Annual Book Price Update

November 2007

TO: Customers of YBP and Lindsay & Croft

FR: Nat Bruning

RE: 2006/2007 New Book Price and Output Report

Each fall YBP publishes a report on price and output for new books published during our prior fiscal year. The data encompasses all new titles treated on the Approval Plan programs of YBP and of Lindsay & Croft, YBP’s division in the United Kingdom, two offices which regularly profile, with book-in-hand, well over 65,000 distinct new titles annually. Since our Approval Plan programs are expressly designed to serve academic libraries, our data, which we have reported in a consistent way for over a dozen years, is a useful index to English-language publishing trends for scholarly, professional, and scientific books.

We are pleased to present, once again, these reports for our company’s 2006/2007 fiscal year.

A complete set of data, showing separate YBP and L&C totals for all titles handled between July 2006 and June 2007, can be found on the YBP website (click here). We present several types of data. Some is organized by subject, under the Library of Congress, Dewey, or National Library of Medicine classification system. Other data is organized by publisher. Subject and publisher reports both show the number of titles handled, the total list price, and the average list price. We also show data by "non-subject parameters," which include bibliographic categories like binding or format, and interdisciplinary fields such as Black Studies, Globalization, or Biotechnology. All of these reports are available on our website in PDF format. Excel versions are available on demand in GOBI.

As the YBP table below shows, last year on our Approval Plan program we profiled 59,732 titles. This figure, about 2,600 titles above our total for 2005/06, is a new record for YBP.

Half of this title increase is attributed to the output of small publishers that we added to our approval press list in the past 12 months. The other half is the result of heavier title output from our legacy publishers. This growth was lead by Nova Science (+247) which has been aggressively expanding its list over recent years and Cambridge University Press (+198) who published a large number of ESL titles and reprints. Oxford University Press (+150) also had a big year. We continued to see publishers growing through acquisition with Taylor & Francis purchasing Lawrence Erlbaum and David Fulton and Springer purchasing Humana.

The 59,732 profiled titles represent the academic books of nearly 1500 imprints, half of which published 10 or fewer titles in 2006/07. It also includes over 700 of our buyer’s AP Plus selections, titles of academic merit published by small presses we wouldn’t otherwise cover. As well, it represents our concerted effort to provide select coverage of Canadian, Australian and New Zealand academic publishing.

While publisher output was up, the average list price per title was relatively stable. It rose from $68.10 in 2005/06 to $68.36 in 2006/07 for an increase of only $0.26, or .04%. The average price was kept in check in part by Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Brill, Sage and a few other large publishers whose drop in average list price from the previous year offset increases from other publishers. This data counts cloth editions whenever there is a choice between cloth and paper. The average list price for the "paper-preferred" bibliographic universe, where in the opposite way a paperback is counted in place of a simultaneous cloth edition, was $62.08, representing an increase of 3.3%.

As usual, the average price varied from subject to subject. In Library of Congress terminology, for example, G Geography was up (+21%), HM Sociology was up (+18%) while RC Internal Medicine was down (- 1%). Another interesting look at prices by subject, however, might be by interdisciplinary topic, data recorded in our "non-subject parameter" reports. Our YBP figures show that fields of interest such as Nanotechnology (+16%), Public Policy (+11%), Gay/Lesbian Studies (+26%), and Chicano/Hispanic Studies (+8%) all were substantially up in price for the year.

The table below shows YBP’s data for publishing output and new book list prices for the past twelve years. (These figures, again, are "cloth-preferred.")

The next table shows output and price data over the past six fiscal years at Lindsay & Croft, YBP’s division located in Godalming, England. L&C attempts comprehensive coverage for new UK titles of interest to academic libraries around the world. L&C also profiles a modest number of books from continental Europe and from Africa. Profiling 16,412 titles, L&C set a new high-water mark. Continuum (+ 121), Cambridge Scholars Press (+104), Cambridge University Press (+96) contributed the most to this new record. As also shown, prices went up in the UK after several years of low or no increases. We experienced higher average list prices from many publishers including Springer (+36.3%), Continuum (22.9%), and Edinburgh University Press (+19.1%).

