Overall Picture of the EM field

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How was this field born and how is it evolving?

Book Publishing Industry

  • "Since 1639 book publishing has been clustered primarily on the East Coast (mainly in the port cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia) and in Chicago. New York City became the center of the industry in the nineteenth century." (Greco 1997, 4)
  • "By 1987 the New York City-Boston-Philadelphia triad no longer dominated the industry. California was the second largest book publishing state, with an impressive 375 corporations. The other principle states were Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida. Pennsylvania was a distinct seventh." (Greco 1997, 5)
  • In the 1990s, "the impact of electronic publishing, the information highway, sophisticated telecommunication systems, computers, and fax machines seem to negate the importance of publishers being located in urban centers" (Greco 1997, 8)
    • "freelance editors, consultants, graphic artists, and others [...] can [now] be contracted out and supervised from some distance because of the availability and usefulness of electronic ocmputer and telecommunications systems."
  • "Dominant Trends Since 1945" (Greco 2007, 10)

What are the main business models?

Book Publishing Industry

  • Solitary Authorship + Contractual Relationship
    • "Whatever the motive, the stark reality of writing means that the author toils alone, for writing is a singular, hard profession." (Greco 1997, 1) However, "the author's objective changes. He or she needs a publisher willing to tender a contract to have the novel, biography, or monograph edited, printed, reviewed, publicized, distributed, and, hopefully, read by as many people as possible." (Greco 1997, 1)

Commercial Publishing House

  • Modest objectives?: "... to sell enough copies to pay the publishing house's employees, taxes, and other expenses while making a contribution to the world of letters. Hopefully, a profit can be made a royalty paid to the author." (Greco 1997, 1)

University Presses

  • Mission?: "to make a contribution to scholarship while trying to pay the bills" (Greco 1997, 2)

What are the innovation dynamics in this field?

Inputs Innovations

  • "New capital expenditures" (Greco 1997, 3)
    • Timing: incremental growth, 1967-1987
    • "Computer systems for editing, data management, accounting, royalties, and payroll"
  • Commons-based peer production

Outputs Innovations

  • e-Books
    • Timing: potentially disruptive technology but still some percentage of sales
    • In 2005, "30,000-50,000 e-book units were in use in the United States" (Greco 2007, 24)
    • In 2005, "total e-book sales were in the $12 million range" (Greco 2007, 24)
    • Example: CourseSmart
  • (Computerized) Print on Demand (POD)
    • Timing: incremental innovation "allowed publishers to keep titles 'in print,' effecitvely reaching new audiences for decades" (Greco 2007, 24)

How does knowledge flow in this field?

coming soon

Is this field replicating models from other fields?

coming soon

How many companies?

Book Publishers (not only EM)

  • 2006 U.S. Census Data (U.S. Census Bureau, Company Statistics Division & Bowan 2008)
    • # of Firms: 3,042
    • Employees: 83,504
    • Annual Payroll: $4,993,924
  • 1967 and 1987 U.S. Census Data (Greco 1997, 2-3)


Year # of Firms # of Employees # Annual Payroll Shipments Value
1967 1,022 52,000 $390 million $2.13 billion
1987 2,298 70,100 $1.86 billion $11.6 billion
2006 3,042 83,504 $5 billion ???

Textbooks Publishers

"Market share for new textbooks (that is, the $4.2 billion piece) is highly consolidated, with 6 publishers holding about 85% of all sales dollars (Pearson, Thomson, McGraw Hill, John Wiley, Houghton Mifflin, and St. Martin's/Von Holtzbrinck). Although college publishing remains highly profitable for the large players, with reported EBITDA in some instances as high as 30%, growth has stalled, due in large part to the rise of the used book business, which represents the key strategic issue in the industry today." (Esposito 2005, 2)

How much money do they make or how much money do they “move” in the American economy?

Book Publishing Industry

"The U.S. college textbook business currently has annual revenues net to publishers of about $4.2 billion. (For a variety of reasons, this document will address only the U.S. opportunity.) The figure for the amount actually spent on classroom materials is much higher than that, however. For example, used texts have now grown to about $1.2 billion a year, net to retailers. The margin on new texts taken by retailers is approximately $1 billion (that is, $1 billion on top of the publishers' receipts of $4.2 billion). And then there are all the books that are not formal textbooks that find their way into the curriculum, mostly in the humanities: literary classics, paperbacks on social policy, anthologies, coursepacks (collections of readings), etc. Data on these informal materials are hard to assemble, in part because of their widespread provenance (literally thousands of trade and university press publishers), and in part because most of these sales go through wholesalers, making it difficult for publishers to ascertain a book's ultimate destination. A good working estimate of the total size of the college book market is therefore around $7 billion." (Esposito 2005, 2)

How important is research from universities in this specific field?

coming soon

How important is public funding in this field?

coming soon

How important is private funding / venture capital in this field?

coming soon

Are there any specific public policies (from agencies, federal or state policies) that give incentives for openness or enclosure?

