Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study

Monographs are central to university press publishing, and to the scholarly ecosystem. As Alison Muddit, recent director of University of California Press commented, “Monographs are the heart of university press publishing; our fundamental role is to serve as a channel for scholarship that does not have an immediate commercial return. The monograph remains a vital vehicle for scholarly communication in many fields, not to mention the gold standard for promotion and tenure.” It has been challenging to develop open access business models for books similar to the grant-supported APCs and transformative agreements that journal publishers have adopted. Moreover, smaller and even mid-sized university presses often lack the capital to experiment with new models. Perhaps more daunting still, with the decline in monograph sales over the last couple of decades, margins on academic books are so thin that publishers may fear that anything that threatens to cannibalize anticipated print sales of a scholarly title, such as a freely available open edition, is a threat to its viability. This is the central focus of this report, which is authored by members and representatives from the Association of University Presses and Ithaka S+R. Beyond exploring the question of the role of print sales in OA monograph publishing, we will also touch briefly on how print sales fit into the overall financial equation of a sustainable OA book model. Previous studies of the cost of monographs as well as anecdotal feedback from our participating presses about sales expectations, costs for typical monographs, and the general picture of how print sales and outside funding work together, give us a window into that question, which we examine. Still, a full analysis of OA book publishing business models or the comparative viability of different funded pilots is beyond the scope of this study.