This year was our second year profiling e-books from NetLibrary so we have comparative pricing data to share for the first time. Based on a profiled e-book count of 15,498, the average list price was $95.54. This is a 34% increase over the previous year’s average list price of $71.16. What happened? Did the price of e-books take a sudden jump? Not exactly. Two years ago when we started adding e-books to our approval service, we loaded over 55,000 e-books, 85% of which were backlist and carried a lower average list price. Last year’s $95.54 reflects the average list price of front list e-books which will continue to make up a larger percentage of the NetLibrary e-books we profile going forward. We have recently added ebrary and EBL as aggregator partners and will factor their output into future price reports. We expect over time that our price reports for e-books will become a standard planning tool for academic librarians, as our reports for print books are.

Of course all of this is aggregate data. As we have said in the past, we think that libraries will find a review of their own purchasing history to be the best indicator of the inflation rate they will experience. In fact, as it always does, 2006/07 book price inflation varied widely among YBP and L&C customers. Subject emphases, binding preference, changes in budget, and the method for acquiring UK and other English-language books from around the world are some of the factors that made one library’s experience different from another’s.

All of the data cited in this report, as well as aggregate and local data configured in many other ways for hundreds of bibliographic categories, can be obtained at any time in GOBI. For the past several years, GOBI has offered reports enabling librarians not only to track their own library’s YBP and L&C buying patterns, but also to track the corresponding bibliographic universe in ways that make sense locally. GOBI’s "New Title Reports," a subscription feature which can be found under the "Approvals" menu, offer on-demand and highly customized access to the same Approval Plan data that we use to create this annual output and price feature for YBP and L&C. We think all academic libraries will find GOBI a powerful tool in budgeting and planning.

Each year librarians regularly ask YBP for a forecast of the inflation rate of book prices. We do our best to consider our historical data, collect insight from buyers and publishers, and review general economic data when developing our forecast. From our conversations with publishers, we know that they are very aware of the pressures on library budgets and want to be careful not to over price their books. Market pressure will keep publisher prices from rising quickly. Other indicators seem to support the prediction that publisher prices will increase only modestly. The US Producer Price Index – Industry Group: Book Publishers and the US Consumer Price Index have both been tracking in the 3-4 % increase range for the past five years. This is consistent with what YBP has seen over the same period. Over the past five years, YBP has seen an average increase of 3.8%. We predict that in 2008, the increase will not deviate far from this historic average. We are calling for a 3.5% increase. In the UK, the Consumer Price Index is tracking inflation at 2.4% and the retail Price Index is running at 4.4%. Therefore the inflation rate in the UK is currently tracking pretty close to the US rate. We are predicting the average price of UK books to be up 3% in 2008. With e-books, we believe prices will vary widely as publishers continue to digitize their backlist and release large numbers of these titles at favorable lower prices. We see evidence that front list e-book prices will climb from our 2006/07 average list price at about the same 3.5% rate we expect to see in print book prices.

Libraries who are importing books are certainly watching the dropping value of the dollar as closely as they are the inflation rate. A year ago, the Pound was trading at $1.91, the Australian Dollar at $0.77, and the Canadian Dollar at $0.88. Today the pound is up 12%, the Australian Dollar is up 18%, and the Canadian Dollar is up 22%. Cambridge University Press has announced that it will be pegging US prices of their titles to the pound as a safeguard against a further fall in the value of dollar. We may see other UK publishers take this step if the dollar doesn’t stop its decline. We are already seeing an increase in the number of titles being announced for publication in the US for 2007/08. As well, YBP will continue to consider adding new presses to our approval plan coverage. We expect to profile 5% more titles in the current year. We are not forecasting a significant increase of new titles out of the UK.