Scholarly Book Publishing Practice the ALPSP survey findings

Transcription

1 Scholarly Book Publishing Practice the ALPSP survey findings Book publishing has along and illustrious history and is now entering one of the most significant periods of change since moveable type enabled multiple copy printing of books. Publishers are now able to produce books for niche markets using digital short run printing and are able to keep books in print for as long as they wish using print on demand. Nevertheless, the most significant change to book publishing is taking them online. E books are currently one of the most talked about developments in the entire publishing industry. Therefore, ALPSP commissioned this first industry wide survey into scholarly publishers policies and practices in book and e book publishing. It follows the surveys into journal publishing that have been undertaken since Journal publishing is, in comparison to books, a much more homogenous activity in that journals all serve the same purpose of reporting on scholarship and research. Journal publishers use a variety of policies and practices, the publications themselves, authors, primary readership and online delivery remain much the same. This cannot be said of book publishing. Within academic and scholarly book publishing, significantly different types of book coexist with many more variables than journals. This survey was therefore somewhat more difficult to design particularly when taking into consideration what would be reasonable to ask of the publishers who participated. In the summer of 2009, we conducted a survey of 400 academic and scholarly publishers covering a representative range of commercial, university press and non profit publishers, of all sizes, worldwide. The questionnaire was available online and in print. It was sent to members of the major scholarly publishing

2 trade associations and a small selection of additional publishers that are not members of these organisations. The questionnaire covered 14 main topics, some of which I will cover in more depth than others: A publisher profile The size and scope of scholarly book publishing Sales channels and printing technologies E book publishing in general Technical aspects of e books Services for libraries Licensing terms for e books Pricing and business models for e books E book collections and bundles Perpetual access and long term preservation Authors rights to re use their work Securing publishing rights for e books E book revenue and development Publisher s concerns about the e book market We received a total of 243 responses of which 72 had to be discounted from the analysis, leaving a balance of distinct 171 publishers. The publishers that responded represent a good split between the four main categories. 24% were commercial and 76% non profit.

3 The majority of respondents are based in the UK and North America, unsurprising given the make up of the trade associations and the nature of scholarly publishing, being primarily in the English language. It is notable that 78% of publishers also publish journals, perhaps unsurprising given that this was a survey of the scholarly market, but it does mean that the majority of publishers already have experience in the online environment to some extent. 45% of respondents publish exclusively in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, while 33% publish exclusively in science, technology, and medicine, leaving just under a quarter with more varied publishing programmes. The discipline mix across all publishers is as shown. In order to classify publishers by size we devised four categories: Very small with under 20 titles per year Small with between 20 and 49 titles Medium with 50 to 200 titles per year, and Large publishers of over 200 titles per year The survey findings offer a snapshot of current policy and practice in book and e book publishing which can form a baseline for future comparative research and instruct further investigation into some of the more complex areas of scholarly book publishing. Respondents publish over scholarly and academic titles per year with an overall average of The number of new scholarly and academic titles

4 per year ranges from one every other year to 4750 per year. When broken down by size the average number of scholarly titles published per year looks like this. On average commercial publishers publish over four times as many new books as non profit publishers. The total scholarly and academic backlist available is nearly 350,000 with an average of 2042, when broken down by size the averages look like this. Respondents indicated that they are involved in a wide range of book publishing. 33% also published books outside the categories we selected these were primarily trade titles, but publishers also indicated that they published anthologies, biographies, directories, general business books, study guides, and so on. Large publishers are more active in publishing reference works, textbooks, and professional handbooks than their smaller counterparts. Commercial publishers are more active in textbook and reference publishing than nonprofit publishers. The vast majority of publishers publish books for research and postgrad students. More than 65% for undergraduates and over 40% publish general reference. Publishers showed patience with the Google Book Settlement, which we will hear more about later. In mid August 2009 when this survey closed, over 60% had not yet opted in or out of the settlement.

