What’s Next for Academic Publishing?
by Alan Jarvis (Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis Books)
I recently spoke to an old friend and colleague now working at a
rival publisher who said that their organization had undergone more
change in the last two years than it had in the previous two hundred. A
sentiment that may be difficult to verify but is indicative of a rate
of change most in the industry are finding challenging.
This is manifested at both a macro and a micro level. Whilst
publishers puzzle over “big picture” issues such as the impact and
trajectory of things like Open Access, MOOCs, the for-profit educators,
and the never-ending shift in library budgets away from books towards
STM journals, on a micro level they also have to rethink their approach
to deciding whether individual book projects are worth pursuing. At the
Charleston Library Conference I was asked how a
commercial publisher can evaluate whether a monograph will be
financially viable under current highly uncertain market conditions.
Historically this would just be a case of comparing costs (fairly
predictable) with anticipated revenues, determined by sales which, with
the aid of approval plans, would also be fairly predictable.
The basics of this equation — revenues minus costs — remain the same,
but the details have become much more complex. Sales revenue might now
be generated from the printed hardback book, a subsequent print on
demand paperback, the eBook and from eBook rentals. It is not clear how
any of these components is going to behave, or even what the split
between the different parts is going to be. Perhaps the only
predictable thing is that total revenue from sales in all formats is
likely to be lower than what it used to be from a single hardback
version. Costs associated with electronic sales ought to be lower,
since you are no longer paying for printing, paper and binding or for
storing and distributing physical copies. But this saving is offset by
investment in platforms for selling eBooks, and can be negated entirely
if the publisher has anticipated, and printed for, more hard copy
sales. Many other costs have been largely unaffected by the digital
revolution (for example, human inputs like copy editing or the costs of
peer review). The underlying feeling, therefore, at macro and at micro
level, is of sailing in uncharted waters.
What does a scholarly publisher do in the face of rapid change, with
conflicting priorities, and where budgets in core library markets are
flat or declining? What is next for academic publishing is some
combination of developments along existing trajectories, changes which
are significant in themselves but leave much untouched, and changes that
might amount to a paradigm shift.
Developments Along Existing Trajectories
Publish more — Come what may, growth in published
scholarly output is likely to continue. The number of universities,
libraries, scholars, and students continues to increase, especially in
emerging markets, and administrative and institutional exercises like
the UK’s Research Excellence Framework also create more pressure on
scholars to publish. For Routledge, publishing more
books is the consequence of decisions taken some time ago, when we chose
to add to our strength in established areas by pursuing new and
emerging areas. As a result we have editors in areas like gender
studies, environment and sustainability, and tourism, alongside editors
in traditional subjects like philosophy and economics. Growth in output
is also a reflection of the globalization of academic research in
English. This means that publishing more does not mean lowering the
quality threshold, since we are not just taking more fish from the same
geographic pond. In our case growth in title output is also driven by
the acquisition of other publishers and imprints.
Consolidation — Faced with declining revenues and
the need to invest in digital infrastructure to compete, many small and
medium-sized publishers are choosing to sell up. At the same time
larger publishers also active in areas other than scholarly books (e.g.,
journals or textbooks) are downsizing or selling their books aimed at
more specialist upper-level courses. Concerns that this might lead to
the sort of oligopoly that supposedly exists in STM publishing are
probably premature. There is far less concentration in HSS scholarly
book publishing, with a multitude of small publishers and no single
player owning more than 20% of the market. And even in the most
unpromising circumstances there are still new start-ups and entrants to
the market. Authors and customers will likely go on being able to
choose and distinguish between HSS publishers for the foreseeable
future.
The Long Tail — Not only will publishers publish
more books, but print on demand technology and eBooks guarantee that
few, if any, of these titles will now go out of print. At the same time
many publishers are actively re-issuing titles that were previously out
of print (at Routledge this takes the form of the Routledge Revivals and Routledge Library Editions
programs). This activity is enabled by digital technology, and it
persists because there is a small but demonstrable demand for these
books.
Pricing — Not a subject publishers always choose to
broach but the financial realities of the market for specialist academic
content mean that it cannot be ignored. Our prices are relatively high
for an HSS books publisher, but the gap between our prices and those of
our competitors has shrunk, and we expect it to shrink further. Fewer
units sold normally leads to higher prices. Is this a vicious circle
that can be broken? It is possible that with the flexibility that
digital publishing brings the answer may be “yes,” or at least a
qualified “yes.” There are now multiple ways in which our customers
acquire our content — in print or electronic format, outright purchase
or rental, and individually or in collections. Each of these might
involve a different price point. The headline price of the book is no
longer the sole factor in determining how much the customer pays for it.
Change which is Significant but Not Necessarily Fundamental
Engage proactively with new business models —
Clearly there have been some bumps in the road with Demand-Driven
Acquisition (DDA) and, to an even greater extent, Short-Term Loan
(STL). With hindsight one could argue that publishers sleepwalked into a
situation in which STL was one of the primary ways in which libraries
acquired new books. Before Routledge agreed to
participate in the Kindle rental program there were extensive internal
discussions about whether it would extend the market or cannibalize
existing sales. There were no such discussions before we agreed to STL,
and we ended up having to raise our rates because of the impact that
STL was having on frontlist sales. Notwithstanding this we remain
excited about the potential of STL to keep books in front of potential
readers for longer periods of time. We have reduced our STL rates for
backlist titles (i.e., books more than a year old), in the hope that
this encourages libraries to keep titles in their portfolio for longer
periods. Publishers need to accept that if they are publishing more at a
time when budgets are flat, then libraries will need to pursue
innovative strategies to determine what to buy and what not to buy.
