Routledge Publishing

[paulgranger]

Routledge publish what look like interesting books at eye-watering prices, as do other academic publishers, but at the moment, and who knows for how long, their Kindle editions are, though not cheap, definitely worth considering. For instance, James Pugh on the Royal Flying Corps. £105 hardback, £27.99 Kindle, or Paul Harris, The Men Who Planned the war, £95 hardback, £39.98 Kindle. There are others.

[Guest]

   Routledge are now re-transmogrified as "Taylor and Francis Group" -which is a large-scale lateral integration of a number of academic publishers into one giant group. The idea is-as you have guessed with monographs now usually £105 a pop-to make pots of money. There are some UK institutions-who are the main targets of this pricing, who refuse to play ball and just go without-although the group is so large it is difficult for library buyers entirely to evade these high prices as some stuff just has to be bought.

    A curiosity of amalgamations is that there is a miscellany of backstocks of the various constituent publishers. Routledge's aim seems to be to sell these down and then keep everything "in print" perpetually as Print On Demand - keep no stock, charge the high prices. But some stuff from Routledge et al is popping up as they realise they are overstocked with bits and bobs and clear out old end-of-bin stock of physical books so as to achieve consistency on POD editions, which are largely paperbacks anyway. 

  Thus, a good time to keep an eye on Tinternet or log in your wants with ABE,etc as some bits are appearing as old stock gets cleared out. In addition, -and I stress I have no commercial connection with them- , visitors to "The Smoke" might care to visit Judd Street Books, close to Camden Town Hall and the major rail termini who have had a long-term connection with Routledge and usually have a good few Routledge books on their shelves (Also especially good, for the same reason, for Yale books)  They are the strong on academic remainders of all sorts and a very good browsing bookshop.

[paulgranger]

Thanks for the information, I'll certainly try to get to Judd's when next in that London. Point taken about flogging off overstocks, interestingly the Pugh book I mentioned is only just published, and the Kindle price is therefore surprisingly low (relatively speaking)

[seaJane]

Routledge was Routledge Kegan Paul before T&F got hold of them. Back in the day (say 1987-1995-ish) they were actually far more reasonably priced. Sigh.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, seaJane said:

Routledge was Routledge Kegan Paul before T&F got hold of them. Back in the day (say 1987-1995-ish) they were actually far more reasonably priced. Sigh.

 

    Routledge was never a cheapo publisher, even back in the good old days- but they have got a lot more mechanistic about greed in recent years. Academics are solicited for volumes for publication at these egregious prices- T and F seem to want to squeeze the market of university money by controlling a larger share of the market and extending the percentage of academic stuff published by them in that market- As I said, snme libraries have arrived at the day the pigs refused to be driven to market. But this tactic and the use of POD mean much smaller actual print-runs of first edition physical books-and, I suspect a shortage of copies of these books on the market at any time as university-type libraries will be the only buyers-They are beyond the public library system by price already

 

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[seaJane]

I was working in a university library about then, keeping individual tutors' book budgets and organising purchases. Still maintain that RKP, along with St Martin's/Leicester, was at the cheaper end.

[Staffsyeoman]

In the words of a friend, informing me that a mutual friend's long-awaited military history PhD had finally appeared in print (no names, no pack drill)

 

"What's the b****y point? At that price, no more than six people will ever read it."  Cover price:  £110.  Pages?  265

[ss002d6252]

26 minutes ago, Staffsyeoman said:

In the words of a friend, informing me that a mutual friend's long-awaited military history PhD had finally appeared in print (no names, no pack drill)

 

"What's the b****y point? At that price, no more than six people will ever read it."  Cover price:  £110.  Pages?  265

Ouch.

 

Craig

[The Scorer]

42p a page .... I won't be one of them, that's for sure!

[Guest]

  Academic publishing from Taylor and Francis group has become extortionate-for that is what it is-It's holding institutions to ransom. 2 points to consider:

 

1) As well as Kindle, the major academic publishers provide packages of their journal and monograph publications online to institutional libraries (as do Wiley, OUP, CUP,etc). Thus, with Kindle and these packages the item is widely available and in print forever.

