Campaigners demand government investigates 'exorbitant' academic e-book market

An open letter by a group of academic librarians, researchers and lecturers has been posted online complaining that the licensing and pricing of academic e-books is leaving them out of reach for many and calling for the government to investigate. It has already been signed by hundreds of people. https://academicebookinvestigation.org/

Among its complaints are that too many titles are not licensed as e-books, those that are often prohibitively expensive and subject to sudden price rises.

Response from ALPSP Council:

 "ALPSP is very aware that university libraries have faced and are still facing serious challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. At very short notice they have had to provide centralised digital resources (including e-books) to support off campus and remote learning on a worldwide scale, thus massively accelerating their transition from print to digital. In many cases they have had no extra budgets for implementation. ALPSP members, a large proportion of which are small and not-for-profit publishers, are fully aware of and sympathetic to these challenges. For some time, they have been actively accelerating the development of digital books and sales models and remain committed to working with librarians and their communities to be part of the solution. However, smaller publishers in particular face their own challenges regarding resources and are also working in an uncertain economic climate. They remain committed to continuing discussions with their customers to do all they reasonably can to help them access e-books content. In addition, ALPSP calls on policy makers and government to meaningfully support higher education's transition to digital resources with increased financial support earmarked for this purpose."

Read the full article on The Bookseller website.