THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia


ANU E-Commerce/E-Publishing Issues

by Dr T. Matthew Ciolek

This document is an abridged version of a report prepared for the ANU Electronic Publishing Meeting, Menzies Library, Thursday 7 Aug 1997.

Last updated: 11 August 1997.

RSPAS and the Library are jointly planing for an electronic commerce facility for ANU publications to be stored, sold and distributed electronically via the Web. This paper reviews and articulates the University's explicit and implicit options, concerns and opportunities in the field of electronic publishing and electronic commerce.



Contents

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction
  4. What is Publishing?
  5. What is Electronic Publishing?
  6. Current Electronic Publishing Strategies
  7. The Economics of Electronic Publishing
  8. The Electronic Commerce
  9. Types of E-commerce Activities
  10. Is E-Publishing Worth the Effort?
  11. E-Publishing and E-Commerce: Current Concerns
  12. ANU: External Factors
  13. ANU: Internal Problems and Issues
  14. ANU Electronic Publishing: Possible Strategies
  15. ANU Electronic Publishing: Optimal Strategies
  16. ANU Electronic Publishing: Possible Work Alliances
  17. Postscript - Berthier's Dilemma in March 1809
  18. Notes and Calculations
  19. Sources of Information

A List of Tables

  1. Print and Electronic Publishing Operations
  2. Locus of Publisher's Control in E-Publishing Enterprises
  3. The Cost of Converting Books to Electronic Format
  4. Costs of Establishing and Operating Commercial Info Servers
  5. Comparison of Costs of Print and Electronic Publications (Scenario 1)
  6. Comparison of Costs of Print and Electronic Publications (Scenario 2)
  7. ANU Losses of Skilled Personnel, 1995-1997
  8. Decline in the ANU's Share of Academic Resources on the Internet, 1993-1997
  9. ANU Printed Publications, 1978-1988
  10. Number of Volumes Printed Annually by Australian Universities
  11. ANU Electronic Publishing Options

1. Executive Summary

  1. The sudden emergence of global possibilities afforded by Internet technologies already has produced a dramatic impact on all human activities, including research and tertiary education.
  2. A significant and rapidly evolving aspect of Internet-based activities is the electronic commerce (= online sales and collection of money)
  3. Main technological barriers to e-commerce are now fully solved, and the social and cultural inhibitions which until now have been hindering the widespread acceptance of electronic commerce are starting to dissipate.
  4. A minor, yet rapidly evolving sub-set of e-commerce activities is electronic publishing
    (= online storage, online sales and online delivery of information).
  5. Electronic publishing is a pragmatic, complex production-distribution-marketing operation which - in order to succeed - needs to be run with military-like clarity of objectives, vigour and precision - all within an unpredictable, global and dynamic matrix of ever changing opportunities, policies, legislations, economies and technologies.
  6. Widespread beliefs and preconceptions that online information should always be accessible free-of-charge in any volume to any online reader continue to slow-down the growth of an online information-market. However, these barriers are also expected to fall down in the forthcoming months and years.
  7. In 1996/1997 the typical cost of an information cyberstore was between US$1.2 and US$7 million to launch and operate for the first 12 months.
  8. In 1996/1997 the great majority of successful electronic publishing activities were not self-funding (let alone profitable), and had to be supported by money derived from other sources.
  9. The 1997/1998 financial and political situation at the ANU does not favour any serious involvement in a fully fledged electronic publishing activity.
  10. What is possible, however, under the current ANU circumstances is:
  11. In the view of emerging competition, as demonstrated by the Internet successes and high international visibility of other - especially US - universities what would be to the ANU's advantage is a quick decision on these issues, and wholehearted commitment to the selected course of action.

2. Acknowledgments

Preparation of this report has benefited from discussions with many persons, and especially with Mr Paul Macpherson, ANU Library and Mrs Ann Andrews, ANH, RSPAS. However, any errors of fact, or interpretation are exclusively mine. Also, I am deeply grateful to Mrs Andrews for her generous editorial advice on the first version of this paper.

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3. Introduction

The ANU, like many hundreds of thousands of other organizations, faces a number of dilemmas and challenges while operating in an ever-changing, unfriendly and demanding environment. The University's situation can be likened to that of an army engaged in a variety of tasks and operations, some of which bring about cooperation, and others, fierce competition with other organizations, both in Australia and overseas.

