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University presses have faced “more change in the past 12 weeks than in the preceding 12 years”, The Bookseller has been told, as publishers develop their digital offerings to cope with a drop in print demand since Covid-19.
Some publishers have said the pandemic has consolidated changes that have been in the pipeline for years. “Rather than igniting change, the pandemic lockdown has acted as an accelerant,” said Anthony Cond, m.d. of Liverpool University Press. “E-book sales that had begun to plateau are now an area of significant growth, print on demand which was widespread is now absolutely dominant for academic books, the migration of print and online to online-only journals subscriptions will surely continue apace, and everything from meetings to marketing that were hybrid in person/online are now seamlessly digital.”
However print still accounts for a large proportion of university publishers’ profit, meaning many have felt the effects of the lockdown period. “Print books are still a major part of our business", said Alison Shaw, c.e.o. of Bristol University Press. “Last financial year, 34% of revenue came from digital products, so the majority is still print. The pandemic meant a significant drop in print sales which are now starting to pick up again. We continued to publish through the period, only holding back a couple of scholarly trade books to the autumn.”
Timothy Wright of Edinburgh University Press said a significant proportion of EUP’s sales had been printed books or journals until now. “Over the past three months we’ve seen a significant decline in print sales since February March, though there was some decline before then," he said. “We were doing pretty well generally up to end of February, our reduction in print sales year on year is about 7%. There’s no doubt that when we get to the end of July, the reduction will be significantly greater than that.
"Our e-sales are up by 9% since the beginning of the year — but that is a trend that has been happening for a while anyway. Our print sales have been going down and our e-sales have been going up, the same as everyone.
“We’ve got really significant challenges ahead, and we’re looking at our costs across the business, in terms of travel and other areas. We are in a position to meet those challenges, by shifting focus away from the print monographs and by having a journals list and managing our cash,“ he said.
For Manchester University Press, book revenue for print and electronic format is split 70%/30% for this financial year, with e-books up 25%. The press has a forecast of 35% of sales coming from e-books next year.
Many publishers are implementing strategies to cope with the lack of demand for printed academic materials from university libraries. Edinburgh University Press has been focusing on making titles in its backlist and frontlist available electronically, while BUP will be launching a “Rapid Response” package, which includes low-priced digital social commentary and research, and will produce a range of Covid-19 related books in print and digital format on accelerated schedules.
“We are also expanding our digital publishing routes to market through a range of library-focused platforms," said Shaw. “Publishing both print and digital will continue to be at the heart of our strategy offering, as wide a range of options for consumers and libraries.”
LUP has seen a tenfold increase in the number of institutional trials for its digital collections since March. “Libraries have been clear that if even part of the next academic year is online it would be irresponsible of them not to purchase books and journals digitally rather than in print,” said Cond.
David Clark, m.d for Oxford University Press' academic division, said :"We are continuously looking at the way we work to ensure we can continue to deliver a high-quality digital experience to meet the needs of our authors and users. The need for this has increased significantly during the pandemic as students and researchers are almost exclusively reliant on digital resources right now."
He added: "Academic publishing has been undergoing digital transformation for many years, and often faster than other areas of publishing due to increased demand from users; they expect academic content to be digital, accessible, discoverable, and optimized. There are also some real benefits to digital functionality when interacting with research—it provides more opportunity to analyse data, annotate text, and draw connections between different pieces of research."
Simon Ross explained MUP is using several digitally focused strategies to promote sales. Drawing on the e-book success, he said: “This is a continuation of the existing digital transformation strategy, which included building two new content platforms, manchesterhive.com and machesteropenhive.com, which launched in the summer of 2018. Over the past four years we have ensured a deep backlist digitisation and ensured all our current list has files for p.o.d. We’ve also continued to develop our marketing site with direct sales of print and e-books to individuals. We expect it to continue, this is via direct e-book sales of single titles, our Digital Collections and sales through aggregators.”
The press also relaunched is academic trade list, which became the “surprise success” for its print sales, in addition to utilising online events.
LUP will be launching a new medieval studies e-library, three journal archive digital collections, and is working towards making more than 600 volumes in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment Online collection available in partnership with the Voltaire Foundation. It will also be working collaboratively with Bloomsbury on two digital projects in the new academic year.
“Narratives of the decline of print miss the point,” said Cond. “The range of models for digital have the potential to open up wider readership and greater utility for our authors' research than ever before. The major challenge for all academic publishers will be the financial impact of the pandemic on the education sector, which is among the worst hit of all sectors. We need to work in harmony not just with the disrupted supply chain but with authors, librarians and readers to negotiate sustainable change that will benefit all of the stakeholders in scholarly communication. On that note, we can also expect to see more interest in Open Access and greater challenges than ever in its funding for non-STEM subjects.”