Bloomsbury's Academic Aspirations

Originally published at outsellinc.com, 28 September 2008
by Kate Worlock

Two recent announcements from Bloomsbury have set the company's academic publishing stall out for all to see.  

Important Details
In the UK, Bloomsbury has been in the news most often in recent years thanks to its publication of the Harry Potter series, which helped boost revenues to a high of £150.2 million in 2007, with associated profit before tax of £17.9 million.

CEO Nigel Newton has a keen understanding of the need to position the company for what he terms "the post-Harry Potter era". To that end, changes in the last 12 months have included the appointment of Richard Charkin as executive director in October 2007, the April 2008 division of the group into two segments (trade and specialist, with Charkin taking charge of the former, and Newton the latter), and the completion of several important acquisitions designed to boost its educational, academic and reference publishing activities.

These include the purchase of Featherstone Education in April 2008, and this week's acquisition of Berg Academic for £2 million.

However, the most interesting announcement is one which came out of Bloomsbury earlier in September – the creation of a new imprint, Bloomsbury Academic which will be run by publishing industry veteran Frances Pinter. The interesting aspect here is the model which the new imprint will be using: publishing Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS) monographs free of charge online using a Creative Commons licence which allows only non-commercial use, and also making them available for sale using a print on demand model.

The imprint aims to have 50 new titles online and in print by the end of 2009.

Implications
Bloomsbury Academic is really an experiment aimed at solving some of the problems that the network has created for academic publishing. The move to digital has created opportunities for academics to bypass publisher services, for example by depositing pre-print work in institutional repositories, and to severely disrupt the business model – open access is the key case in point here.

Pinter believes that some sectors of the academic publishing market will benefit from an open access model, but a typical author pays model of the sort seen in STM markets does not work in the HSS space because research budgets are generally not sufficient to cover publishing costs. The Bloomsbury Academic model is designed to see whether publishing content free of charge under a Creative Commons licence and also making it available for purchase using print on demand would be economically sustainable.

Bloomsbury is the first major publisher to have tested this radical a concept in the HSS area. Pinter believes that, for library customers, the book remains the most economic vessel for printed content – enabling library users to print out a 300 page monograph is not only expensive in terms of overhead and staffing, but the end product is not then available to be shared with other library users. The key lies in the licensing approach – the "free" content is protected by a Creative Commons licence which allows only non-commercial use, and it is hoped that making this content available will stimulate interest in the material, which will then drive print on demand sales.

Bloomsbury is dedicated to the concept – the division has a five year business plan – and has support from several key players in the market, with Board members including British Library CEO Dame Lynne Brindley.

Pinter hopes that not only will the concept prove sustainable, but that it will offer further benefits to authors and to Bloomsbury. Making the service work well for academics will be key – other than a vocal minority, most see the value of publishers' activities.

The service should also benefit users in the developing world, and if usage is good then the model may help to attract authors to the new imprint. Bold experimentation of this sort is the only way in which publishers can hope to stay at least abreast of the way in which academic communication is evolving and to ensure their continued participation in the process – with so much focus on activities in the STM space, academics in the HSS space should welcome this development with open arms.

Kate Worlock is Director, Market Intelligence Service - United Kingdom   
 
http://www.outsellinc.com/about_us/employees/Kate_Worlock