[Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS

[Donat Agosti]

Neal

A structural change is needed. The open course ware initiative is just one,
and since MIT is one of the leaders in it, it has an impact, and hopefully
will lead to a discussion in our field as well.
(http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html)

See for example how quickly our knowledge changes during the last years:
higher classification of arthropods down to species level. There is a huge
impact of DNA studies (although often not more conclusive then previous
studies), evolutionary development and imaging, which calls for adoption of
textbooks very quickly - or then use online curricula.

Even the libraries talk about this and will need to adopt (see eg
http://delange.rice.edu/conferenceVI.cfm).

There might be a market for printed version of all this material, and even a
service to produce well formatted content, etc. And I think this is already
protected because it is a hassle to edit this content, get a market for it,
set up a print on demand, etc. and if there would be "creative commons
license" on it, stating that the material can be used for free for
educational purposes only with attribution rights, than this might do it.

I certainly buy books - the only difference nowadays is, that once I read my
books, I often cut, scan and ocr them, so I can easier search them for what
I need. One reason is, that I don't like the idea that I have not only to
assure I take the book along, but that I charged my cadget and don't forget
to bring along the charger with the right plugh, figure out in hotel where I
can plugh it in, etc.

Donat

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal Evenhuis [mailto:neale at bishopmuseum.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:35 AM
To: Donat Agosti; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR COPYRIGHT
VIOLATIONS

>$20M seems not to be a huge loss in a $3.5 billion market with high profit
>margins.

Not quite right, Donat.

In my experience in publishing scholarly works, just the opposite is 
true for textbooks (and there are numerous online articles explaining 
the true profit margins of textbooks -- just google "textbook" and 
"profit-margin").

The reason for the high costs of textbooks is essentially that the 
vast majority of them are demand driven  (publishers cut the large 
costs of production by only producing the number they estimate are 
needed by professors -- why do you think they canvass professors on 
what they will be needing for their courses?) and thus also avoiding 
large unsold stocks sitting on shelves knowing that soon a new 
"revised edition" will be coming forth to keep up-to-date (and the 
recent U.S. tax laws state that you must inventory unsold books at 
the retail price, not the unit cost - a very big change that caused a 
change in how many scholarly books are produced nowadays). Publishers 
thus need to prop up the retail to keep the revenues meeting 
resultant large production expenses for those shorter print runs. 
True -- there are "best sellers" in the textbook world in the primary 
and secondary education sector and they are produced at a very low 
cost due to the tremendous volume of guaranteed sales and are 
retailed at a correspondingly low cost in order for schools to be 
able to purchase them. However, the textbooks that many colleges and 
universities require in their specific course work are sold at a much 
comparatively lower volume and need to be priced accordingly (even 
so, it is normal for the profit margin to be kept at only 25% for 
textbooks -- extremely low when the normal profit margin for the 
non-textbook scholarly publication market is 400% or more over unit 
cost).

One might ask why then would publishers continue to produce textbooks 
if the profit margin is so low? The answer: volume. It's the same as 
grocery stores, which as everyone knows, have extremely small profit 
margins. The only way grocery markets stay in business with such low 
profit margins is volume. The same with the textbook market.

So, if we truly want to make all information open access (not just 
journal articles) we also need to be discussing a change in how 
textbooks are produced -- or not. My hunch is that no publisher will 
go along with allowing textbook material to be accessed absolutely 
for free. Thus, the only solution is that textbooks need to be 
abandoned and regarded as old-fashioned, obsolete, and an unnecessary 
added weight that is much easier to deal with electronic files that 
are extremely more light weight. If the educational curriculum-makers 
can go along with non-traditional textbook publication (i.e., 
web-based or pdf files) then open access for this type of information 
will succeed.

Of course, lack of proper exercise in carrying all those heavy 
textbooks will also cease and no doubt arm muscle atrophy will take 
place over time ... But I can live with that. I'm not going to ever 
get back into competitive tennis or baseball in my lifetime ... (but 
I know my wife will be pissed if I cannot take the trash out 
anymore)... She'll ask me why, and I'll weakly raise an atrophied arm 
and point over to my iPod and say "Blame that!"

;-)

--Neal