The publishing company began to sell directly to customers online three years ago. New features will allow customers to search books and journals, read reviews, sample chapters and view 10,000 jacket images online. Cambridge University Press, founded in 1534, sells to bookstores, academic institutions and individuals worldwide. While it's a legitimate channel, we wanted to have control of our information at our own e-commerce site. By contrast, university presses, which need to match their costs and avoid alienating campus stores, must stick with the higher prices charged by their retail channel partners.
Book publishers have a curious relationship with the Internet.
Unlike retail industries, the Web doesn't instantly create an enormously profitable new business model. Cambridge can't wildly discount its publications online, under pain of channel conflict and legal problems. But e-commerce does provide some advantages to presses like Cambridge. They can sell publications that retailers wouldn't carry. Rare monographs that sell three copies a year are far more likely to stay in production if publishers and retailers don't have to account for shelf space.