The overall context of these developments change with ever-increasing rapidity, especially since the mid-1990s when the Internet became the major force redefining the paradigms and operating procedures of business, commerce, industry, media, administration, politics, research, education and defence (Rutkowski 1994a, Rutkowski 1994b, Reid 1997). The basic current trends and transformations are that:

Among the activities bringing various parties into competition and conflict are at least four recognisable layers, each with its own special significance and linkages (Chandler 1996, Earle 1966). These are:

The planning of campaigns; the selection of objectives; the devising of time-tables of movements, reinforcements and supplies, the correct disposition of men and their equipment for their actual day-to-day operations entails repeated calculation and evaluation of both one's own capabilities as well as of those of the enemy's intentions, resources and moves.

This report concentrates on provision of up-to-date intelligence pertaining to the Internet and the world of electronic commerce and electronic publishing. It consciously and deliberately steers away from major ventures into the specialist domains of Policy, Strategy, Tactics or Logistics. Clearly, there are several senior ANU officers far better equipped and trained to offer adequate guidance on these matters.

For a few years from December 1991 onwards, the ANU managed to place itself in an advantageous position on the Internet, and several of its online projects have been greatly successful.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, both organizational and political, this early lead is now lost. Yet, the strong corporate interest in online activities continues to be alive, and since January 1997, RSPAS and the Library have considered embarking on a project which would enable selected, if not all, ANU publications to be marketed, sold and distributed via the Internet.


This paper looks at the ANU's electronic publishing situation, major strengths and weaknesses and, finally, available options. It focuses chiefly on the first two components of the 'holy trinity' of the 20th century: Production-Distribution-Marketing, leaving issues of the third one (Marketing) largely uncommented upon.

Intelligence presented here comes from a number of sources:

All this information has been identified, collated and evaluated in the light of this author's unique expertise involving 10 years of work as a social anthropologist, 12 years as an IT specialist and 6 years of intensive work with the Internet (Ciolek 1997a).

A colourful bazaar of data has been pieced together from a variety of sources, trustworthy or otherwise. The object of the exercise was the construction of a general model indicating what can and cannot be accomplished at the ANU. In preparing this report a number of simplifications and assumptions have been made regarding developments, organizational structures and IT systems at The Australian National University. These observations or comments try to be as factual as possible and are not intended to offend or criticise The Australian National University and its staff. Therefore, the reader is kindly invited to

Finally, the bulk of this report was written between 16 and 31 July 97 while I was crippled by a nasty back problem. It is due to those inauspicious circumstances that I did not have enough time to turn stacatto sentences into a pleasingly flowing prose.

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4. What Is Publishing?

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Little 1973:1702) defines the word "publication" as

In all three cases, whether they focus on the product, technical procedure aimed at making the product, or the business established around that procedure, there is implied the existence of:

In other words, placing a piece of information in the hands of the public requires that some body, an individual or a team (conventionally referred to as the publisher) orchestrates and interlinks at least seven sequential steps, abstracted here as:

(1) Writing => (2) Editing => (3) Organization => (4) Production => (5) Storage => (6) Selling => (7) Delivery

Each of these steps, of course, consists of its own sequence of subsidiary operations. For instance, Yelland (1997b) discussing new developments in the printing world (Step 4, Production) points to a distinction between:

A parallel view is expressed by developers of contemporary Web-publishing software who point to the need of maintaining at least three hardware/software systems (Anonymous 1997a), each taking care of a separate stage of publishing operations:

Similarly, Rowley (1996:90) suggests that, the penultimate step, (Step 6, Selling) consists, of a four highly specialized sub-sequences:

Finally, Rowley (1996:90) observes that the last sequence (Step 7, Delivery) involves two distinct operations:


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5. What Is Electronic Publishing?

Clearly, not every online activity constitutes an act of electronic publishing. Similarly, not everybody with enthusiasm coupled with a videocorder, editing-table and a TV-set is into the film-making or TV business.

