RE: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

To build on Ann's point about the predictability of costs. Costs 
are indeed difficult to predict, especially when one has 
suppliers in different currency zones. But there's a wider point 
about costs that no-one's mentioned yet. Many costs are down to 
choices made when planning one's operational budget. These 
choices relate to decisions made about how the business is run. 
In particular, about the additional services a publisher chooses 
to deliver on top of the basic tasks of preparing print issues 
and putting a PDF online. Since publishers don't behave like 
budget airlines - where seemingly everything including the seat 
you sit on is charged as a supplement - publishers don't charge 
supplements for these services but provide them as part of the 
subscription fee. For example, we didn't increase our prices to 
reflect the cost of creating our StatLink service (so readers can 
download Excel sheets of the tables they find in our 
publications), but we did make the choice to add the work it 
takes to create this service to our cost base. We didn't have to 
launch the StatLink service, no-one was asking for it, but we did 
feel that adding value in this way would make it more likely that 
enough customers would choose to subscribe to our publications at 
the prices we charge so that we'd have enough revenue to cover 
the additional cost we chose to take on.

As Dickens noted with his character Mr Micawber: "Annual income 
twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, 19 shillings 
and 6 pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, 
annual expenditure twenty pounds, ought and six pence, result 
misery." One can be sure that those publishers who regularly 
flirt with misery will not be around to offer their services in 
the long run (unless there's someone prepared to subsidise the 
show indefinitely).

Toby Green
Head of Publishing
Public Affairs & Communications Directorate
OECD
toby.green@oecd.org
www.oecd.org
www.oecd.org/publishing

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Okerson, Ann
Sent: 07 October, 2008 3:57 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

Indeed, as Joe Esposito wrote earlier today, costs are not 
necessarily identfiable or predictable; here I'm thinking 
*particularly* of startups such as BMC and PLoS.  Their pricing 
has increased by multiples in a relatively short number of years. 
The ideal of being inexpensive and affordable not infrequently 
has to be adjusted due to practical realities, such as growth 
(increased size and scale do seem to add to journal costs for 
some reason?), expectations and demands of readers for 
ever-greater functionalities or services, unexpected 
advertising/marketing costs (often underestimated in early days), 
and no doubt other factors.  When such idealistic publishers 
quickly raise their per article fees to keep up with (or catch up 
with) their costs, we librarians get no less annoyed with them 
than we do with Nature or Science, to name a few.

Also there are the "free" startups that now need to ask for 
subscription or membership funds to sustain them, as they didn't 
realize how much their service would cost, and that their 
institution wouldn't be able to afford to cover such costs in 
perpetuity.  (Isn't an increase from zero to something, termed 
"infinite?")

So, the challenge isn't just to budget for costs accurately each 
year.  It's also the case that this age, where every 
author/institution can be a publisher too, attracts novices, and 
they need a few years to learn the ropes.  In fact, even 
long-established publishers can become in some ways novices when 
jumping into new-tech publishing arenas.

Ann Okerson/Yale Library

________________________________________
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu]
On Behalf Of Paul N. Courant [pnc@umich.edu]
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 6:10 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu; espositoj@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Subscription and Licensing Options

And here we have the difference between non-profits and
for-profits.  Joe Serene sets prices to cover costs,and including
paying the folks who do the work.  Joe Esposito says the that the
market sets prices, which can't quite be entirely true, because
the quantity demanded of any title will depend in part on the
price. As long as the price is high enough to cover costs, The
publisher has a choice of prices. The obvious price for the
publisher to pick(or at least to guess at and try to pick) is the
profit-maximizing price, which will depend, per Joe E., on the
market.

Paul N. Courant
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries
Harold T. Shapiro Professor of Public Policy
Professor of Economics and of Information
The University of Michigan