Flexibility around price and discounting can help influence these
decisions.
Focus on Open Access — Open Access (OA) is clearly a
very powerful way of connecting authors and readers, which remains the
primary function of publishers. Along with most of our competitors we
have a gold OA offering, and publish OA book content (either whole
titles or chapters) most months. But there remain significant issues
around available funding for OA monographs in HSS subjects. The UK
government, for example, has been quick to mandate gold OA but slow to
provide additional funding to facilitate this.
Sell more to non-library markets — Scholarly
publishers operate in a “mixed economy,” selling print and eBooks to
different sorts of customers (libraries, individual scholars, students,
and professionals). Books which primarily sell to libraries
(monographs, works of reference) account for a minority of our sales.
We use digital printing to sell monographs to individuals in paperback
format through our Routledge Paperbacks Direct program
and we use differential pricing to make more specialized works available
to individuals in eBook form, with lower prices on Kindle and other
eBook retailers. The wider availability is welcome to authors, but the
impact is finite. Moreover as the library increasingly becomes
something that is accessed 24/7 via a VPN the need for an individual to
possess their own copy diminishes. The library still remains the heart
of the market for scholarly publishers.
Publish eOnly — This seems to be an appropriate
approach to changing technology, but we still make 70% of our sales from
print and publishing eOnly might only save about 15% of our costs.
Notwithstanding this, publishing models which combine eBooks and books
where the hard copies are printed on demand are becoming increasingly
common.
Pursue new publishing models — Technological developments in digital publishing have facilitated innovation from short-form publishing (e.g., the Palgrave Pivot or Routledge Focus)
to complex digital platforms hosting multi-volume reference works or
databases which can contain millions of items. But the latter are not
what most scholars produce most of the time, nor are they what most
scholars or students read. Projects like the Routledge Performance Archive, which makes extensive use of video, or Routledge Handbooks Online,
which is our first foray into chapter level metadata, are potentially
most valuable to us as they allow us to build our digital capabilities,
experiment with different kinds of content such as video, and develop
similar products based on accurate measurement of customer usage and
engagement.
Change with Potential for Paradigm Shift
Make your books more discoverable, so they get used more, and then use that data to drive better decisions
— In the contest for library budgets, slowly circulating HSS monographs
find themselves consistently outgunned by easy-to-use and instantly
accessible journal articles. Books have much to learn from journals if
they are to make the most of the digital transition. I would highlight
four key steps:
- Make books more discoverable, so they get used more. Adding metadata
at the chapter level is an obvious first step but publishers must also
work more closely with intermediaries like eBooks vendors and make sure
that the metadata is surfaced by major discovery tools. - Remove or reduce barriers to use such as restrictions on concurrent use, printing and copying.
- Enhanced discoverability also gives the publisher a much greater
sense of which parts of their content are being read, cited and
referenced. This is valuable information which can be used for both
marketing and editorial purposes. Find out what is getting used, and
publish more of it. - Greater usage of metrics around citations and impact, including altmetrics.
you have metadata at the chapter level is limited but eye-opening. We
have chapter level metadata for our handbooks on RHO (Routledge Handbooks Online), and we believe it is a major factor in driving use. The same title is fourteen times more likely to be used on RHO
than it was on our standard eBook platform. There are also striking
variations in the extent to which different chapters from the same title
get read. Feedback at this level of granularity has implications for
customers, authors and publishers. Historically the only real data book
publishers have attended to has been about sales and costs, and they
lag far behind journal publishers in their use of other metrics.
However, I would anticipate that this gap will close rapidly and book
publishers will increasingly focus on citations, impact, and altmetrics,
as well as usage data. Clearly we need to be mindful of the limits of
each of these measures, but if a publisher’s main role is to connect
authors and readers, paying attention to what gets read is paramount.
Summary
Book publishing: will it survive and will they still be books?
— My argument is that if books’ content is more discoverable to readers
then books themselves have a better chance of surviving as repositories
of knowledge, wisdom, argument, debate and provocation, whether in
print or digital formats. If book publishers can learn from journals’
use of metadata at a more granular level, books will be better able to
compete for readers’ attention as their empirical research and
theoretical insights will be easier to discover and will therefore be
accessed more frequently and engaged with more productively by readers.
In a world where usage is becoming increasingly linked to purchase, and
where there is stiff competition for limited library funds, this will
be as essential for the future of books as the Gutenberg printing press once was.
But is a disaggregated book still a book? Will the scholarly book
only survive if it becomes like a journal, consumed, if at all, by the
chapter? Traditional fans of the book need not be alarmed. On the
surface much might remain the same, with physical books still being the
preferred “long-form” format for HSS scholars to delineate complex
arguments, collate and analyse empirical evidence, and develop
innovative methodological and theoretical insights. But alongside this
familiar territory, there is a quiet revolution happening beneath the
surface in a digital sphere where much publishing activity will be
guided and influenced by a forensic analysis of incredibly detailed,
albeit inherently imperfect, data.
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