Internet activities involving placement of electronic information into readers' hands fall into one of the four general groups:

For the purposes if this report I propose that we define electronic publishing as an activity which is:

In other words, electronic publishing activities are aimed at systematic harvesting, processing and delivery of substantial chunks of information (scholarly/factual materials, news, software, entertainment, games etc.) in electronic format to the public (users, purchasers)

The resultant electronic information can be distributed either:

and can be made available either free-of-charge or at some cost to the user.

Table 1
Print and Electronic Publishing Operations - A Comparison

Technology\Operation WRITE EDIT ORGANIZE PRODUCE STORE SELL DELIVER
PRINT
PUBLISHING
(technology & procedures used
1455-1990)
prepare an item of information structure and edit it turn it into a commodity print it on paper, or otherwise store on some physical medium and then copy it as many times as necessary place it in a warehouse or a shop place it in a bookshop, and offer to the public in exchange for money physically move it from the shop to the purchaser
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
(technology & procedures available
since 1990)
prepare an item of information structure and edit it turn it into a commodity deposit it in digital format on a magnetic medium as


(a) an image file (tiff, gif, jpeg, pdf), or


(b) text (ascii, rtf, html, pdf) file

place it in the memory of a networked computer place it in a cybershop, and offer to the public in exchange for money electronically move it to the purchaser's computer

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6. Current Electronic Publishing Strategies

The key role in the electronic publishing cycle is played by those in charge of Step 3, ORGANIZE.

The publisher, that is, a person or an organization who orchestrates and oversees the capture, value-adding and dissemination of information, may or may not have administrative/financial control over all seven steps of the publishing cycle. Publishing is a rich mosaic of many interlocking endeavours and there are multiple ways for delineation of responsibilities for handling and coordinating these tasks.

Table 2
Locus of Publisher's direct administrative control in selected e-publishing enterprises

STRATEGIES OF ELECTRONIC PUBLISHERS WRITE EDIT ORGANIZE PRODUCE STORE SELL DELIVER
The Wall Street Journal yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Playboy
www.playboy.com
yes yes yes no no no no
The Journal of Buddhist Ethics no yes yes yes yes yes $ yes
JSTOR Journal Storage Project
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
no no yes yes yes yes yes
HighWire Press
HQ at Stanford U.
no no no yes yes yes yes
HighWire Press
Proposed regional unit at Griffith U.*
no * no * no * no * yes * yes * yes *
proposed AUO (1997a) - scenario 1
AUO running its own electronic productions unit
no * no * no * yes * yes * yes * yes *
proposed AUO (1997a) - scenario 2
AUO cooperating with the ANUTech which will run electronic productions unit
no * no * no * no * yes * yes * yes *
ANU ArtServe yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
ANU Asia Pacific Magazine no yes yes no # no # no # no #
ANU NCDS publications programme yes yes yes yes * yes * yes * yes *
ANUTech (activity in conjunction with the AUO) no no no yes * no no no
STRATEGIES OF SOME of the ONLINE BOOKSHOPS
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd no no no no yes no + no +
Barnes and Noble Bookshop no no no no yes yes yes
AMAZON.COM Online Bookshop no no no no no yes yes
$ in practice JBE readers are not being charged for the use of the journal
* proposed publishing scheme, yet to be implemented
# an ad hoc, informal arrangement with the remnants of Coombs Computing Unit, RSPAS
+ online sales and distribution services are provided by Marston Book Services Ltd

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In short, there are many possible approaches to electronic publishing.

At the one extreme an attempt can be made to bring under a single organizational umbrella all seven (7) steps of creation, manufacture and dissemination of a piece of information, of a product. In such case the publishing houses employs in-house writers, editors, publishers, digital conversion bureaux and web-based storage/sales/delivery systems.

At the other extreme, arrangements can be made for a system comprising seven separate, independently managed but collaborating expert units, each taking care of its own specialized step withing the complete publishing cycle.

Between these two poles, there is a place for organizational arrangements involving four basic groups of people:

On the whole, large-scale umbrella-like electronic publishing projects offer the greatest stability, online visibility, and continuity to electronic publication operations. They do so at a large financial cost, however, being slow to exploitopportunities presented by frequent and rapid changes in technology.

Similarly, small-scale operations are the nimblest and quickest in seizing opportunities and niches created by new technologies, processes and business models.

