publishing [2]

[charlesg]

          On to Bob Beard's points: it may only cost $5.00 to
          manufacture a CD-ROM, but that's as much as it costs to
          manufacture a short-run book (we can do 500 copies of a 250
          page book for $2500 to $3000 for printing alone).  You still
          have the same distribution, advertising, and all other costs
          with a CD-ROM as you have with a book, and in addition a
          CD-ROM is not as permanent as a book: according to the hi-fi
          magazines that I read, many or most won't last more than ten
          to fifteen years, whereas a book printed on acid-free paper
          (which most printers use today, and Slavica has been using
          since 1985 for all scholarly books) and given a good sewn
          binding will last at least 300 years.  Running off a copy
          and binding it is not cheap, when you take into account the
          time required and the cost of materials (printers, toner,
          and binding are not free, and the type of binding for such
          books is vastly inferior).  Note what dissertations from
          University Microfilms cost, and in my opinion their prices
          are very modest for what they provide.
          Any refereed publishing operation will have costs associated
          with it, and they are not insignificant, and as Mr. Ehle
          rightly points out, even editing and typesetting are
          signficant.  Slavica finds that about 2/3 of our total costs
          are not production costs, but everything else that goes into
          running a publishing operation: advertising, wages, storage,
          taxes, shipping, insurance, computers, etc., etc., and much
          of this would still remain in any electronic publishing
          operation at the present time.  I have no doubt that
          eventually most publishing will be electronic, but it's a
          lot further off than most people seem to think, unless we
          want to go to a do-it-yourself-in-any-old-way, unrefereed
          type of publishing without advertising.
          In the meantime, the question is: what are we going to do in
          the next 10 or 20 years, while waiting for the electronic
          millenium?
                 Charles Gribble   Gribble.3 at osu.edu

          (Opinions expressed are my own and do not in any way
          represent official statements from The Ohio State
          University).