5 Publishers are generally using traditional offset litho printing twice as much as digital short run printing for their books. Large publishers in particular are printing a higher proportion of books traditionally this may be due to the large quantity of textbooks that they publish. Print on demand is used by 64% of publishers, and more so by commercial publishers than non profit. Over half of publishers use PoD to keep their backlist titles in print, an advantage of the new technology that was previously unavailable. Amazon continues to dominate as an online bookseller, 78% of publishers sell through Amazon. Use increases with size, from 59% of very small publishers to 100% of large ones. Of the publishers using Amazon, 66% use the look inside function which allows potential customers to browse the book online, often restricted to certain pages. Look inside was reported to have a positive effect on sales by 61% of publishers using it, only 1% reported a negative effect. 62% of publishers are using Google Books, commercial publishers are more likely to do so than non profit publishers. 63% or 108 of all the responding publishers publish e books. They either do this themselves or through an aggregator or e book vendor. The percentage doing so increases with size and commercial publishers are more likely to publish e books than non profit publishers. 67% of publishers have also retrodigitised their backlist.

6 Publishers have generally put fewer textbooks online than other types of book. This is likely to be because there is concern about the impact of e textbooks on traditional multiple copy print sales. There are large numbers of monographs published each year so there are correspondingly more e monographs. 75% of publishers indicted that all their e books, irrespective of type, were provided through the same online channels or routes to market. These include using a hosting company, aggregators, e book vendors, online bookshops and the publisher s own platform. Non profit publishers were more consistent whereas commercial publishers were more likely to use different channels for different titles. The use of differing channels for different books increases with size from 7% of very small publishers to 47% of large publishers. The publishers who indicated that they used the same channels for all books primarily used aggregators and e book vendors although 37% used their own platform and 27% their hosting company. Commercial publishers use aggregators and e book vendors more than non profits. When amalgamating both the answers from publishers using the same channels and those indicating different routes to market for different book types, e book vendors and aggregators stand out as the most favoured channels. There is variation between book types, however several publishers stated that their policies considered more variables than the type of book. There were also several publishers using an open access policy.

7 Most publishers use PDF files to create e books. Flat PDFs allow pages to be viewed online but allow little in the way of functionality, nevertheless 57% of publishers use flat PDFs, with 50% providing PDFs with some imbedded unctionality, a quarter are creating full text in XML and only 15% are using epub. Unsurprisingly the use of different formats for added functionality increases with the size, and budget, of the publisher. Only 65 publishers answered the questions on e book functionality for their own platform or hosting company and only 42 about the functionality provided by aggregators and e book vendors. It is possible that the individuals responding for some publishers were not fully aware of the services offered by the companies they outsourced to. Publishers are starting to enable their e books for use on a variety of platforms and there is a good deal of experimentation going on with PDAs, e book readers and mobile phone delivery. Only 40% of e book publishers are providing MARC records to libraries. MARC records enable librarians to include e books in library managerment systems and the OPAC. 54% of commercial and 33% of non profit publishers provide MARC Records and the proportion increases significantly with size. 53% of e book publishers provide usage statistics to their library customers, but only 40% provide COUNTER compliant statistics despite the guidelines from COUNTER being releases in March 2006.

8 Publishers offer a variety of access and authentication methods, username and password or IP range are most prevalent but Athens is provided by 38% of publishers and Shibboleth by 28%. Licensing terms and conditions are also important to libraries. Publishers have responded positively and allow the use of e book content in many ways. 97% allow remote access to e books via institutions. 88% allow walk in use of e books in the institutional library by patrons who are not members of the institution. 45% do not place any restrictions on user printing out e book content. 51% allow e book material to be used for interlibrary loan, although 16% require that content is printed out first. 58% allow e book content to be used in course packs or on e reserve 63% permit the use of e book content in virtual or managed learning environments. Publishers have less confidence in enabling e book material to be used in learning objects at 35% or for text mining at 40%, but this may be as these are relatively new concepts in comparison. Many publishers found the questions we asked on business and pricing models difficult to answer as different models are used for different types of publication or for different subjects. It is notable that many, particularly smaller publishers, seem less aware of or confused by the variety of pricing and business models used by aggregators and e book vendors. The responses

