Publishing SIG DOWNLOAD CHARGES SURVEY

Pubs SIG members,

Here's a summary of responses to questions I sent last month asking if anyone charged customers to download and/or subscribe to publications. Thanks to all of you who responded.

ORIGINAL QUERY

Pubs SIG members,
We in Oregon are interested in selling our online publications in a pay-for-download and/or by subscription. We'd appreciate your ideas, suggestions, and references to the following questions:

• Is your state receiving payment for downloads? If so, whom should we contact for more information?
• Are you actively exploring this option and do you have information that might help us?
• Are there any commercial enterprises or others within the Land Grant system who might help us?
• Have you established a subscription fee for some materials e.g., rather than downloading the entire publication, the customer pays an annual fee to view the information online).

Evie Engel, Publishing Specialist and Professor
Extension & Station Communications
Oregon State University
422 Kerr Administration
Corvallis, OR 97331-2119

E-mail: Evie.Engel@oregonstate.edu
phone: 541-737-0807; fax: 541-737-0817
http://eesc.oregonstate.edu
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/

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RESPONSES

We have no plans to do this -- we ask people to pay for the printed publications but plan to maintain free downloads.

But I believe that OECD in Paris is pursuing a system whereby one can access their publications in HTML form free of charge but one has to pay for the PDF and printed versions. I believe that if one pays for a printed publication, one gets immediate "free" access to the PDF version on line. Unfortunately, I do not know the name of the person to contact about this.

I also believe that FAO here in Rome is or is planning to follow a similar approach. The person to contact about that is Rick Sutton (Rick.Sutton@FAO.org).

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Paul Neate
Head of Communications Services
International Plant Genetic Resources Institute
(IPGRI)
Rome
Italy

(Sorry, I forgot to mention that we have had some discussions with Ingenta (www.ingenta.com), specifically Angela Doyle there, about such a system. They are very journal oriented, so did not meet our needs, but they did say they had plans to offer a book-oriented service eventually.)

*****

We in Ohio appear to be at exactly the same place that you all are on this issue. Lots of questions and few, if any, answers. Would appreciate receiving information that you gather.

Thanks,

Bob Furbee, Ohio State
furbee@ag.osu.edu

*****

Dear Evie,

So far, to my knowledge, Texas isn't looking into pay-for-downloads. Sorry! However, I've bought a couple of e-documents from Dan Poynter's Para Publishing Web Site. You could query him about this at info@ParaPublishing.com, or you could look through his site to see if there's anything on there on this subject already. In my brief search, I found:

Making the Web Pay, a set-up guide for publishers shows you how to set up your web site to make money and save time - automatically. Examples and descriptions are given for selling books, reports and newsletters on-line with some clever and automatic response mechanisms. 6 pages, Paper: $13.95; self-service Electronic: $9.95. Document 629.

http://parapub.com/getpage.cfm?file=/resource/promote.html&userid=95332006#doc112

Good luck!

Diane Bowen
d-bowen@tamu.edu

*****

Evie,

I cannot help you with any of the information that you need. We are not charging a fee for downloads yet but are interested in the idea. If you get any useful information on the subject, would you be willing to share it with me?
Thanks,

Ron Addis
Clemson University
raddis@clemson.edu

*****

Hi, Evie,

All of our online publications are free.

Jane Honeycutt, Louisiana
JHoneycutt@agctr.lsu.edu

*****

Evie..

Re: charging for downloads... we are doing it for at least one ag effort.. more on that to you later today when I get the info.. but we're not doing it for most online publications...

Barb Abbott, Iowa State
babbott@iastate.edu

*****

Hi, Evie,

We haven't tried this in Kansas, as far as I know. When people use our online publications, it saves us the cost of printing and distributing them, which is already an advantage for us. I've never, as an individual, paid to download content. Libraries pay for some online subscriptions, but those subscriptions are at risk of being cut during hard times, and they don't get ordered in the first place unless there is substantial demand for the publication.

You might want to run some numbers on what it would cost to put the system into place, and pay at least one semi-technical employee to manage it once it is going. Maybe your library can suggest names of academic publishers of online journals who'd be willing to talk about costs. Don't forget security issues, assuming customers will use credit card numbers. A pay-for-download system might not be worth the effort, particularly if your neighboring states have similar information online for free.

Cordially,

Amy Hartman Electronic Document Librarian
Dept. of Ag. Communications
Kansas State University
307 Umberger Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
ahartman@oznet.ksu.edu

*****

Evie,

We are not charging for our online pubs, nor are we selling subscriptions at this time in Minnesota.

We have put all publications 20 pages or less that we produced, online in HTML in their entirety. Items larger than 20 pages are put up as samplers. All pubs have links to our online catalog and now we have an online shopping cart set up. We have no way of knowing which items are sold as a result of finding them on the website, but our Distribution Center sales never decreased when we made things available online. Because we lose money on fact sheets and smaller pubs, getting those items online pay for themselves by not costing us. We're proposing making small items only available online. We are also proposing that Extension leverage the huge audience of our site into paying learners for our educational programs. The site received 5.2 million visits in 2002, a 66% increase over 2001. 16.4 million pages were viewed by more than 2 million unique visitors. More than 300,000 visitors returned to the site more than once, indicating satisfaction and repeat business. (FYI, I'm doing an ACE presentation on web stats.)