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7. The Economics of Electronic Publishing

All available evidence confirms that publishing is a capital and labour intensive activity. Each of the seven steps of the publishing cycle has its own cost. These costs fall into two groups:

The sections below summarize intelligence gleaned from a variety of sources:

WRITING COSTS

EDITING and Document ORGANIZATION COSTS

Until adequate data are located, one can assume that, on average, these costs resemble those of Writing Costs listed above.

PRODUCTION COSTS


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STORAGE COSTS

There are three types of costs involved in storage of information:

SALES and DELIVERY COSTS

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PRINT vs E-PUBLICATIONS: A COMPARISON OF COSTS

On the basis of information collected so far, it is possible to compare the costs of the two main publication technologies. The model below assumes two scenarios

Table 5
A Comparison of Costs of Print and Electronic Publications
(Scenario 1)
Assuming publication process involving 1 book of 300 pages;
Assuming a selling facility capable of carrying 2000 titles

WRITE EDIT ORGANIZE PRODUCE
master copy
STORAGE
set-up
STORAGE
operate for
1 yr
SELL
setup

SELL
running
cost
DELIVER
PRINT PUBLISHING $20,000 say, $2,000 say,
$4,000
$90,000
*
$18,000
***
$900
****
say $180,000
#
$410,000
##
$21,000
###
E-PUBLISHING $20,000 say, $2,000 say,
$4,000
$900
**
$3,000
***
$150
****
say $419,000
##
$893,000
##
$1,500
###
Total publication costs (print) = $745,900; Average publication cost per copy = $124.31
Total publication costs (electronic) = $1,343,550; Average publication cost per copy = $223.92
Note: for the sake of simplicity of this model, no adjustment is made for the difference in the value of Australian and US dollars

* assuming 6000 copies run at 5c a page, for a 300 page book
** assuming existence of the document in electronic format and $900 for the html/pdf conversion
*** assuming storage of 6000 physical volumes at $30/book, vs storage of one copy of an electronic book on a 10Gb hard disk.
**** assuming annual operating costs are 5% of the setup-cost.
# assuming a bookshop capable offering 2000 titles (and holding 3 copies of each) at $30/copy of a book.
## assuming a staff of 10 in each case and an average commercial 'content' type of the web system
### assuming unrealistically that within a single year all 6000 copies of the book have been sold at $3.50 per manual transaction and $0.25 per electronic transaction, and that these costs are not covered by the operating costs of a bookshop/cybershop

Table 6
A Comparison of Costs of Print and Electronic Publications
(Scenario 2)
Assuming publication process involving 100 books of 300 pages;
Assuming a selling facility capable of carrying 2000 titles

WRITE EDIT ORGANIZE PRODUCE
master copy
STORAGE
set-up
STORAGE
operate for
1 yr
SELL
setup

SELL
running
cost
DELIVER
PRINT PUBLISHING $2 mln say, $200,000 say,
$400,000
$9 mln
*
$1.8 mln
***
$90,000
****
say $180,000
#
$410,000
##
$2.1 mln
###
E-PUBLISHING $2 mln say, $200,000 say,
$400,000
$90,000
**
$3,000
***
$150
****
say $419,000
##
$893,000
##
$150,000
###
Total publication costs (print) = $16,180,000; Average publication cost per copy = $26.96
Total publication costs (electronic) = $4,1545,150; Average publication cost per copy = $6.92
Note: for the sake of simplicity of this model, no adjustment is made for the difference in the value of Australian and US dollars

* assuming 6000 copies run at 5c a page for a 300 page book.
** assuming existence of the document in electronic format and $900 for the html/pdf conversion.
*** assuming storage of 6000 physical volumes of 100 books, vs storage of one copy of 100 electronic books on a 10Gb hard disk.
**** assuming annual operating costs are 5% of the setup-cost
# assuming a bookshop capable offering 2000 titles (and holding 3 copies of each) at $30/copy of a book.
## assuming a staff of 10 in each case and an average commercial 'content' type of the web system
### assuming unrealistically that within a single year all 6000 copies of each of 100 books have been sold at $3.50 per manual transaction and $0.25 per electronic transaction, and that these costs are not covered by the operating costs of a bookshop/cybershop

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Continue to Part 2 of the Document

Copyright (c) 1997 by T. Matthew Ciolek.

URL http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/ECOMM/e-issues97.htm



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