SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

September 19, 2023 by Gary Price

New From AUPresses & Ithaka S+R: “Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study”

September 19, 2023 by Gary Price

From a Joint News Release:

The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) and Ithaka S+R today publish “Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study.” This report is the result of research funded by a Level I Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to investigate the effect of open digital editions on the sales of print monographs.

The study sought to understand the print sales performance of scholarly books that are also available in a free-to-read open digital edition. Twenty-six (26) university press members of the Association contributed data for 976 OA titles published between 2005 and 2022. One of the key insights from the investigation is that print sales can be a significant contributor to offsetting the costs of publishing such works, with median print sales of close to $6000—and (excluding outliers) average sales of nearly $8000. The analysis looks more closely at disciplinary differences, high-sales outliers, print format choices, and the potential for consumer ebook sales for supporting OA book publishing programs. While the research team was not able to collect comparable non-OA monograph data from participants, the OA-titles data set has been made freely available, and will be a valuable tool for publishers to study their own lists and sales data.

“I think many publishers will find both the report and the data set immensely useful in analyzing business decisions and determining paths forward. It is another evidence-based piece of the puzzle as we work toward sustainable and open scholarship in the humanities and social sciences,” said AUPresses Executive Director Peter Berkery. “They complement research already undertaken—by AUPresses and others— on the costs of publishing scholarly monographs, on the impact of OA books, and on researcher attitudes towards OA, and towards print versus digital formats. There are also very interesting questions still to answer in this sector of university press publishing and we hope to be able to continue down some of the paths laid out in the report’s conclusions.”

The full report has been published by Ithaka S+R and an anonymized data set is available at Humanities Commons. Report authors include the study co-principal investigators John Sherer (University of North Carolina Press) and Erich van Rijn (University of California Press), Ithaka S+R researchers Laura Brown, Maya Dayan, and Roger Schonfeld, and AUPresses project staff Brenna McLaughlin.

Study team members will speak about the research and findings at a number of conferences over the coming months, including the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association 2023 Conference on Open Scholarship on September 19, and the Virtual Charleston Conference in mid-November. Study team members Brown, Schonfeld, Sherer, and van Rijn will present the findings during Open Access Week 2023 in an AUPresses-hosted public webinar on Tuesday, October 24, 10-11AM Eastern. Registration information available soon at https://aupresses.org/resources/oa-impact-on-print-book-sales/

Key Insights 

  • OA titles can generate significant print revenue. While there may be some tradeoff between OA editions and print sales, publishers can produce print sales revenue from their OA lists. Publishers may wish to take such revenue into account in considering business models for OA publication today.
  • OA titles can generate meaningful digital revenue. When made available through consumer channels such as Kindle, ebooks that are available openly on other platforms can in parallel generate meaningful consumer sales. Publishers may benefit from giving focused consideration specific to OA monographs to their pricing and windowing tactics for such channels.
  • Outliers are essential. A small number of OA titles sell particularly well, just as is historically the case in traditional monograph sales models. Publishers bearing this in mind will be thinking in terms of the sustainability and growth of their lists overall rather than each title individually.
  • Titles with both hard and soft cover formats generate the most revenue. This may be the result of format choices publishers based on market forecasting, so from our data we cannot be sure that there is a causal relationship. Still, publishers may wish to give additional attention to their format strategy for OA books.
  • Sales vary widely by field. History, arts, and humanities saw lower unit sales while social sciences saw higher unit sales and STEM fields saw the greatest. Publishers may need to pursue different sustainability models for OA books based on their field.
  • An opportunity to increase print sales? There is currently significant friction for users in navigating from digital to print editions. Publishers and digital distribution platforms should work together to create a more seamless reader experience from digital discoverability of and engagement with the OA version to potential print sales.

Direct to Full Text: “Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study.”

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Funding, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Publishing

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week

From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is Hosting a Virtual Roundtable on AI and Content Creation on October 4th

From the Federal Trade Commission: The Federal Trade Commission staff will be hosting a virtual roundtable discussion on October 4, 2023 to better understand the impact of the use of ...

Andrea Jackson Gavin Appointed Inaugural Program Director of the HBCU Digital Library Trust

Below is the Full Text of the Announcement Letter (via the Harvard Library): We are delighted to announce the appointment of Andrea Jackson Gavin as the inaugural Program Director of the ...

U.S. Census Releases 2020 Data for Nearly 1,500 Detailed Race and Ethnicity Groups, Tribes and Villages

From the U.S. Census: The U.S. Census Bureau today released 2020 Census population counts and sex-by-age statistics for 300 detailed race and ethnic groups, as well as 1,187 detailed American ...

Book Bans Spike by 33% During the Last School Year, According to New Research by PEN America

From PEN America:  The number of public school book bans across the country increased by 33 percent in the 2022-23 school year compared to the 2021-22 school year, according to ...

Penn State Leads Big Ten Academic Alliance Project on Open Homework Systems; ChatGPT Usage is Rising Again as...

AI ChatGPT Usage is Rising Again as Students Return to School (via Bloomberg) Universities Rethink Using AI Writing Detectors to Vet Students’ Work (via Bloomberg) Amazon AI-Generated Books Force Amazon ...

$800,000 Budget Cut Proposed: West Virginia University Library System Plans to Reduce Staff, Modify Space Amid University Cuts;...

From WCHS: Following the vote to cut 28 majors and more than 100 faculty positions at West Virginia University, the university’s library system could be the next to take the ...

American Library Association (ALA) Releases Preliminary Data on 2023 Book Challenges; Highest Number of Book Challenges Since ALA...

UPDATE LeVar Burton to Lead 2023 Banned Books Week as Honorary Chair (via ALA) —End Update— Below is the full text of a statement released today by the American Library ...

Harris County Libraries Declared a 'Book Sanctuary' Amid State Crackdown; UCLA Library Receives $4.2 Million Political Cartoon Collection...

Acquisitions UCLA Library Receives $4.2 Million Political Cartoon Collection Spanning Centuries (via UCLA  California At 20, San Jose’s MLK Library Remains a Partnership For the Books (via The Mercury News) ...

The Lens Loads Now Open Dataset From Crossref of Retraction Watch Papers; Digital Science Announces Brand Redesign for...

Clarivate Clarivate Unveils Citation Laureates 2023 – Annual List of Researchers of Nobel Class Digital Science Digital Science Announces Brand Redesign for ReadCube and Papers Internet Archive IMLS National Leadership Grant ...

Making IIIF Official at the Internet Archive; Exploring Equity on Wikipedia; & More News Headlines

American Library Association (ALA) ALA Introduces New LibGuide on How to Explore and Use Library of Congress Digital Collections In Library Programming ALA ‘s Committee on Library Advocacy Releases Update ...

Journal Article: "Redesigning Research Guides: Lessons Learned from Usability Testing at the University of Memphis"

The article linked below was published today by Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL). Title Redesigning Research Guides: Lessons Learned from Usability Testing at the University of Memphis Authors Jessica McClure ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.