Revenue generation is a priority for all Extension programs. If we can connect a web publication that answered a user's question to a program that may provide even more help, the web becomes a key recruiting tool for our educational offerings. It's less direct income, but in the long run could prove much more valuable. Our focus is on those 300,000 return visitors.

That's roughly what we're proposing. As the organization moves away from publications, and more into programming, the web can reflect that change and support it. We have a lot of work to do in reorganizing our site around priority programs. But we don't believe people will pay for our online materials when there's so much free stuff elsewhere on the web.

I hope this helps. I'd be interested in what you find out. Will you be in Kansas City? Good luck.

Karen Lilley, Minnesota
kll@umn.edu

*****

Hi, Evie. Good to hear from you. We don't receive pay for downloads and we don't have subscription fees. I'll be interested in the results of your query. Cheers! Carol

Carol Whatley, Auburn
cwhatley@acesag.auburn.edu

*****

Evie,

We at Idaho are not receiving payment for downloads, nor are we actively exploring the option. A member of our group actually raised the possibility recently, and I have to admit I dismissed it. I had just shelled out $4.99 to get a month's worth of information from Consumer's Union online, information that could save me tens of thousands of dollars, and I had paid a bit grudgingly. And so, I thought to myself, if I have to think twice about paying Consumer's Union for information online, I would never, ever pay to get Extension materials online. But maybe others would. Maybe the thinking that information on the Internet should be free is fading. On the other hand, why would anyone pay OSU for information they can get free from another web site? Davis's? Or WSU's? Are our own state's materials actually that valuable? Are they unique? Or is similar, free, material just a click away? Hmmm.... I do hope you'll let me know what you learn and how your thinking develops on this subject.

Diane Noel, Idaho
dnoel@uidaho.edu

*****

Evie,

Susan Roberts asked me to respond to the below message.

* Is your state receiving payment for downloads? If so, whom should we contact for more information ?

No. Some lower-cost publications are available as free downloads from http://pubs.wsu.edu/

* Are you actively exploring this option and do you have information that might help us?

We are rebuilding http://pubs.wsu.edu/ using the Interchange system (vendor until recently was Red Hat). Interchange has the built-in capacity to do downloads for a fee. We are not actively thinking of offering this at the moment, but we are aware of the capability in case we might want to use it in the future.

* Are there any commercial enterprises or others within the Land Grant system who might help us?

Dunno.

* Have you established a subscription fee for some materials (e.g., rather than downloading the entire publication, the customer pays an annual fee to view the information online).

No. To my knowledge, we have not even considered this option. Since you brought it to our attention, I will keep this in mind.

Thanks,

Bob Hoffmann, Web Coordinator
Information Department
Cooperative Extension
Washington State University
305-C Hulbert Hall
Pullman WA 99164-6244
Ph: 509-335-7744 Fx: 509-335-2863
http://caheinfo.wsu.edu/webtips/

*****

Evie -- Interesting questions. We are still barely into the selling of any publications -- most of our stuff is still free on paper and certainly online, but our administrators are of course interested in cost recovery. Here are a couple of comments that I hope might be helpful.

1. Our Extension fiscal officer takes a hard line on (strict interpretation of) the federal accounting guidelines for cost recovery by state Extension Services. According to her, only bona fide out-of-pocket costs (such as paper and printing but not authors', editors', or designers' salaries) can legally be recovered. Many states violate this rule, of course, and seem to get away with it. How that would apply to electronically distributed publications where the costs are difficult to trace bears careful inquiry.
2. The expectation of Web users is that everything is free. If an Extension Service wants to be successful at charging for Web-delivered content, it would need to have something that's not available anywhere else and that people really want enough to pay for it. If Oregonians have to pay for your gardening guide, they will likely go to Ortho.com instead or Washington's site instead. Very few entities are getting away with charging for access on the Web these days. Perhaps it is a commentary on our society that only the porn sites seem to be successful at that game, and judging from the amount of advertising they send to my e-mail account, they are struggling.

Tom Knecht, Mississippi State
tomk@ext.msstate.edu

*****

Hi Evie,

We have no plans in Texas to go to a "pay for download" system. However, from time to time a specialist will ask me if we can do this for his or her publication. So I'll be interested in whatever feedback you get. I hope you'll share it.

Thanks,
Judy Winn, Texas A&M
j-winn2@tamu.edu

*****

Hi, Evie. Sorry, but this is one of those "We haven't done any of that, but I'd love to hear what you find out so WE can profit from YOUR initiative" notes. We've talked about doing something like this, and I think our new order processing/inventory management package, InOrder, will handle those types of transactions.

Jim Coats, University of California
wjcoats@ucdavis.edu

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