Scholarly monographs and other published books are among the most important resources for the humanities and adjacent fields. Unlike scholarly journals, which have become almost entirely digital-only, books have experienced a gradual, even extended, transition from print to digital distribution and demand may yet remain hybrid for some time. The pandemic accelerated this transition for monographs, opening up resultant opportunities for remaking not only their distribution but also the business models and marketplace in which they operate.
In recent weeks, there has been much discussion about some of the changes that Clarivate has made to its books product offerings. While the shift to a subscription model, as noted in a previous piece in these pages, has both advantages and challenges, Clarivate’s announcement was unexpected and seems to have been rushed so that it could be incorporated into its February earnings announcement. In a subsequent letter to the library community, Clarivate leaders apologized for the frustration and announced some adjustments to their transition plan.
My goal in this piece, however, is not to add to the pile-on. Instead, I wish to provide some broader context about several key drivers transforming the monographs marketplace. My hope is that some of this context can help libraries, publishers, and intermediaries together find digital-first models that best address access and sustainability going forward.
Libraries Want Flexibility?
In the print environment, libraries had enormous flexibility in deciding which books to purchase, flexibility that was reasonable given that, over the long run, the costs of processing and storing tangible materials far exceeded the purchase price of a given title. The transaction costs of bibliographer-driven selection was enormous, however, and over time, a set of intermediaries formed to help academic libraries purchase the full list from preferred publishers, or create profiles that reduced the local labor and expertise required for selection. While offering this curatorial support, these intermediaries continued to provide libraries with nearly complete flexibility to return or refuse any book, providing far more than just an illusion of continued flexibility.
Yankee Book Peddler was the leader in this intermediary business in the US, and it was ultimately acquired by EBSCO, which retired the YBP brand but invested in building out GOBI, the selection platform. Today, GOBI drives not only various kinds of print selection models but also a large array of ebook distribution models, including bundles, demand-driven acquisition, and individual title selection, not only through EBSCO channels and platforms but also through those of others in the sector.
In the digital environment, which is actually a hybrid print-digital environment for most institutions, many libraries have wanted enormous flexibility in selection, mirroring the approaches they were able to take in the print environment and in some cases expanding upon them. Some digital models, for example demand-driven acquisition, actually provide libraries with a great deal more flexibility than they had in the print environment, essentially allowing them to “trial” every book and only pay when the book’s value is made clear by their patrons actually reading the ebooks. Models like this generated transaction costs for the platforms that distribute books while delaying publisher revenue recognition, offering great value to many libraries (and users) in the process.
Libraries Want Ownership?
Libraries also want permanent access rights. They secured these early on through journal subscriptions, where publishers found themselves happy for libraries to have permanent access to each year of a journal to which they had subscribed. The licensing models spearheaded by the Lib-License project and the preservation ecosystem developed by CLOCKSS and Portico provided the enabling infrastructure to ensure this permanent access. Journal publishers were happy because they had a recurring revenue model in the subscriptions, and libraries were happy because they had ownership-like rights — overall, a sustainable balance.
Many libraries similarly want to own books in digital formats just like they did in print. Perpetual access is always at the heart of this objective, and while some libraries focus on additional ownership-like rights beyond perpetual access, far more expect to have perpetual access to their ebook collections. That is to say that they want to know what books they have “purchased” and ensure that their user community has perpetual access to these materials without them having to pay recurring license fees for that access. One reason for this, particularly at larger institutions, is a desire to build deep topical monographic collections tied to institutional research identity.
The most traditional perpetual access models have tended to drive revenue to publishers in the window immediately following publication, with a long tail of revenue that can be derived through the backlist accumulated across all of that publishers’ titles. Such models are similar enough to print book sales that they generate some of the same revenue patterns. One challenge for publishers is that revenue is not predictable as it is for a subscription.
Tracking these perpetual access rights adds complexity and cost for the hosting platform. This is particularly the case if, as discussed above, books are selected at an individual title level.
Digital-First Models
The economics of the digital ecosystem are different from those of the print environment, even if library practices, values, and preferences are more fixed. One direct illustration is that although individual book title selection might be less expensive in the digital environment as compared with print, it is borne by a different party. Specially, in the digital environment, cataloging and storage/access costs are borne by the hosting platform. As a result, there is nothing for libraries to weigh the transaction costs associated with individual title selection against.
A number of publishing programs at least implicitly recognized this essential dynamic and have sought opportunities to build digital-first business models.
- Several university presses identified opportunities to sell their entire catalog as a bundle, perhaps none more prominently than MIT, which did so under a subscribe to open model.
- ACLS and my colleagues at JSTOR developed the Path to Open initiative, a beta program guaranteeing revenue for roughly 50 participating publishers, providing access to participating libraries immediately, and eventual open access to all.
