LIS 901B: Summer 2005 Lecture 2

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LIS 901B Summer 2005Lecture 2

• Acquisitions Introduction
• Acquisitions The Publishing World
• Acquisitions Management and Principles

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Why Acquisitions Not Taught in Library Schools

• Every library has different policies, practices,
  and procedures
• Not considered as worthy of a semesters worth of
  studying
• May not be considered sufficiently professional
• Some libraries staff their acquisitions
  departments with non-professionals

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Primary Functions

• Order
• Claim
• Receipt/Payment

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Goals of Acquisitions

• To acquire materials as rapidly as possible
• To acquire materials as inexpensively as possible
• To function like a smoothly-operating business
  (pay bills in 30 days, answer correspondence and
  return calls promptly, etc.)

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Change in Acquisitions

• Historical
• In the past, acquisitions focused on locating
  material and recording its bibliographic
  information correctly for the vendor rather than
  the patron (Pitts)
• Present
• Timeliness of information regarding material
  library intends to acquire (ordered but not yet
  received), and material library has just acquired

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Change in Acquisitions (cont.)

• Present (cont.)
• Transfer of some functions from Cataloging to
  Acquisitions
• Present/Future
• Incorporate management of electronic resources to
  include handling of license agreements and
  relaying of technical information

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Prerequisites

• Knowledge of publishing industry
• Knowledge of budgeting
• Knowledge of accounting techniques
• Knowledge of personnel issues

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Acquisitions Functions

• Bibliographic searching
• Order preparation
• Order placement
• File maintenance
• Correspondence
• Claims
• Cancellations
• Receipt
• Billing

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Acquisitions Basics

• Pre-order searching and verification
• Ordering different types of materials
• Vendor selection
• Ordering and receiving
• Fund management and reporting
• Record-keeping and statistics

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Basic Records and Files

• Vendor records/vendor file
• Order requests/order file
• Purchase orders/purchase order file
• Financial records/fund accounting file
• Correspondence/correspondence file
• Serials/standing order check-in records
• Volume holdings
• Invoices

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Librarians and Publishers

• Publisher bashing
• Law of supply and demand
• Law of price elasticity
• mass markets
• vertical markets

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What is a Publisher

• Agent for the author
• Adds value to information
• Selects
• Edits
• Prepares for manufacture
• Contracts for manufacture
• Markets
• Pays the author

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Types of Publishers

• Economically divided
• Commercial
• Non-profit
• By medium
• Book
• Serial/Journal/Periodical
• Audio-visual
• Software
• Web-based

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Types of Publishers

• Trade
• Mass-market paperback
• University presses
• Mail order
• Book club
• Special Interest
• Religious

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Types of Publishers (cont.)

• Professional associations
• Societies
• Reference
• Textbooks
• Governments
• International agencies (U.N., NATO, etc.)
• National/federal governments
• States/provinces
• Municipalities/counties

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Types of Publishers (cont.)

• Institutions
• Universities
• Research institutes
• Independents
• Alternative presses
• Small presses
• Fine presses
• Art presses

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Quasi-Publishers

• Vanity presses (Subsidy publishers)
• Individuals

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Publishing Process

• Publisher contacts author author contacts
  publisher
• Publisher and author negotiate contract
• Author produces manuscript
• Publisher edits manuscript
• Publisher prepares manuscript for publication

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Publishing Process (cont.)

• Publisher contracts for manufacture
• Publisher markets and distributes
• Publisher pays the author

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Roles of the Publisher

• Publishers are information intermediaries
• gathering
• selecting
• enhancing
• informing
• Sounds a lot like libraries!

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Quote

• There are of course at present two main kinds of
  knowledge intermediary the library and the
  publisher.
• Colin Day, Director
• University of Michigan Press

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Gathering Information

• Reactively
• Responding to author submissions
• Proactively
• Recruiting author submissions
• The Acquisitions Editor

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Selecting Information

• Choice of information to publisher
• Sends quality signals to reader
• Effects publisher reputation
• Effects bottom line

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Enhancing Information

• Editing (revisions and resubmissions)
• Copyediting
• Design
• For reading
• For navigation
• For marketability

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Informing

• Readers and libraries
• Marketing
• Publicity
• Notifying vendors
• Reviews

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Publishers Costs

• First copy costs
• Acquisition
• Editing
• Copyediting
• Design
• Marketing
• Incremental costs
• Costs to manufacture the item
• Order processing
• Shipping and handling

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Breaking Even

• First copy costs 25,000
• Incremental costs 10 per copy
• Print run 1 Cost 25,010 per copy
• Print run 10 Cost 2,510 per copy
• Print run 100 Cost 260 per copy
• Print run 500 Cost 60 per copy
• Print run 1000 Cost 35 per copy

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Assuming 500 copies

• For a typical university press publication
• 30 vendor and bookstore discount
• Need 86 per copy retail price to break even
• Average university press subsidy from home
  institution 400,000 per year

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Most publishers operate at a loss

• Even for profit publishers often operate at a
  very low margin of profitability

