RE: Darnton on the Google settlement

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Darnton's long piece includes this statement:

"University presses, which depend on sales to libraries, cannot cover their
costs by publishing monographs."

This is not expressed with precision.

For the past 3 months I have been conducting a survey of university presses.
Among the questions I have been  asking is, What percentage of a press's
sales go to academic libraries?  The answer appears to be 25%, though many
press directors have told me that they would be more comfortable expressing
this as a range:  15-25%.  These figures are for dollars, not units.  Unit
sales would comprise a smaller percentage since libraries often purchase
higher-priced editions than indiviuals.

Libraries are important to university presses, but it is overstating the
case to say that they "depend on" libraries.  Amazon, which distributes
books to a wide range of customers, including libraries, also comprises
about 25% of university press sales.

The reason it is not easy to get specific figures is that presses typically
do not sell books directly to libraries but use various intermediaries
(Baker & Taylor, Blackwell, Ingram, even Amazon), and is not always possible
to find out from the intermediaries where the books eventually end up.

It is certain that libraries at one time comprised a larger proportion of
unversity press sales, though how large is a matter of debate.

Joe Esposito