- DeGruyter had the key insight that publishers would prefer to distribute their entire catalog and some libraries would prefer to acquire the complete catalog of those publishers. This could make it possible to reduce the transaction costs for those libraries and publishers, passing along a portion of the benefit of bundled pricing. DeGruyter’s approach, called University Press Library and now offered through its Paradigm subsidiary, has provided some additional incentives, often offering at least certain books exclusively as part of the bundle, helping to drive library participation.
- As noted above, Clarivate has announced a subscription package containing nearly three quarters of a million books, at the same time decisively ceasing transactional sales and future long-term library access rights, both in print and digital formats. This will advance its goals of transitioning a greater share of its revenues towards recurring models, yet has generated substantial library community objections.
Each of these digital first models brings certain benefits with it, in terms of expanding access and reducing transaction costs, and several serve as alternatives to one another, either from a publisher or library market perspective. At the same time, Ebsco released a statement saying that it “remains steadfast in its support of,” among other things, “Perpetual Access E-books [and] Comprehensive Print Book Fulfillment.” Even if the market shows signs of looking to move beyond these approaches, it is clear that there remains substantial demand for transactional models including for print and at least a near-term opportunity to serve them.
Looking Ahead
One question that emerges is whether there is a way to marry a subscription-like recurring revenue model so valued by content distributors with the kind of ownership-like model so valued by libraries. There are probably a number of opportunities to do so, both for closed as well as open access materials, and we are likely to see more models created and tried out before any form of market consensus is generated.
Several of the subscribe-to-open flavors have shown initial success with something approaching this model. That said, these models have not yet proven themselves as durable in the face of a resource downturn facing libraries.
For monographs, the pay-for-access landscape remains stubbornly important. Looking ahead, it will be fascinating to see whether there are opportunities to build models there that work for libraries and publishers alike while providing the kinds of access that users most need. One of the biggest challenges in doing so is to find ways to provide adequate revenues to publishers to enable them to continue publishing excellent monographs — which is not an afterthought but absolutely foundational to success.
Ultimately, the transition beyond single title purchase models for ebooks seems to be picking up, suggesting a sort of second digital transformation for the monograph, not unlike the Second Digital Transformation we are experiencing in other parts of the sector. What model or models for books will achieve market acceptance remains the key open question.
Discussion
4 Thoughts on "A Second Digital Transformation for Scholarly Monographs?"
This is an excellent summary, but it is missing a few points. The first is the purchasing model commonly known as EBA, evidence-based acquisition. This, unlike DDA, allows publishers/aggregators to have a known fixed revenue while allowing librarians to ultimately select individual titles for perpetual access. Generally the publisher defines the package of titles included in the EBA but a few, like Springer, let the librarians choose subject collection packages for that model. The second is hosting fees. Some platforms, like Gale, charge an annual hosting fee to maintain access to perpetually owned titles, which provides a reasonable compensation for maintenance costs. A third: some publishers also offer tech-savvy libraries the option to self-host. An extreme (in the good sense) version of that is the Ontario “Scholars Portal” platform which is a consortial solution to self-host perpetual content, both journals and books.
Finally I want to note that for many libraries, wanting “flexibility” is about massive budget problems, not just wanting options in a power sense. Journal subscription cost increases for decades have reduced our monograph budgets so much that we simply can’t afford “just in case” book purchases (print or e) anymore – we have to have “just in time” options like DDA and EBA to tighten our monograph spending to only titles that absolutely definitely are needed by our patrons. Numerous studies published in peer-reviewed librarianship journals over the years have well documented that “just in case” selection by librarians and faculty tend to produce collections of books that are only about 50% successful choices (only about 50% are used within any reasonable time period) and we just can’t afford (financially speaking) that poor a selection process anymore.
Thanks this was very interesting regarding the histories (and current realities) of these third party relationships! I have a couple of points regarding the open access sections as well.
‘One question that emerges is whether there is a way to marry a subscription-like recurring revenue model so valued by content distributors with the kind of ownership-like model so valued by libraries.’
I’d like to raise another model (fair disclosure, I myself work on it), Opening the Future. This uses subscriptions to backlist packages (which eventually become an acquisition with perpetual access) to fund the publisher’s frontlist OA publishing. It’s quite similar fundamentally to the MIT model you flagged, and launched the same year, but with some key differences. It is not ‘all or nothing’ on flipping the front-list, but works incrementally, as titles are published OA on the front-list OA as and when enough funds have accrued from backlist subscriptions. It is therefore relatively low-risk for publishers (and was designed to be so, with smaller, specialist presses in mind), and has been working well for our participating publishers.
‘Several of the subscribe-to-open flavors have shown initial success with something approaching this model. That said, these models have not yet proven themselves as durable in the face of a resource downturn facing libraries.’
I would also like to push back on this very slightly! Some collective funding schemes for OA books (and journals) have been thriving for a decade, of particular relevance here are OLH and OBP. While the current and upcoming downturns in libraries will be a major stress test for this sort of model, I think that we may arguably be past ‘initial’ for the success component at this point. Additionally, the resource downturn will likely see many publishers who use more traditional revenue models, particularly the small and specialist, bought up by others. By which I mean, the resource downturn will be a durability test for all publishing not just s2o-adjacent open ones!
