2.5 Costs to publishers

In private conversations and in group sessions, editors consistently identified the high cost ofillustration programs as the factor specific to art history publication that has adversely affected the volume of bookpublication in the field in recent years. Our detailed survey of 17 editors of art history books at leading university and commercialpresses confirms that the costs of illustration programs are as onerous to publishers as they are to authors.

The primary costs of illustration programs are incurred in the design, layout, and offset printing processes.Although all books require design, layout, and printing, illustrated books necessarily go through more phases of layoutreview and correction, including time-consuming consultations between editors, designers, and authors. Particularly vital, andoften contested, decisions include sizes of illustrations relative to the page and to each other and locations of illustrations inrelation to argument and to overall design of the page. Black-and-white illustrations necessitate grayscale checks,sometimes by the image provider as well as the author. The accurate transfer of a color image onto the printed page involves anelaborate color separation process, and for color the offset result more typically requires the approval of the image supplier. Paperquality and finishing varnishes can have dramatic effects on image registration, and it is not unheard of for initial print runs to berejected by the publisher because color calibration or paper quality turns out to be inadequate. Although such costs are bornein part by printers, changes of paper and delays in publication inevitably incur additional expenses for publishers.

The supervision and enforcement of the permissions regime generate another, and rarely analyzed, cost toart history publishers.

In light of escalating production costs and declining sales, presses can ill afford to produce art historicalmonographs in the 1000+ print runs that were still standard only a decade ago. Such print runs yield undesirable inventory maintenancecosts. As publishers seek to avoid high inventories, per-copy costs and prices go up, and so does the risk to authors and readers ofbooks going out of print.