Libraries and Publisher Price Control: The Net Price System (1901–1914) and Contemporary E-book Pricing

Zhang, Mei; Senchyne, Jonathan

doi:10.5325/libraries.1.2.0171

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Research Article| September 01 2017

Libraries and Publisher Price Control: The Net Price System (1901–1914) and Contemporary E-book Pricing

Mei Zhang;

Mei Zhang

MEI ZHANG is a PhD candidate in the Information School at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests include electronic resource management and information policy. She is currently working on her dissertation about librarian e-book selection practices in academic libraries.

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Jonathan Senchyne

University of Wisconsin–Madison

JONATHAN SENCHYNE is an assistant professor of library and information studies and the director of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research has been published in Book History, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, and Early African American Print Culture.

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Libraries: Culture, History, and Society (2017) 1 (2): 171–193.

https://doi.org/10.5325/libraries.1.2.0171

ABSTRACT

This article explores how librarians have responded to publishers' control over book prices in two different, yet related, historical periods. It historicizes the net price system, a book-price control system in the early twentieth century, within debates by librarians about library book buying and price negotiation practices. Turning to similarities in current e-book pricing, the article focuses on how publishers reduce the “fragility” of books as cultural commodities in either paper or electronic format, and then explores how libraries, publishers, and distributors gain power in library book pricing.

Library book market, net price system, e-book, price control, cultural commodities

2017

The Pennsylvania State University

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Libraries and Publisher Price Control: The Net Price System (1901–1914) and Contemporary E-book Pricing

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