendor, aggregator, and buying academic books is going through to find that even with less generous pricing and or librarian, we’re all challenged to examine the tectonic change, but at electronic speed. terms for DDA and Short-Term Loan, “DDA assumptions and practices that have sustained Among the ways I’ve been fortunate in my remains by far the most efficient models for an us in the past. If we are going to engage with career is that I began it by working for about institution like ours.” What would Carol do if our future, one place we are not going to find fifteen years as a book vendor colleague of the DDA model was in fact suppressed? To find it, I can tell you, is in the encyclopedia. Rick Lugg. Now I’m fortunate once more that out, just read her Against the Grain contribution. Rick agreed to write for this issue, since he and Librarians aren’t the only ones who need to his wife Ruth Fischer have been as responsible justify how their budgets are spent. Scholarly Endnotes as any individuals I can think of for a healthy publishers, according to Routledge’s Alan 1. Robert Harington, “Interview with an portion of that change. When they founded Jarvis, “have to rethink their approach to Empire: Tim Collins, CEO of EBSCO Indus- Sustainable Collection Services in 2011, deciding whether individual book projects are tries,” March 1, 2016. Scholarly Kitchen, their earlier experience as library workflow worth pursuing.” In his wide-ranging Against Web. March 10, 2016. consultants had revealed to them that academic the Grain contribution, Alan rethinks just

@Brunning: People & Technology Rumors from page 10 from page 6

I know. This is easy to say, flaunts legal and moral authority, and Ran into Daryl Rayner in Fiesole! I hadn’t seen her in ages. Re- is post-modern beyond any reasonable test. We are beyond scruples member her Rumours from Paddington column in Against the Grain here. But stuff is happening at the edges of what we do. The first edge many years ago? That was when she was at Xrefer (now Credo). Daryl strategy is realizing this. is now with Exact Editions. https://www.exacteditions.com/ Following Italy, a wonderful woman got married at Boone Hall Plantation in Charleston this past weekend so my-son-in-law and Column Editor’s Note: Concepts lifted from an excellent daughter were visiting. We had the awesome job of babysitting my Harvard Business Review monograph, Alan Lewis and Dan grandson 17-month-old George Jacks! What a cutie! George’s dad McKone’s Edge Stragegy: A New Mindset for Profitable Growth (a cardio-thoracic surgeon) has taught him to love books! Who would (HBR Press, 2016). continued on page 46

14 Against the Grain / April 2016