9 here are as dependent on the individual answering the questions as on the publishers policy so we have not analysed the data by type or size of publisher. Outright purchase is by far the most common business model used, followed by annual subscription. Open access also features for conference and research reports. Annual subscription models become more common for aggregated e books. Responses relating to pricing models are inevitably generalised but still provide some insight into how publishers are currently creating their pricing. Providing the e book free online with a print purchase is surprisingly common at 38%, 38% of publishers differentiate pricing by the type of customer, for example corporate or academic customers. 31% sell e books directly to end users and many use tiered institutional pricing, with pricing by FTEs being the most popular. 58% of publishers offer libraries the option of acquiring e books in collections. 69% of these have created their own collection and 50% participate in multipublisher collections such as the ALPSP e book Collection. Libraries are often looking for perpetual or continuing access to online content after the cancellation of a subscription, where access is maintained to the content for the years or editions actually subscribed to. 45% of e book publishers provide perpetual access in the following manners: for free, for an access or maintenance fee, via local hosting, on CD ROM, or in print as a

10 substitute. Commercial publishers provide this more than non profit publishers. When we asked about long term preservation 31% of publishers stated that they had made formal arrangements and 27% were planning to do so. 40% of publishers stated that they had taken their own measures for long term preservation although it is not entirely clear what this entails, Portico and LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, both recognised formal long term preservation systems were widely used by over 40% of publishers. Commercial publishers were much more likely to take this approach than non profit publishers which were more likely to make their own arrangements. Authors rights have been a contentious issue in the journals market in light of the controversy over open access mandates and repositories. So far the argument has made less of an impact in the e book market, nevertheless we asked publishers about their policies on authors rights to use their own e book material. 84% allow the re use e book material of which there are an author in teaching. 79% allow authors to re use their work in their own subsequent publications. 71% allow the use of their own e book material in the creation of learning objects. 53% allow authors to post e book material to open access repositories, although large publishers are significantly more unlikely to do so with only 15% allowing the practice.

11 The majority of publishers are able to secure all the rights they need for both print and e book publishing from literary agents and authors. Although 42% did note that they had some difficulty with some titles. 45% of publishers experienced no difficulty in securing e publishing rights for books which they already published in print. There are likely to be increasing problems in securing rights, after this survey was undertaken, the Society of Authors introduced guidelines for authors which limit any grant of e book rights to the verbatim text and recommend the authors involvement in any enhancements to e books, they are also suggesting limiting rights to a 12 month period and demanding higher royalties for e books. The vast majority of publishers are planning to try new activities in the e book market in one way or another. 65% are planning to try new providers, 78% make their e books available on new devices and 66% plan to try new business models. 69% of publishers have seen an increase in e book revenue over the last two years. Commercial publishers have seen significantly more growth than nonprofit publishers. The proportion of growth also increases with size, all large publishers reported growth of e book revenue in the last two years. The percentage of growth varies somewhat. One publisher reported that e book revenue had increased by 44,000% and two publishers reported extremely large increases of well over 1,000%. To normalise the figures to be more representative of all publisher groups, these three results were

12 discounted and we see an average increase in revenue of just over 100% over two years. Medium and large publishers fare better than smaller publishers and non profits slightly better than commercial publishers. However, e books still account for a small proportion of total book sales revenue. The overall average is 9.4% although this varies by size and type of publisher. We asked about publisher s level of concern for a number of issues in the emerging e book environment. Once averaged out, publishers concerns were pretty moderate across the board. They were most concerned about business models, piracy and the emergence of a dominant format or standard and least concerned about the complexity of territorial rights and securing e publishing rights, although that may change. This question was asked of both e book and non e book publishers, the results are shown for comparison. E book publishers showed more concern about piracy and business models whereas non e book publishers were more concerned about rights and the effect on print sales. To conclude I would like to give three main points to take away with you. Scholarly publishers are embracing the opportunity to take books online, nearly two thirds are actively producing e books in one way or another. There is a further opportunity to go beyond the PDF and add functionality to e books, which suit the audience they are intended for

13 Business and pricing models are very varied and complex and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. This is still a relatively new market and the nature of books themselves calls for different treatment in the online environment, depending on type of publication, audience, and new technologies as they are released. All of these results are available in more detail in the report published last week. Thank you, are there any questions.