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and ebook prices, many of which cite more than 1,000 per cent cost differences. And using the hashtag, #ebooksos, librarians are also sharing examples of ebook prices on Twitter. Since her letter, Anderson has featured
in articles from the BBC and The Guardian that report on the ‘ebook pricing scandal’ and ‘price gouging’. Westminster has since stated that it will not be acting on the letter – but, undeterred, Anderson and colleagues have taken their case to the Competition and Markets Authority, and await a response. David Prosser, executive director of
Research Libraries UK (RLUK), has also been following ebook pricing carefully. Alongside the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), he recently issued an open letter to the Publishers Association asking for it to work with members to review support of UK higher education institutions given the ongoing lockdowns. During the initial lockdown, many publishers offered extended online access to ebooks and other electronic resources to students working remotely. This has now ended, so Prosser is calling for access barriers to be permanently removed for students still working remotely. However, taking a step back, he also believes that the fundamentals of the text book publishing are, in fact, broken, and simply don’t work in the modern world. As he put it: ‘[The market] hasn’t really
taken into account the move to electronic and hasn’t taken into account that a lot of people might want to read a chapter here and a chapter there, and don’t necessarily want an entire book. ‘The pandemic has really focused minds
on some of the unacceptable practices that we’ve been working around, but no longer can due to limits on travel.’
A publisher view But what do scholarly publishing publishers make of ebooks, the pandemic and the ensuing pricing model row? While some publishers declined an interview, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature and Cambridge University Press were happy to discuss the issues. In an email to Research Information, Mark Majurey, commercial director and vice president of ebooks at Taylor & Francis, highlighted how the publisher had provided free e-textbooks and free upgrades from single to unlimited user access from the 2020 summer term. The company also put in place free photocopying and scanning license extensions, with these due to end come the close of the current academic year.
6 Research Information April/May 2021
“In response to the pandemic, CUP developed a higher education website to quickly deliver textbooks”
Right now, a mighty 97 per cent of
Taylor & Francis’ catalogue, which includes supplementary textbooks, is sold through established models that, according to Majurey, ‘are standard and pretty unremarkable’. However, highly-adopted textbooks make up the remainder, and are sold through library suppliers such as ProQuest and Ebsco, and retailers including Amazon, Google and Apple. What’s more, these titles have, as Majurey put it, ‘more nuanced’ business models and ‘require a considerable amount of investment and ongoing development’. ‘The difference between a single
print copy of a book, priced as a core text for a student, and what amounts to an enterprise licence across an entire university, is like comparing apples and pears,’ said Majurey. ‘Comparing individual print costs to a digital licence which gives access to many readers, does not represent the reality of how different formats are used, nor the additional functionality e-textbooks provide.’
Still, Majurey reckons these e-textbooks, which are sold on a title-by-title basis rather than ‘bundles’, are fairly and competitively priced for the library market. But as he added: ‘We are investigating and experimenting with various partners to create new business models, designed to provide as much value and access as possible to customers. We’re also working with trade bodies... to facilitate dialogue on these models.’ Over at Springer Nature, Wouter van der
Velde, manager, books solutions portfolio, highlights how his company has been working hard to provide value to librarians. ‘We don’t know what the pricing
strategies of other publishers are but I think we price fairly, we price as simply as possible and there are no restrictions on content,’ he told Research Information. ‘For example, we don’t put DRM on content on SpringerLink and we don’t set limits on concurrent users – obviously the ebook price for unlimited users is higher than for one user, but it isn’t ridiculous.’ Come last year’s lockdown, Springer
Nature also made key textbooks freely accessible, via Springer Link, to educators, students and academics. Access to some 500 titles ended as university libraries re-opened – as Van der Velde said: ‘Our hosting provider told us that traffic was going through the roof and we were incurring a lot more costs. The publisher has since launched ‘Flexible eBook Solutions’, designed to
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