Some Reflections on Professional and Academic Books
Some notes on academic publishing, university presses in particular.
Some notes on academic publishing, university presses in particular.
This is a report on the monograph output of American university presses. The report had the cooperation of 65 presses, which contributed their historical data to the project. The report shows the output of the presses and provides a more granular analysis by subject area and press size.
There have been several recent studies of what it costs to publish academic monographs, but they all mistake the cost of production with the cost of publication. This post summarizes the issues and suggests a very simple way to calculate the cost of publication.
Announcing a research project to study how many academic books Amazon sells to libraries.
A research report on direct-to-consumer marketing is provided here. The study was first announced on the Scholarly Kitchen. The report includes a survey of current university press practices and recommendations for steps to take to improve performance.
A survey of university presses on selling books directly from their Web sites shows that for most presses, sales hover around 1% of total volume, but a concerted effort to improve Web marketing could increase that figure to 3% or perhaps even more.
This is an announcement of a university press research project, which includes a link to a survey we hope every book publisher will fill out. The project is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The focus is on how university presses can sell books, both print and digital, directly from their Web sites. The project report will cover current practices and recommend courses of action.
PDA as presented to the AAUP. Slides from Joe Esposito and Rick Anderson. Enjoy!
A new initiative for a unifying online catalog of resources is underway. Can it provide a substrate for future innovation?