National Legislation

  • H.R. 1464, the Learning Opportunities with Creation of Open Source Textbooks (LOW COST) Act of 2009
    • Full text of the bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1464
    • A bill introduced in the House March 12 would require certain federal agencies to collaborate and develop freely available open source educational materials for college-level math and science subjects. ('Foster Introduces Bill to Reduce Cost of College Textbooks' 2009)
    • H.R. 1464, introduced by Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) would require heads of federal agencies that expend more than $10,000,000 annually on scientific education and outreach to use at least two percent of those funds to develop and implement open source materials as an educational outreach effort. The materials would be made available free of charge on a new “Federal Open Source Material” Web site, where they could be downloaded, redistributed, changed, and revised by any member of the general public. (ibid.)
    • The head of each affected agency would be required to develop, implement, and establish procedures for checking the veracity, accuracy, and educational effectiveness of the materials. At a minimum, the materials would contain a comprehensive set of textbooks or other educational materials covering topics in college-level physics, chemistry, or math; be updated annually; and free of copyright violations. The bill would authorize $15,000,000 in appropriations for the purpose of awarding grants to educational institutions, nonprofit or for-profit organizations, and federal agencies that produce the materials. (ibid.)

State Legislation

Common Policy Themes

click on links to see lists of relevant proposed and passed legislation from 2004-2007, compiled from ACSFA 2007

  1. Sales tax exemption for textbooks
    • also includes income tax credits for EM purchases
  2. Require faculty to consider costs of educational materials
  3. Regulate educational materials that have particularly limited re-usability
  4. Require publishers and/or bookstores to offer unbundled textbooks in addition to bundles for particular courses
  5. Require publishers to disclose info on textbooks’ wholesale prices and revision histories
    • Reduces sales of new textbooks by publishers
  6. Recommend that institutions explore alternative textbook sources or otherwise innovate to reduce costs of educational materials
    • e.g. textbook rental programs
  7. Regulate textbook prices in public institutions
  8. Commission studies and reports to investigate high cost of textbooks
    • Good to follow up on and see state findings for those studies that were actually carried out
  9. Require schools/bookstores to actively promote textbook buyback programs
    • Represents used book competition for publishers

Potentially Key Legislation

  • AB 2477 (CA), signed into law 9/16/04 ACSFA 2007, 2
    • “Encourages publishers to unbundle textbooks; reveal price info on textbooks, differences between editions, and planned length of circulation of current edition; and update current editions with supplements rather than the creation of new editions
    • "Requests the UC system and requires CSU and CCC systems to encourage faculty, through the academic senate, to consider low cost textbooks, work w/ publishers to create cost-effective bundles, inform students of book costs and differences between editions, and evaluate the system of how faculty notify the campus bookstore of textbook selection
    • “Requests the UC system and requires CSU and CCC systems, though the academic senate, to evaluate the current system of communication between faculty and the campus bookstore
    • “Requires campus bookstores to publicly list textbook costs for each course
    • “Urges schools to give students as many options as possible for purchasing textbooks”
  • HB 1024 (CO), signed into law 6/1/06 ACSFA 2007, 4
    • “Requires the governing board of each state college and university to consider creating an online textbook library for students in an effort to reduce the cost of college textbooks; these schools are not required to create this library, only to consider it; no other information is provided”
  • AB 1214 (NY), introduced 1/19/05 ACSFA 2007, 13
    • “Amends the education law to broaden the definition of textbooks to include supplementary books, fiction, non-fiction, manipulatives, art reproduction, maps, sheet music, manuals, almanacs, atlases, general dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, and newspapers”

What is the cost structure of the field?

coming soon

Who are the producers, the buyers, and the users?

coming soon

What is the structure of power from the production side?

Who has the power to control production?

coming soon

How is the control distributed?

coming soon

What is the structure of power in the demand side?

Who has the power to control demand?

  • Book Publishing Industry
    • Book Reviews (Greco et al 2007, 48-51)
    • Oprah Winfrey (Greco et al 2007, 51-53)

How is the control distributed?

coming soon

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