5.1 Changes in the university press publishing environment  (Page 3/3)

Another challenge created by the shrinking shelf space given to art history titles is selling backlist. Oneperson said, "Although Amazon helps, it doesn’t make up for thelack of independent bookstores and other changes in the way books are marketed and sold today." Another person said, "Sales hadbetter come in the first year, because later the interest trickles. The trajectory of sales over 1 to 3 years has changed. After threeyears, you better have sold two-thirds of the books if there is going to be any hope of selling out the run." A third personpointed out that generating quick sales of art history titles is further hampered by the fact that scholarly journals in the fieldare traditionally slow to publish book reviews that draw attention to new titles.

Sales of course-related books are also declining. One source said that while 1700 copies of a book mightbe ordered for a course, perhaps as few as 500 might actually be sold. Whether the problem is related to pricing, the availabilityof used texts, greater sharing of resources among students via electronic media, other factors, or some combination of all ofthese, declining course-related sales add another dollop of red ink to the mounting economic challenges facing publishers of scholarlymonographs.

An additional burden faced by publishers of art books is that of copyright and reproduction costs (though thisburden is typically off-loaded onto authors). One source explained that since about 1990, the world of copyright has changed, causingimage costs to spiral upwards. The phenomenon of third-owner copyrights, along with the attachment of restrictions (e.g., nocropping allowed) has made the use of images more difficult. The problems are especially acute in the areas of 20th-century andcontemporary art history. Even older material that ought to be considered in the public domain is being "held hostage" by theholders of the objects who ask for fees. Photographs of art works are also being copyrighted.

Another source contrasted the situation in the United States with that of Europe. In Germany, she said, no one hasto pay museums for the rights to use an image, while in the U.S., "rights and permissions fees are eroding the small margin that usedto exist in the field of art and art history." As she explains how things got to this point, "artists’ rights societies started therights protection movement and museums followed along. Museums will admit that rights granting is a money maker." She is now concernedthat the practice of charging for image usage may have contributed to the decline of object-oriented works of scholarship in arthistory.

According to a third source, existing property laws apply much better to the textual world than to the art world.The concept of "fair use," for example, is applied fairly liberally in the sciences, but not nearly as generously in the humanities.She characterized the current publishing climate as one of conservatism with respect to copyright matters. Publishers fearlawsuits, although technically they are supposed to be protected from such problems through their standard arrangements withauthors. Nevertheless, in such an atmosphere, content owners hold the upper hand.

There is some disagreement among editors as to who should be responsible for obtaining permissions to reproduce animage – the press or the author. While this has typically been the responsibility of the author, some editors believe that the processof obtaining permissions has become so complex that it is unrealistic to expect authors, especially new ones, to do itcompetently. One source said, "Since we cannot trust the author to be accurate, we do [all of the permissions work ourselves]. The expenses and procedures for requesting images and reproductions aremore complicated than they used to be, and young scholars in particular cannot be trusted [to get it right]." Another said, "I find that even the most conscientious authors cannot alwaysaccurately find the right people from whom to request the illustrations."

Permissions fees are one half of the additional cost burden associated with art history publishing. Theother half is reproduction costs. Some presses are better positioned than others to deal with such costs, although allpresses find the situation more challenging now than it used to be. More than one source said that opportunities to obtain grants tocover costs are shrinking. At one press, it has become standard practice for a letter to be sent to prospective authors from thepress director asking them to approach their universities for funding to cover illustration costs. At another, the policy is verystraightforward – "there is no color [in the book] without outsidefunding."