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The Profitable Publishers

• Trade publishers
• K-12 textbook publishers
• Scholarly-scientific journal publishers
• Large newspaper chains
• Large media conglomerates

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Book Publishing Statistics, 2001

• Total
• 24 billion up 4.3 from 2000
• Adult trade publications
• 4.8 billion up 2.9
• Juvenile trade publications
• 1.7 billion up 15.6
• Mass market paperback
• 1.4 billion down 7.3

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Book Publishing Statistics, 2001

• Religious books
• 1.2 billion up 3.3
• Professional books (business, law, medicine,
  sci/tech, etc.)
• 4.7 billion up 6.8
• University presses
• 412 million up 5.1

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Book Publishing Statistics, 2001

• K-12 education
• 3.4 billion up 3
• Higher education
• 3.1 billion up 8.3
• Reference books
• 789 million up 2.9
• Mail order and book clubs
• 1.7 billion down 1

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U.S. Consumer Expenditures on All Books (foreign
and domestic)

• Expected to increase to 38.1 billion by the year
  2004
• (Up from 22.6 billion in 1994)

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The Problem

• Consolidation of information production and
  distribution among a few powerful providers
• The effects of consolidation on access and content

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Consolidation

• Media companies controlling most of the U.S.
  book, magazine, movie, and television industries
• 1981 46
• 1986 29
• 1989 25
• 1997 7

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The Big 7

• Rupert Murdochs News Corporation
• Viacom
• Time/Warner
• Newhouse
• General Electric
• Westinghouse
• Disney

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Runners up

• Newspaper monopolies
• Gannett
• Knight-Ridder
• Foreign behemoths
• Bertelsmann (worlds 2nd largest media empire)
• Elsevier
• Kluwer

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Conglomerate Profits

• Historical average publisher profit margin 4
• Expected publishing profit margin of media
  conglomerates 12-15
• To survive as a subsidiary of a multi-national
  corporation, the publishing unit must concentrate
  on publishing high volume materials and eschew
  low volume publications

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Lowest Common Denominator

• Big publishing firms have trimmed their
  mid-list books
• Mid-list
• Offerings by non-celebrity authors
• Serious fiction, history, criticism, and other
  genres
• Published in modest printings
• Bring in modest profits

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Independent Publishers

• Ca. 53,500 in U.S.
• Ca. 2/3 of book sale dollars
• ca. 16 billion of 24 billion in U.S.book sales
• Ca. 4/5 of titles in BIP
• ca. 1.1 million of 1.4 million titles

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Independent Publishers

• Keep books in print longer
• most less than 15 years old sell every title they
  ever publishes
• Ca. 1/3 have had at least one title sell over 1
  million copies

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Gray Literature

• Material that usually is available through
  specialized channels and may not enter normal
  channels or systems of publication, distribution,
  bibliographic control, or acquisition by
  booksellers or subscription agents
• Scholarly communication among a small group of
  specialists
• No or minimal cost, print or electronic
• Announced in specialized sources and distributed
  once

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Gray Literature

• Websites and e-mail Distribution channels
• Collected by research libraries
• Examples meeting minutes, preprints, market
  surveys, committee reports, proceedings,
  corporate documents, newsletters, discussion
  papers, house journals, working papers,
  standards, trade literature

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Organization of Acquisitions

• Typically reflects the organization philosophy of
  the parent institution
• e.g. large research institution with centralized
  vs. decentralized planning and budgeting
• consortium of public libraries with centralized
  vs. decentralized planning and budgeting
• Acquisitions staff
• Professional
• Support staff

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Organization of Acquisitions (cont.)

• Fast Cat Units
• Monographs vs. serials
• Priorities
• Timely placement of orders and payment of
  invoices
• Timely processing of cancellations, especially
  for subscriptions
• Claiming missed issues

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Organization of Acquisitions (cont.)

• Priorities (cont.)
• Maintaining proper records for orders and
  payments that are consistent with generally
  accepted accounting principles
• Processing received material in a timely manner
• Proper order record maintenance to ensure
  timeliness of information to user
• Establishing and maintaining publisher and vendor
  relationships

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Acquisitions and the Large Library

• Business unit within a non-profit
• Subject to procurement system of larger
  institution
• Subject to fiscal year requirements
• Subject to internal and external auditing of its
  procedures and financial records
• Little direct interaction with library or patrons
• Activities done in back room

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Acquisitions and the Small Library

• Combined with many other duties of librarians
• Actual process may be done at a level outside the
  library
• The business is even less well understood by
  librarians than in large libraries
• Business concepts and requirements usually not
  communicated to librarians

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Scope of Acquisitions The Business

• Get library materials into the hands of patrons
  Keep all customers happy
• Purchasing according to procurement law,
  regulation, requirements
• Keep and maintain financial records
• Do not overspend budget
• Specify, negotiate, contract with, and evaluate
  vendors

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Relationship of Acquisitions to

• The library as a whole
• Collection Development
• Cataloging/Bibliographic Control
• Serials
• Those outside the library
• Business office
• Vendors

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Acquisitions Collection Development

• ACQUISITIONS
• Selects vendors, processes orders
• Generates reports
• cancellation, receipt, expenditure, encumbrance
  balances
• Evaluates vendors, services

