Against the Grain Volume 26 | Issue 6 Article 8 2014 Academic Publishing Is Not in Crisis: It's Just Changing John Hussey Ingram Content Group, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Hussey, John (2014) "Academic Publishing Is Not in Crisis: It's Just Changing," Against the Grain: Vol. 26: Iss. 6, Article 8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6943 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Academic Publishing Is Not in Crisis — It’s Just Changing by John Hussey (Key Accounts Sales Manager, Ingram Content Group) <[email protected]> verything changed in the fall of 2008, of these platforms attempted to provide an sities, this often meant a change in internal when I was a sales manager for the economical solution for both the publishers structure in terms of who university presses EUniversity Press of Kentucky and and the libraries. With models such as demand- should report to, or who would control their we had one of the most ambitious lists in our driven acquisition as an option, no longer subsidies. Within a few years, presses such as history. At my seasonal meeting at Barnes & would publishers have to print 10,000 units on Arizona, Indiana, Georgia, and Kentucky Noble, I received “large” trade buys, for a uni- comparable sales histories and libraries could were either folded into the library or saw the versity press, including more than 500 copies analyze what should be bought according to library control their funding. Claiming there of several of our titles. Additionally, we had a actual usage. were synergies within these two generally dis- regional coffee table trade book with amazing One of the benefits of the economic collapse tinct operating units, administrators attempted comparable sales figures, a $45 price tag, and and the model interrogation for both libraries to both maximize efficiency and reduce costs. a 10,000 unit print run. and university press publishers was a higher As a result, publishers and librarians, who By the end of October, though, I could see level of communication between these two for years didn’t co-mingle, were now sharing that dramatic change was underway. While our siloed groups. Prior to 2008, university press- office spaces. daily sales figures were strong, sell-through at es, especially within marketing and sales de- One of the unfortunate by-products of the major retailers and wholesalers was disastrous. partments, generally didn’t understand library economic crash was an overall increase in I warned my staff that in January or February purchasing and, to be quite frank, had no inter- prices for monographs. When publishers began of 2009 most of the stock we had pushed out est in learning about it. Sales managers took looking at internal profit/loss statements, the so heavily into the distribution channels would their approval plan num- obvious choice to help offset come flying back at us and we would have to bers from Blackwells, the decrease in copies sold bear the expense. Soon, it was evident — we Coutts, and YBP for was to raise prices by $5 weren’t alone. granted. There was an or $10 per book. Some University presses, like every other book assumption that putting of these decisions, as well publisher, fell victim to the economic crash. At stock in the hands of as increased prices across Kentucky, we quickly went into triage mode the approval teams was major textbook and journal where we analyzed every facet of the business. where their job ended. publishers, caused state The status quo was no longer accepted; rather, After the collapse, governments to take note. personnel had to defend decisions in a manner however, a dialogue between the two parties Large states with major budgetary problems that made us better employees who were more became necessary. At a Charleston Library stemming from the crash asserted there was a aware of the business we were in. Thanks to Conference roundtable in 2010, I was aston- crisis at hand: book costs were out of control strong management, Kentucky was able to re- ished at how poor the information exchange for their college students. define our business in months, instead of years. had been. For example, many of the acquisition What for decades was a relatively stable and But it wasn’t just publishers who were librarians assumed that most university press- rather staid industry faced a convergence of forced to examine costs and practices. Fed- es were selling 1,000 monographs (by then events. Simultaneously, university presses had eral, state, and municipal budgets were under monograph sales for a medium-sized university to account for decreased net sales, an eBook intense scrutiny, and as a result money was cut press were in the 400-500 range, now down to technological shift, a change in printing tech- that had previously been earmarked for acqui- 200-300), and many of the presses had never nology, a reduction in subsidies, a movement sitions at public libraries. State universities even seen the OASIS or GOBI library portals. toward library-university press partnerships, had tough decisions to make as enrollment This digital interrogation wasn’t just limited and a mandate from state governments to make numbers dipped and funding decreased. Li- to eBooks. As the eBook market was providing books more affordable. Articles in the press, as brary budgets, unfortunately, were one of the an economic bubble to help curb expenses and they seem to do every year or two, announced places they could trim. increase margin, another technology began to forthcoming doom for academic publishing. For university presses, this meant three explode. It was a new way of printing that Unequivocally, however, university presses simultaneous hits: their retail sales were would eliminate the need to overprint, ship to have responded to these challenges. down as a result of a sagging economy; their a warehouse, ship to a customer, and then ship Rather than relying on pre-2008 publishing university subsidies were decreasing; and their back to a warehouse if the book didn’t sell. models, university presses continue to experi- most trusted revenue stream, libraries, weren’t This new solution to a gigantic economical ment as a means to respond to all of the various buying at the same rate. Ultimately, this was publishing problem was POD. economic factors facing them. This year, for unsustainable. Print-on-demand (POD) technology had example, the University of North Carolina Over the next few years, university presses existed since the late 1990s when Lightning Press launched a series of open access mono- devoted enormous resources to stabilize their Source first burst onto the scene, but only after graphs, which exist for free in digital form and businesses. With Amazon’s Kindle emerging the economic crash did its value proposition re- for a small cost in a POD print format. As a way as the first legitimate eBook retailer and with ally make sense for university presses. Because to foster a closer relationship with its library, the new iPad showing the potential of what POD didn’t quite match its offset competition the University Press of Kentucky made its enhanced content could look like, publishers from a quality perspective, publishers often entire out-of-print library available in a digital had to revolutionize their internal workflow overlooked POD and continued with printing repository for free. In Florida, The University and develop new ways to distribute their books. large quantities for better unit cost and better Press of Florida helps offset high costs for its From contracts and royalty structures to data quality. However, as overprinting and obsoles- college students with its open access textbook management systems and book design, this was cence became a larger problem with publishers program, Orange Grove. The University of no small undertaking. who hadn’t adjusted their business models and California Press has a position open for a Additionally, an eBook market in the library sales expectations quickly enough, finance marketing manager whose responsibility is to space also began to take shape. Aggregators teams began cost-benefit analyses of what a help lead an open access initiative, and even the such as ebrary, NetLibrary, MyiLibrary, and shift to POD might mean for their companies. largest university presses, such as Princeton, University Press Scholarship Online were As publishers continued to work on their have experimented with one-off OA projects. first to market. The University Press Content publishing programs at a high level, university There’s no going back to the days of large Consortium powered by Project Muse and administrators and state governments began seasonal buys at Barnes & Noble and standing Books at JSTOR were quick to follow. All some evaluations of their own. For univer- continued on page 16 14 Against the Grain / December 2014 - January 2015 <http://www.against-the-grain.com> The Ant, the University Press, and the Librarian. Reflections on the Evolution of Scholarly Communication by Patrick H. Alexander (Director, The Pennsylvania State University Press) <[email protected]> he Pennsylvania State University es- Although presses range widely in terms of are service-oriented; their “performance” does tablished a press-library collaboration in size, audience, and mission — University of not depend on generating revenue to pay for T2005. In due course, under the auspices Chicago Press is not like the University of costs. Although they obviously need money of a newly created Office of Digital Scholarly Oklahoma Press, and University of Michigan to offer services, the work that libraries do Publishing, it successfully launched an Open Press is not like Kent State University Press does not itself typically generate that revenue.