RE: Digital publishing and university presses

[Kevin L Smith <kevin.l.smith@duke.edu>]

I think we need to be careful about what we claim that "everyone 
knows."  For a three hundred page book to cost just a few cents a 
page would  require a retail price around $10 - $15.  It has been 
many years since  academic books cost so little.  A quick check 
of five titles selected  randomly from the web site of Penn State 
University Press yielded an  average per page cost of .23 -- far 
more than the expense of local  printing.  There may well be good 
reasons for this, but we should base the  discussion on a 
realistic view of prices.

Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
Scholarly Communications Officer
Perkins Library, Duke University
PO Box 90193
Durham, NC  27708
919-668-4451
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/


Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu> wrote:

> Everyone in publishing knows how highly inefficient it is to use
> local printers to produce hard copy. The per page cost to the
> consumer for most academic books ranges from under a penny to a
> few cents, whereas using a standard desktop printer probably
> costs twice that amount.  The shift to having people print out on
> their own, or library, printers adds significant costs to the
> entire process -- which, of course, are rarely tallied when one
> hears about the supposed lower costs of publishing online.