Is there a future for an academic publisher?

The focus of publishing is no longer the production of an elegant book (or some other artefact) at the right price. There was a time that if a publisher produced a book that satisfied the reading habits of a community of readers, the chances of selling copies of it were influenced by the product, its price as well as the publishers marketing efforts.

The role of the publisher is changing in today’s environment, where books and other material overwhelm communities of readers directly presented to them by the authors. The focus has become on building a long-term relationship with a community of readers who come to recognize and trust a publisher’s brand.

Most academic authors do not need a publisher to produce their books or articles. They can easily produce elegant books with computer based page layout systems. Digital print-on-demand facilities also make it easy for the authors to produce copies with minimal up front investment and have them despatched to the readers. In addition the distribution via the web makes the print medium less critical.

Some academic authors find the intervention of a publisher in the production process annoying! Academic publishers demand that all manuscripts be subjected to peer-review. This incorporates a long delay in the production process and in most cases requires the author to revise the manuscript. Publishers also use trained copy-editors who revise the language and style of the publication to a level of consistency within the publisher’s house style with which the authors may not be comfortable.

In my view publishers are winning on two fronts and losing on a third when it comes to academic publishing.

1) Most academic articles are published in established journals and publishers own these. Academics are locked into these brands and attempts to break out of this have had limited success. The publishers clearly add value to the process and their brand helps bring the authors to the attention of an established readership. The idea of “open access” in my view is a red hearing as it still acknowledges the role of the publisher. It only shifts the payment to them from the reader to either the author or a third party benefactor.
2) Reference and textbooks are growing to be the main stay of academic publishers. They meet the needs of communities of readers and publishers are better at finding out such needs and getting authors to fulfil them. As the potential audience for a textbook or a reference book is large publishers are willing to take risks to make them work.
3) It is the publication of research monographs that has most suffered in recent years. The readership for an original idea is small and expensive to reach in marketing terms. Authors are not convinced that they need a publisher's help to reach readers. The publishers see little financial gain in ever smaller audiences for ever larger number of books.