The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) recently undertook a survey to establish current practices in scholarly book and e-book publishing, providing analysis and statistics in this growing market. The resulting report develops a picture of the market as it emerges and aims to be a starting point for further research into how publishers are treating this rapidly developing arena.

Respondents included 400 publishers, both commercial and non-profit. A response rate of more than 60% was achieved including most major academic book publishers. The publishers surveyed publish more than 24,000 new titles each year with a collective backlist comprising nearly 350,000 academic and scholarly titles, covering reference, monographs, textbooks, conference reports, professional handbooks and manuals, and research reports. 63.2% of publishers publish e-books in one way or another, but they still account for a fairly small proportion of total book sales, with the average across all publishers at just 9.4%.

Some of the key findings include:

• Publishers continue to use offset printing, as well as digital printing for short-run publications aimed at the academic library market and for print-on-demand.
• Amazon has emerged as a major sales channel for scholarly books. Two-thirds of publishers use Amazon’s ‘Look inside’ feature to allow customers to browse. Most report a positive effect on sales.
• Most publishers still use PDF files as the principal format for e-books. Half use PDFs with some added functionality. Only a quarter use XML full text. 15% are using the ePub format to create re-flowable text.
• The business models in current use are extremely varied but can be divided broadly into the following categories: outright purchase; annual subscription; purchase by individual book chapter; short-term rental. Almost 40% use a model where the e-book content is provided online free of charge with the purchase of the printed edition. New business models are being tried, e.g. open access e-books. Larger publishers generally offer a greater range of business models than smaller publishers, and are generally more likely to differentiate by book type as well as other factors.
• The majority of publishers are actively planning new e-book activities such as new service providers, new devices, and more experimentation with business models. Almost 70% report an increase in e-book revenues in the last two years. Overall, the increase was just over 100% in the last two years.

The full report provides a vast array of evidence about the current policies and practices of scholarly and academic book publishers. For additional information visit http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/default.asp?ID=201.