Michael Bemis on Reference Publishing
The Feb. 1 issue of Library Journal has an amusing article by Michael Bemis about various aspects of the reference publishing industry. (The article is available online here.) Among the practices he rails at are publishers who charge more for their e-books than for the print versions, publishers who release titles on arcane subjects, and reference titles on the same subject from multiple publishers.
I happen to agree with him about most of these items. I have previously blogged about the preponderance of multivolume world history encyclopedias that are cropping up lately. Obviously, the publishers have their own reasons for doing this, although it doesn’t appeal much to me. As for publishing on arcane topics, we deliberately avoided this model in choosing the subject for our first line of reference titles, our “Milestone Document” series. Our goal is to publish right in the heart of a basic subject of study, American and world history, and to do so from the vantage point of primary source document analysis–a practice that is fundamental to the study of history at the high school and college levels. We think we have come up with a model that is at once broad-based and accessible and yet at the same time fills a niche that has not been previously filled.
As for e-book pricing, here too Bemis makes compelling arguments–and they are nothing we haven’t heard before from reference librarians. Here, again, we are happy to be bucking the trends. Salem Press (our distribution partner) has hit upon a fantastic model for their upcoming Salem History database, in which our Milestone Documents series will appear. Libraries who buy the print version of our first title, Milestone Documents in American History, automatically receive free access to the electronic content for 3 years. There are virtually no restrictions on this electronic access, either. I’m surprised that Salem’s model (which they are also using for their Salem Health database) hasn’t received more press from the library media, but I’m sure it will come.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
[…] releasing lots of desirable new products, including digital ones, and they have devised some rather groundbreaking sales offerings for those products. And, of course, they are working with some great young publishing companies to […]