[9296] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: money, commercialization, and publishing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Tue Dec 28 03:26:02 1993
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1993 2:23:44 -0600 (CST)
From: Sean Donelan <SEAN@sdg.dra.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
> Lingua franca reports a snag -- folks are realizing that it is hard for
>Elsevier (which makes big $$s from its journals) to make the same kind of
>money by selling articles piecemeal. As a result, the pay-per-piece portion
>of TULIP has been delayed.
A problem with pay-per-read for academic articles is most academic
articles are rarely read. From memory, I believe one study estimated
the average academic article was read by *FIVE* people worldwide. Sure
there are some articles read by a lot of people, but there are even more
articles read by almost no one. Remember the saying is "Publish or Perish,"
not "Read or Rot." So the academic publishers have a problem. They would
have to charge such high pay-per-read rates for the few articles that people
actually read, to make up for all the unread articles; it would exceed the
market value of the article. [Well, I could suggest they publish fewer
articles, but I'd rather face the wrath of a few reasonable, capitalist
publishers than thousands of rabid, tenure-track professors. :-)]
On the other hand, there is also a segment of the magazine market
that has an extremely high reader-to-article level. Something like
Consumer Reports might do well with a pay-per-read pricing strategy.
The trick is to not go bankrupt while trying to transition to a
different pricing strategy.
Another problem, is the budget effect. This has nothing to do with
how much money is actually paid. Rather whose budget does the money
come out of. If you try to shift the fees to a different budget, a lot
of resistance develops. And most importantly, the person paying
the bill, making the purchasing decision, or using the product may
in fact be different people and have different needs.
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
Domain: sean@dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
