The Business of Scholarly Publishing: Managing in Turbulent Times by Albert N. Greco (review)

Fordham University marketing professor Albert N. Greco is a well-known and prolific author in the world of book publishing, having written or edited numerous books about the industry and served on the boards of three scholarly journals. In this book, The Business of Scholarly Publishing, Greco uses the most recent data he was able to gather from a variety of sources—recognizing that some of the data are a little old—to give an overview of the landscapes of both scholarly journals and scholarly books, focusing primarily on the twenty-first century.

After an opening chapter in which he discusses the history and growth of scholarly publishing and its subsequent challenges, Greco divides the book between journals and books, and he brings them together again in the final chapter to discuss how to manage in turbulent times, including the various movements toward open access.

Greco gives an interesting and concise history of the growth of journals publishing. He notes the publication of the first scholarly journal, Journal des Savants, in 1665, soon followed by an English-language scholarly journal, Philosophical Transactions, and contrasts that beginning with the 28,100 journals published in the English language today. Greco traces the many factors that led to this growth. It is a fascinating and concise summary of the historical changes that caused this, including factors one would never consider, such as the GI Bill (which helped expand the US college landscape, thus increasing the number of faculty and college libraries). This growth prompted many universities to institute rigorous processes for tenure and promotion and created what we know now as the 'publish or perish' imperative.

Greco compares and contrasts the average cost per title of journals in various fields. While interesting, the charts could have been put in an appendix (a criticism I would make of many of the pages of data throughout the book), with more emphasis put on analysing the data and making more concise conclusions about what the data mean.

As he does later in the scholarly books section, Greco analyses a profit and loss (P&L) statement for a scholarly journal over a period of five years. While the gross margins remained stable and profits grew steadily, Greco does posit the notion that, if the journal were to go 100 per cent digital, it would save on many expenses, but given that this particular example shows steady growth, one wonders what the incentive would be. Once print copies become harder to sell (as they have been), this move would make more sense.

Greco does a nice job in chapter 3 of discussing the ever-important citation indices and a journal's impact factor, things that rank a journal's prestige and are important considerations for scholars as they face tenure or other promotion. He also discusses the worrisome Plan S, the European open access mandate for publicly funded research, and ponders what it might mean for books and journals, not just in the scientific realm and not limited to the European countries that back it.

Greco pivots to scholarly books in chapter 4, citing the eye-popping statistic that university presses as a whole 'released 30.24 titles every day of the year' from 2001 to 2016 (102). He also shares statistics that once again point out that university presses underprice their books relative to their commercial counterparts, even though commercial publishers have the benefit of scale.

Greco goes on to explain a book P&L statement and contrasts it with an eBook P&L. I'm not convinced that the amount of time and space he takes up explaining one press's P&L for one particular book is necessary or even representative, but for readers who are not familiar with such statements, it will give them some insight into publishing basics...