 

2) When all is said and done, at least T and F published the thing- they took the risk and produced hard-copy editions. The days of Spellmount and Greenhill Books are gone.

[Staffsyeoman]

The faintest glimmering hope is Yale - they still produce academic works at around the £30 mark; some are - whisper it - cheaper.

[trajan]

20 hours ago, The Scorer said:

... 42p a page .... 

 

As opposed to, what 10p a pcopied page? That aside, the matter of over-pricing academic books has resulted here in Turkey (with a very low per capita income level compared to the west) in a situation where many of my students simply borrow the necessary textbook from the uni library, and then get somebody to pcopy and bind it for them - at a quarter of the cost... As an author of an academic textbook, I am outraged; as somebody living here faced with books that are thought over-priced already by those living in the west, then, well, 'nuff said... 

 

Julian

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, trajan said:

 

As opposed to, what 10p a pcopied page? That aside, the matter of over-pricing academic books has resulted here in Turkey (with a very low per capita income level compared to the west) in a situation where many of my students simply borrow the necessary textbook from the uni library, and then get somebody to pcopy and bind it for them - at a quarter of the cost... As an author of an academic textbook, I am outraged; as somebody living here faced with books that are thought over-priced already by those living in the west, then, well, 'nuff said... 

 

Julian

 

    Julian- availability of knowledge is a form of cultural apartheid. Publishers exist to make a profit-when all is said and done about "culture", the first aim of a publisher is to put food on his plate and that of his family-same as all of us. (As a retired antiquarian bookseller-mainly of OP academic books-nothing so vulgar as new books for me)  Publishing is big business and there is-overall-worldwide a substantial  demand for most academic publications of quality- Routledge/Taylor and Francis will know within c.10 copies just what the optimum print-run will be for this stuff- and POD services the random/chance purchaser  market thereafter. 

    The trick is to maintain the quality- Expansion plans of some publishers usually come to grief because they run out of worthwhile material to publish that will generate "forced" sales (ie A book that will sell but the customer will grump about the price). There are some signs that Routledge have got to this position- I understand from several academics that they have been approached to tout for anything to publish from anyone they know. And when quality of work goes down and price goes up a publisher quickly falls into disrepute- the publishing career of Croom Helm is a good example- large print runs of many marginal works, high price, low quality (Printed from typescript) meant that folk just didn't buy the stuff because they knew it would be remaindered very quickly (Ironically, the Croom here-Mr. David Croom went on to be a Director of Routledge)

 

       The benchmark publisher still has to be Oxford-which dwarfs all other academic publishers. Yes, can be bl**dy expensive but the brand is good. Oxford usually have so many standing orders for sections of their publications worldwide, that anything they publish is already into profit the day it is published.

   Looking at the supply of books from the "secondhand and antiquarian" end, there are 2 other matters of concern. Much of the English secondhand book trade has thrived in previous decades from the inability of English publishers to get the print-run right. If it is under against demand, then there is a demand for it OP-if it is over, then it get's remaindered or there is a "sale" by the publishers. Modern technology and POD mean that publishers are spot-on with print runs. Routledge thus far have not had a sale (not directly anyway)-such as Oxford has quite regularly. There is some evidence that Routledge are now much tighter on review copies as well- all of which means a general unavailability of books in the market otherwise than at full price from the publisher. Which is their aim. Tightening of print-runs, tightening of reviews and "freebies"(eg author's copies) has been done before- Cambridge lurched into it nearly 30 years back-a boom of publications but rarely seen secondhand-and ,again, very high prices.

    Go to other publishers?  Yes, of course. Luckily, there are good alternatives to the cartel of major academic publishers for military stuff on the Great War. Which means the Great war stuff gets to a wider market. Most academics-as you know-are on the career narrative of "publish or perish". Fortunately, many authors of good books on the Great war are not on that particular hamster wheel. But it does distort study and research-that some work remains virtually unknown because other researchers cannot easily access it due to price.