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H-ASIA April 21, 2007 Book prices and business models of publishers *********************************************************************** From: Paul H. Kratoska <kratoska@nus.edu.sg> In his posting about his efforts to obtain a copy of Joseph Lee's The Bible and the Gun, Ian Welch remarks on the staggering prices charged for some academic books, and also on the availability of copies through second hand dealers (who are probably selling review copies sent by publishers to journals). Books that carry such high prices are generally issued in limited editions (often around 300 copies) and intended for library sales. Academics buy many fewer books than in the past (something that seems to have preceded the high prices, and in fact lies behind them), and this model is one way for commercial academic publishers to carry on their business. University presses generally charge less, but only because they find creative ways to use endowments, subsidies and other sorts of supplementary funding. In the US, university presses report costs of between $30,000 and $50,000 per title, and for print runs of 500 copies that is a COST of $60 to $100 per copy (as reported at the President's Panel on scholarly publishing at the 2005 AAS meeting in Chicago). The problem is not going to be solved on H-ASIA, but it seems worth discussing a bit more. Paul Dr Paul H. Kratoska Managing Director NUS Press Pte Ltd National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Tel +65 6516-5474 Fax +65 6774-0652 The NUS Press catalogue is available at http://www.nus.edu.sg/sup/ For new book alerts and other updates, please go to http://www.nus.edu.sg/sup/alerts.html ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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