• COLLECTION DEV.
• Generates orders
• Updates per report
• Evaluates collection, services to patrons

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Acquisitions and Cataloging

• ACQUISITIONS
• May be combined with cataloging in one unit
• May be completely separate
• Use many of the same bibliographic tools for
  verification

• CATALOGING
• Older function in libraries
• Not usually combined in large libraries
• Bibliographic tools used for cataloging
• Have same Asst. Director for TS

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Acquisitions and Serials

• Many functions so similar that units may be
  combined
• Order, fund accounting, vendor issues,
  procurement issues, reconciliation and claiming
• Some functions so dissimilar that different units
  are established
• Vendors, title verification, number of titles,
  budget allocation and sources
• Organization sometimes determined not by function
  but by history of the library or workload and
  staffing patterns

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Serials and Monographs

• Serials
• One title
• Intended to be published at regular intervals
• Any kind of binding
• Magazines, journals, newsletters, annuals,
  periodicals

• Monographs (mono one, graph writing)
• One title
• One publication date
• Any kind of binding
• What lay people call a BOOK

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Acquisitions and Other Library Units

• Gifts Exchanges
• What dont we have to buy and what can we give
  away
• Preservation
• Repair and reformatting Can item be replaced?
  How much will that cost?
• Circulation
• Can item be replaced?
• Reference
• Is this the same book? (Cataloging also)
• Administration
• Whats the budget and balance?

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Organizational Patterns of Acquisitions

• By activity
• searching, verifying bib. info., inputting
  orders, fund accounting, vendor relations, report
  generating, technical support
• By type of material acquired
• language//other country/other currency, format,
  rare books, serials
• By means of acquiring material
• standing order, approval plans, serials, etc.

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Basic Acquisitions Functions/Activities/Procedures

• Receiving order requests
• Searching order requests
• Verifying order requests
• Selecting vendors/routing orders
• Preparing and dispatching orders
• Encumbering funds
• Receiving materials, expending funds

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Basic Acquisitions Functions/Activities/Procedures

• Handling damaged and incorrectly shipped
  materials
• Claiming unreceived materials
• Canceling materials
• Database management
• Monitoring and reporting activities
• Special acquisitions problems
• Paperbacks

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Basic Acquisitions Functions/Activities/Procedures

• Government publications
• Small presses
• Microforms
• AV materials
• Electronic formats
• Out-of-print materials
• Back issues
• Foreign materials

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Verification Sources

• Bibliographic Utilities
• Forthcoming Books
• Books in Print (BIP)
• Paperback Books in Print
• Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory
• Whitakers Books in Print (WBIP British)
• ISBN

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Order Information

• Title
• Author
• Edition, series
• Publisher
• Date
• Price
• Binding (Format)
• ISBN

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How materials are acquired

• Approval plan
• Firm order
• Standing order
• Subscription
• Membership
• Gift
• Exchange

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Approval Plans

• Acquire books automatically by profile
• Contract between vendor and library
• May return unwanted selections
• Primarily found in academic and research
  libraries
• Comprehensive collecting
• Shelf-ready books

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Approval Plan Advantages

• Quick receipt after publication
• Reduce number of firm orders
• Broad or narrow scope
• Purchase made with book in hand
• Attractive discounts
• Defines what to collect
• Electronic invoicing

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Approval Plan Disadvantages

• No reviews available
• With forms/slips, may not have enough information
• Cost of returns
• Missed titles when monetary limit reached
• Not necessarily best books on subject
• Not all titles fit into neat categories
• May have to rely on one vendor for all new books

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Blanket (or Standing) Order Plans

• Not subject driven
• Excludes or limits returns
• Minimal profiling May limit by
• total funding assigned
• language
• intended audience
• type of material (e.g. no textbooks)

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Blanket (or Standing) Order Plans (cont.)

• All titles from specified publisher
• Know what to expect
• No selection forms to process
• Attractive discounts
• Coverage clearly understood

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Out-of-print market

• Book scouts
• Neighborhood bookstores
• Specialized dealers
• General out-of-print dealers
• Mixed in-print/out-of-print dealers
• Web-only business
• Academic library vendors
• Rare book dealers

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Encumbrance Between Order Payment

• Order price put aside (list or retail price in
  Purchase Order (PO)
• Search and verification finds cancellations
  discounted price
• Encumbrance adjusted accordingly
• Adjustment change in amount ( or -)
• Difference between initial encumbrance and
  adjusted encumbrance returns to available
  amount( running balance)
• Encumbered funds not available and NOT SPENT

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Encumbrance (cont.)

• Payment Expenditure
• Invoice Bill
• Invoice Real price (can be different from
  estimates)
• Payment process is institutionally based and can
  be complex
• Payment removes funds from encumbrance category
  and puts then in expended category
• Adjustment ( or -) of difference to available
  amount running fund account balance

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General Mission of Acquisitions

• Acquire materials as rapidly as possible, as
  inexpensively as possible, while functioning like
  a smoothly-operating business that serves its
  customers, pays its bills, and deals honestly and
  fairly with its vendors