An excellent summary of the different sides of the issue and great comments. That said, one thing missing in the discussion is another key reason why libraries insist on perpetual ownership: their mission as long-term stewards of information, even when its sale ceases to be profitable for the publisher.
A subscription models places rights squarely in the publisher’s court (or in the hands of intermediaries), providing no safeguard to prevent them from removing materials from their ebook packages when their inclusion/hosting is no longer profitable. Major academic libraries, however, often view it as core to their mission to preserve (at least a portion of) books even after their usage tapers off to near zero. (For example, a book may be checked out by a scholar only once every twenty years, but the preservation of a subset of that material is, at least for major research libraries, part of their mission to serve their institutions and research communities.)
I’m brainstorming here, but as hosting fees are the reason publishers/intermediaries might cease to provide certain materials in their subscription packages, one potential solution could be for libraries to take on the hosting responsibilities for books after publishers cease to view their inclusion in subscription bundles as profitable (e.g., the first edition of a handbook now in its twentieth edition). This might resemble HathiTrust, but with the provision that libraries could continue to provide access to these materials to their patrons after a certain number of years (regardless of copyright status). This idea is admittedly imperfect, but it’s meant to point in a direction that might help libraries fulfill this critical part of their mission.
A thoughtful piece, Roger! Having nearly come to the end of my rope here, I appreciate seeing the thread develop since the arrival of the internet (early 90s) and all that has developed since – Google, Amazon, eBay, Napster (!), GOBI – the first online book vendor interface for academic libraries (late 90s)…….. You weave together many threads in our complex ecosystem, many of which have been discussed on these pages in detail (discussion of the ‘Cost of Publishing University Press Monographs’, and ‘Library Book Acquisition Patterns’ jump to mind).
The question you pose is certainly timely for us all, wherever our position in this system: “On of the biggest challenges …is to find ways to provide adequate revenues to publishers…” I’d ask some patience to share a few thoughts. One is who do we mean when we say ‘publishers’? In so many contexts over many years, I’ve heard ‘libraries think….’ and ‘publishers are…’ when as we all know, there are many types of publishers and libraries. We can’t compare a Springer or Elsevier with a Central European University Press or Multilingual Matters, in the same way as we can’t compare a University of Toronto or University of Chicago to a Bowdoin or Oberlin College. But I digress.
I’d highlight scholarly research by Colin Steele (Australian National University) and Robert Darnton (Harvard), who have written extensively about the decline of academic monograph sales long before ebooks came around. I’d also recommend Book Wars by John Thompson (Cambridge University) who provides more than ample evidence supporting the recent move by Clarivate/ProQuest to a subscription-based model – the focus is a recurring revenue model (a tech industry standard) and the ‘commoditization of information’.
I remember walking into a meeting at YBP where a very ‘heady’ discussion of the integration of DDA into Approval Plans was underway. My reaction was, ‘Are you insane?’ The highly innovative Demand-Driven Acquisitions (DDA/PDA) and Short-Term Loan (STL/ATO) models were created by EBL, along with Non-Linear Lending (NLL). They took wonderful advantage of online technology to provide books to libraries in ways unthought of in a print world. While this was terrific for libraries (and exciting more generally), the revenue from a publisher perspective, was further threatened. If all books could be made available in a library catalog and at least some degree of use ensured at no or low (STL) cost, how would revenue be sustained? The answer to this still evades us.
There were lots of stories about the magic of the new models and indeed, they did generate rapidly growing revenue to the new business sector (ebook aggregators first appeared in the late 90s), but it was largely ‘squeezing the balloon’, revenue flowing from one place to another, but not sustaining for the publishers. Several things followed: most publishers dropped out of STL. Many imposed embargoes on DDA. Some larger publishers (Wiley, Cambridge, T&F, De Gruyter) created EBA (Evidence-Based Acquisitions) whereby they could mitigate DDA impacts by cutting out the vendor and bring libraries directly to their platforms at sustainable and, importantly, renewable rates.
An *aggregator* EBA model has not ben as successful. ProQuest tried for year to launch a model and never succeeded. The existing ones have limitations.
This is the story of winning ‘market share’ in a market where budgets have been under steady attack (journal costs initially, but other forces at play more recently). The market consolidation has been tremendous since 2000 – book wholesalers and vendors consumed or insolvent – until today they can be counted on on hand… There is no reason to believe that this cycle (‘creative destruction’?) is at an end. The smaller publishers (many university presses) have been left to fend for themselves while libraries have ever fewer choices in this brave new world.
It’s a bit ironic that ProQuest will un with the ‘Academic Complete’ subscription model it got from ebrary, its first ebook aggregator acquisition (2011) – and which ebrary created in the late 90s. The model has been highly successful *for the vendor* since its inception, working quietly in the background at many libraries.
I’m optimistic that the business of books in libraries will find its way, but for now we are all at high sea. Batten down the hatches and enjoy the ride!
