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Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options
Emily,
I am grateful to you for providing this information. I could not
find the FAQs to which you referred; the page
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/librarians/faq.asp came up
with "Error: the page you have requested cannot be found", and
the closest I could find to a "Transition" site, viz.
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-35.html does not have any
FAQs.
Of course I accept that the cost of producing the content will be
the same whether the delivery is print or electronic, because you
will be producing print copies from an electronic base. You
appear then to be saying that the cost of delivering the content
is the same whether it is electronic or print. This contradicts a
view I have heard from a number of distinguished publishers over
the years, that maintaining a print production line adds between
20% and 30% to the cost of a journal. The argument put to me has
always been that for customers to see the cost benefit from
cancelling print, the print production line would have to be
closed down completely, which is an argument I can understand.
What Wiley-Blackwell appear to be doing now is including part of
the cost for delivering print (i.e. the cost above the cost of
producing the content) into the price paid by online only
customers. This may make some customers think twice about moving
to e-only.
The justification you put forward for the pricing of the online
version is that the online version provides added value. I accept
that the online version does provide features not available in
the print version, but I am surprised that the cost of providing
these features is equivalent to the cost of providing a print
copy. And one of the added benefits included in the online
version, i.e. perpetual access rights, appears to customers not
to be an added benefit at all, because it is included
automatically in the print copy.
Thomas Krichel wrote in response to my earlier post to Liblicense
that "the issue for a publisher is to maximise profits, not align
prices to costs". He may well be right. However, when publishers
justify the prices they charge, they do so on the basis of costs.
So what I am calling for from publishers is honesty: either be
open about your costs, or else stop talking about costs and admit
that all that matters to you is the "bottom-line".
Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gillingham, Emily - Oxford" <emily.gillingham@wiley.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:48 AM
Subject: RE: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options
> Fred - There is an FAQ about this topic in the Customer
> Briefing document linked to from our Transition site. It is
> our position that we are selling content, not packaging, and
> therefore the journal price is the same for the print or online
> format in 2009. The online journal isn't actually cheaper to
> produce than the print journal. Typesetting, editing costs etc
> are the same whether for online or print. The online delivery
> of journals offers a great deal of additional value (searching,
> linking, alerting, etc) not available in print and that
> requires a publisher to commit to substantial ongoing
> investment to support and improve. In addition, an online
> subscription includes access to 12 years of content in many
> cases, i.e. back to 1997, and includes perpetual access rights.
>
> Emily Gillingham
> Wiley-Blackwell
> emily.gillingham@wiley.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of FrederickFriend
> Sent: 29 September 2008 22:55
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options
>
> Can Emily Gillingham please answer one simple question: why is
> the cost of online only in the per-title option the same as print
> only? The estimates have never been exact but we have always been
> told that producing the print copy adds an extra cost for the
> publisher - hence presumably the justification for charging 110%
> for online plus print - so logically the cost of online only
> should be less than the cost of print only.
>
> Fred Friend
> JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL