Digital Publishing Survey 2011

This survey was first conducted in 2009 to learn more about the extent to which certain digital publishing strategies have been adopted in the book publishing programs of member presses. The 2011 survey updated that snapshot, and gave us a clearer picture of the progress of technological and business changes in the community. Seventy-one presses, or 55% of our membership, completed the 2011 survey, up from 45% in 2009.

Strategies surveyed include front- and/or backlist short-run digital printing (SRDP) and print-on-demand (POD), sales of e-books individually, in collections, or through aggregators, full-text search and discover, full-text open access, mobile book apps, and print/e-book bundling. Presses specified a number of additional strategies they are pursuing, including e-book rental, digital scholarly networks, and website versions of books. In 2011, 100% of responding presses indicated that they are undertaking at least two of these strategies in their book publishing programs. This was a small but telling boost from 2009, when 3 presses indicated they were pursuing no or only one such strategy. In the intervening months, all of those presses have adopted a wider range of digital practices.

Backlist SRDP/POD (97%) and e-book aggregators (86%) remain the most widely adopted strategies, although selling individual e-books (85%) has edged out front-list SRDP/POD (76%) for third place. Each of the surveyed strategies has been adopted by at least 20% of responding presses, including the new additions to the survey such as book apps (21%) and bundles (20%). In 2009, apps were not mentioned at all and just a single press wrote in print/e-book bundling as an additional strategy. With the development of new university press e-book collection platforms through Project MUSE/UPeC, JSTOR, Oxford, and Cambridge, the reported planned adoption of that digital content model has almost doubled, from 34% of responding presses in 2009 to 65% in 2011.

Both surveys asked presses which third-party vendors, platforms, and aggregators they work with to distribute digital book content. Comparisons between the two surveys are made difficult by the fact that the list of possibilities continues to grow. While the 2009 survey offered 8 choices (and presses wrote in 22 more), the 2011 questionnaire provided more than 30 options and the responses harvested 10 additional vendors. Ebrary (80%) and NetLibrary (77%) remain at the top of the list, followed by 75% who offer Kindle editions through Amazon.com and 59% who offer or plan to offer books through the Google eBookstore. Neither of these options made an appearance in 2009, as Kindle editions were only surveyed as a file format that presses make available (approximately 32% of presses indicated Kindle distribution when the question was posed in that way) and the Google eBookstore is only lately launched.

Responding presses provided information about FY2010 revenue from e-book sales or licenses. While 46% (including 16 Group 1 presses) reported that less than 1% of their revenue was represented by e-books, the majority of presses are seeing between 1-5% come from such sales. Two publishers (one Group 1 press and one Group 3 press) reported greater than 10% revenue shares from e-books. A number of comments left in reply to the revenue question revealed that there is still considerable uncertainty about how to account for e-book sales and licenses, and several presses noted that though the e-book FY2010 revenue share was small, they are seeing a steady rise in that sector.

The surveys revealed shifting attitudes towards a number of thorny concerns about digital book publishing. For example, the issue of rights for digital publishing was reported as a serious or critical concern by 71% of respondents in 2009, but only 46% reported such strong concern in 2011—although 60% of electronic publishing managers still express serious concerns of rights issues. Online piracy has also become less of a worry for the majority of respondents, with only 24% reported being seriously concerned with this problem in 2011 (compared to 38% in 2009). On this topic, however, marketing managers expressed more serious concern (45%) than other job categories. Across all job categories, from press directors to production managers, the scarcity of resources is seen as a major hurdle to pursuing digital book publishing strategies. Sixty-nine percent of all respondents marked "resources" as either serious or critical, and 73% of press directors reported this level of concern.

The question of business models for digital book publishing was addressed several times in the survey. While fewer respondents see this as a serious or critical problem today (61%) as in 2009 (83%), 69% of press directors still indicated that business models are a significant concern. However, though it is seen as less of a worrying issue for many in the community, new and experimental business models were still marked as by far the hottest topics for potential annual meeting panels or other AAUP resources. Confirming the findings and recommendations of our recent AAUP report "Sustaining Scholarly Publishing," the digital pulse-taking of the 2011 survey indicates that finding new models to support scholarly publishing and strengthening the digital backbone of AAUP members are the top priorities in digital book publishing for our community.

For most presses, resource constraints continue to slow the development of healthy experimental models or delay the implementation of necessary digitization and workflow projects. Comments submitted to the 2011 survey, though, reflect a far from negative view of how digital book publishing is developing in the AAUP community. Several publishers felt that proceeding with caution in this arena, while necessary because of scarce resources, was in fact beneficial. They are able to carefully evaluate new options rather than jumping in to unsustainable models.

One respondent took a step back from the nitty-gritty details of particular digital publishing strategies, and put these questions in the context of AAUP community values. "We are strategically agnostic about form (digital vs. print), because we think that our fundamental mission remains the same and that our role continues to provide significant value to the overall system of scholarly communication."

Both the 2011 and 2009-1010 reports of the "Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP Community" survey can be downloaded here: http://aaupnet.org/resources/for-members/data-collection-and-analysis/406-digital-book-publishing-survey. AAUP plans to conduct the survey annually, to release a new snapshot of the landscape of digital book publishing in advance of the Association's annual meetings. The questionnaire will continue to be revised and refined to reflect changing technologies and models.

Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP