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Publishers no longer providing hard copies of books for review?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 16–AN EYE-OPENING SET OF COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

A philosopher elsewhere, who is also a book review editor at a journal, writes:

Over the last few years, publishers having been increasingly pushing a policy of only providing digital copies of books for review in journals. This is making the book reviews editor’s job more difficult, since it is now quite common to find that a potential reviewer refuses to review the book if only digital copy is made available, thus further reducing the already small pool of potential reviewers. The fact that people are refusing of course also indicates that it makes the reviewer’s job more onerous. It is difficult to think of a good faith rationale for this on behalf of the press other than a money-saving one, and it is the already unpaid reviewer who is paying a further price for doing an important job.

I was unaware of this development.  How common is this?   I would certainly decline to review any book for which there was no hard copy.  I'm not surprised to hear I'm not alone on that front.

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37 responses to “Publishers no longer providing hard copies of books for review?”

  1. Michel

    I have heard the same from some reviews editors.

    But for what it's worth, Routledge sent me a physical copy for a review I wrote a couple of years ago, and Lexington just sent me one for a review I'll be writing up soon.

    Reply
  2. Michel

    Upon reflection, that's not quite right–the Routledge book was sent by its author, not the press!

    Reply
  3. Steven Hales

    The last book I reviewed (a Springer title) was sent to me electronically. I then asked for a hard copy and they reluctantly sent it to me.

    Reply
  4. Elizabeth

    I wouldn't review a book without a hard copy for two reasons. 1) I strongly prefer reading off-screen; I even print journal articles when I review them. I'm not willing to print an entire book to review. 2) The main benefit of reviewing a book (especially if you were going to read it anyway) is a free copy. It's a small 'thank you' from the publisher for doing work that will likely inrease the readership of the book, and therefore sales.

    Reply
  5. Michael Sevel

    I am Book Reviews Editor of the Sydney Law Review, and we haven't come across a press who outright refused to supply a reviewer with a hard copy, though electronic access has been given because of (usually international) delays in shipment of the review copy. Most reviewers still prefer a hard copy.

    Reply
  6. Andrei A. Buckareff

    I am the book review editor International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Some presses have flatly refused to send a hard copy of a book to a potential reviewer when I've made a request or I have to ask repeatedly for a hard copy and keep underscoring that a potential reviewer will not review the book if they are only given an electronic copy. That said, many presses whose books I'm not interested in having reviewed still send me hard copies of books or send emails offering to send me hard copies of books.

    Reply
  7. Matt

    I have also been offered only an electronic copy of a book that I have reviewed. I actually prefer electronic copies in most cases since I already possess too many books in paper format. However, I have sometimes had the problem that electronic copies are only readable by the particular e-reader which is specific to the publisher (multiplying the programs that I have to use) and that page numbers are not always available in the electronic version, which makes the electronic copy useless for citation purposes.

    Reply
  8. Dave

    I am the book reviews editor for Teaching Philosophy and publishers basically used the pandemic as an excuse to switch to sending only digital copies (Routledge is the main one that comes to mind here). Some presses (like Princeton, Oxford, Bloomsbury) have still been quite willing to send hard copies. Trying to get a book for review to someone outside of US, Canada, UK often requires an e-copy in my experience.

    Reply
  9. Richard Baron

    A related development, of which I am aware but not a victim, is for universities to send only PDFs of PhD dissertations to examiners. This seems to be happening here and there in the UK. Some potential examiners are pushing back and saying they will not examine unless sent a hard copy.

    Reply
  10. £

    About not sending hardcopies … I think one development driving this is the fact that so many people are stealing e-copies of books, and this is eating into the publishers' profits (and authors' royalties). I was at a conference and a young scholar said to ME I will have to get a free download of your new book from the internet, for X (his home country) is a third world country. Incidentally, his country is NOT a third world country.

    Reply
  11. Robert C Hockett

    I'm still receiving at least real paper – in the form of soft cover, 'reviewers copy' editions – from publishers seeking my review. Having seen lots of these while working at an independent bookstore during my youth, I assume this has been common for rather long. I'd not heard of the move to digital, but I'll certainly refuse any such request. If I can't read it comfortably under a tree, I won't review it.

    Reply
  12. Christian Miller

    I am the book review editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy and my experience is the same as Michael Sevel's above. I always insist on a hard copy, and most publishers have been willing to send one. Springer has been the most resistant in my experience.

    I used to get 100+ unsolicited books in the mail a year. Now I hardly get any, and the burden is more on me to contact publishers to have copies sent, or for authors to write to me directly and ask if their book will be considered for potential review in JMP.

    Reply
  13. Andrei A. Buckareff

    Routledge and Springer have both flatly refused to send hard copies to reviewers when I've sent requests. Lately, I've had some difficulties getting hard copies for reviewers from OUP, especially when I have used their forms rather than reaching out to the area editors directly. I haven't had any issues with Cambridge or Bloomsbury.

    Reply
  14. Deborah Boyle

    I am the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and our book review editor noticed this problem last year. Although we still receive hard copies from some smaller presses, it has been very difficult to get hard copies from some of the major publishers, including CUP and OUP. We still hope to be able to offer book reviews, but in our October 2021 issue we published this statement:

    "Many publishers of academic books have recently changed their marketing strategies and have stopped sending hard copies of newly published books to journals. This change began before the Covid pandemic, although that has exacerbated the problem. The Journal of the History of Philosophy received almost no hard copies of books from publishers in the period from April to July 2021. This unfortunate change of policy may limit the Journal's ability to publish book reviews in the future.

    In response to the dramatic decrease in the number of books received, the JHP now offers a semiannual list of books of interest selected by the Book Review Advisory Committee."

    Reply
  15. Harley Maxwell

    To understand Springer, you need to study the Schutzstaffel management structure. I was reading the other day that Franz Stangl was only a captain! Lots of dehumanized party animals doing the dirty work.

    Reply
  16. James Stacey TAYLOR

    I'm the book review editor of The Journal of Value Inquiry, and my experience is similar to that of Michael Sevel and Christian Miller, above. While Springer has resisted provided hard copies other publishers have been willing to provide them–although some do seem to prefer to provide e-copies. I also know that Routledge has been very accomodating with sending out hard copies of my own recent books to reviewers.

    Reply
  17. Ram Neta

    Although Philosophy and Phenomenological Research doesn't publish book reviews, we do publish symposia on 6 books each year. When I became editor of that book symposium series in 2014, I received dozens of books every month, from lots of different publishers. (The journal acknowledged receipt of these books in its pages.). Those shipments ended very abruptly sometime in early 2019, and now I receive maybe two or three hard copies each year.

    Reply
  18. Christopher Shields

    The situation at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, courtesy of Stella Jiayue Zhu, Managing Editor:

    ========
    1. Most major academic and trade publishers still send us physical copies for consideration—that is, we receive books before we have reached commission decisions about them. Among these publishers, the majority send us an email to gauge interest first, but they are happy to oblige when I request "a physical copy for consideration". A few—OUP, CUP, De Gruyter off the top of my head—send us their entire philosophy catalogue automatically.

    2. A few presses are reluctant about sending physical copies just for consideration—Edinburgh UP is an example. But I can still get a physical copy once I line up a reviewer. As far as I am aware, Springer (and as a result its subsidiaries such as Palgrave Macmillan) is the only publisher with an explicit digital only review policy. Even then, I was able to "twist their arms" and get a physical copy for a reviewer recently by leveraging the fact that philosophers are very disinclined to review books without hard copies, among other things.

    In summary, we are probably moving in the direction of digital, but digital-copy-only policies are not common in philosophy as of yet. I have never failed to obtain a hardcopy as long as I have a reviewer lined up. If a small press wants to cut corners by offering digital copies only, I would probably have sympathy for it. Smaller presses were not doing particularly well during the pandemic. I don't have a great deal of sympathy for giants like Springer though. But, as it turns out, they are the only one to have given me trouble.
    ======

    Her summation seems to me just right; her experience with the presses she mentions mirrors mine exactly. I suspect we are in a period of flux and it is not altogether clear how things will play out.

    Reply
  19. Jacob

    I worked for a history journal in the book review office. Brill was notorious for only providing digital copies of their books for review. It was almost impossible to get their books reviewed. And we were a major journal focused on a niche topic that had a lot of historians willing to review hard copies for us.

    Reply
  20. Mark van Roojen

    It has been a few years since I was BR editor for Ethics, but one reason OUP got a large share of our reviews when I did that job was that they sent us copies of books. This brought their books to our attention. Even when I was slow to find a reviewer, sending copies did raise the probability of a review. It isn't that I did not look out for books to review that were not sent our way. But in an unpaid job like BR editor there is only so much time you can put in. And each of us has our blind spots.

    Publishers who offered electronic review copies often had time-limits on availability for those copies — after which they expired (as I understand how it worked; I'm not a wiz with electronic copies). That did not help them get their books reviewed. FWIW, 6 years back, most reviewers still preferred hard copies. That may be different now. Still it seems to me that from the publisher's end it would be worth sending the copy since the marginal cost is low and the promotional benefit of having a book reviewed should be relatively high in a small market.

    It was hard to keep track of author's offers to send books should we have them reviewed, but in the absence of a copy from a publisher such offers did have some effect. So if I were an author I would first pester my publisher to send a copy to likely review venues. Failing that I would offer the BR editors at those venues a copy to send should they decide to review the book.

    Reply
  21. John Callanan

    I'm Reviews Editor for Philosophy, and this is increasingly a problem. CUP are fine, but all the others are difficult. Some will send hard copies if pushed, others flat out refuse. I can't even get Routledge to write back to me. There is no easy tick-box form for selecting hard copies, as there should be. I think publishers are underestimating how much they are self-excluding their products from review.

    Reply
  22. Stan

    I understand the conservative attitude, but I am against it. Get an ebook reader! BOOX ebook readers can read all formats and are a pure joy to use.

    The problem with this solution is compensation, of course. Is there any hope that reviewers will organise and demand alternative compensation, that they do so successfully?

    Reply
  23. Moti Gorin

    Though I prefer to read on paper, I will gladly accept a free ebook reader from a publisher, if they insist.

    Reply
  24. Routledge Philosophy

    Online review copy request forms are usually automated and tend only to offer EBKs (EBK demand is steadily increasingly and is likely preferred in some subject areas).

    The Philosophy Editorial team at Routledge will happily order a book in the reviewer’s preferred format. Our contact info is on our website, and we just need the name of the journal commissioning the review and the reviewer’s contact details to proceed.

    Reply
  25. Alex King

    Daniel Wodak and I have recently taken over as Book Review editors for Ethics and have been pretty shocked by the current state of things. There’s a serious problem for editors: books now have to be requested individually, and the requests aren’t always granted (much less *happily* granted) — this makes the process slow and onerous.

    But there’s also a serious problem for authors. If editors aren’t sent a physical copy of your book, it’s easier for us to miss the title in the publishers’ general marketing lists, it's harder to assess it, it’s harder to attract reviewers, and it's harder for us to ensure that the review is up to standard. We try to do our best to catch everything, but publishing is a messy world. Even good faith actors (who are also typically uncompensated) can only devote so much time to each task, and we will inevitably miss things. And if the reviewers aren't sent a copy and instead purchase it themselves, they end up *paying* to write a review. Pretty terrible. Ideally, books would be sent to editors by default, and then to reviewers as necessary. But this seems unlikely.

    So what can authors do? You should take control in one of the following ways. (1) Add it to your book contract that review copies be sent to relevant editors. (2) If it's not in your contract, just pester the publisher until they send hard copies to the relevant editors. Once we get the book, we can take over. But it’d be great to have your help in making sure we get it in the first place.

    Reply
  26. Jeff P.

    I recently administered a Book Award in which twenty publishers eagerly and even gratefully provided multiple copies, sometimes of multiple books.

    Reply
  27. Thom Brooks

    I know an increasing number of colleagues find eBooks easier (e.g., nothing to lug around etc) and I think it's progress that such an option is available to those reviewers/journals that prefer this.

    However, I read books in hard copy only and would not consider reviewing any book in electronic format only. As former editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy, I am very sorry to see publishers reluctant to send out books for review like they once did – perhaps all the more surprising given the ever increasing volume of books published. Reviews are a great way for younger scholars to learn about academic publishing, hugely important for scholars to get a clearer view of new scholarship recently available and an invaluable source of plugs for publishers' websites promoting their books.

    Reply
  28. Andrew Beck

    My EA and I did a thorough review of those philosophy journals that review books at the beginning of last year. Some journals (like Ethics) wanted all possible books sent, but others only wanted a list of published titles and did not want to receive unsolicited books. Many journals told me that they would be revisiting their policy post-Covid.

    Like most academic publishers today (I think), Routledge does not want to send out a hard copy of a book if it is not going to be reviewed. We don’t, for example, think we should send out 25 hardbacks of a research monograph simply to advertise that the book is now available. And, yes, our default for many of our titles is to send an eBook.

    But if your reviewer wants a hard copy, please do get in touch with your editorial contact; this can be easily arranged. (My authors should know that they can always contact me with this request. Book review editors can also do this.) I will need (1) the reviewer’s name, postal address, email address, phone #, and the journal for which the reviewer is writing the review. If I am not the editor of the book being requested, I will either send the request on to the appropriate editor/EA or — if they are not around –input the gratis request myself.

    Thank you!

    Reply
  29. Jeff Dean

    Hackett still sends hard copy books unless a reviewer requests an ebook. One thing that has changed is that many journals no longer want publishers to send unsolicited copies to a generic office address, preferring to have copies shipped directly to a reviewer.

    Reply
  30. Allen Hazen

    Tangential, occasioned by Robert C Hocker's reference to "soft cover review copies" (#11 above): I first encountered such copies in a second-hand bookstore and had to ask what they were. I thin asked whether it was normal for reviews to sell such (to second hand bookstores) copies after writing their reviews — I think I had seen "review copy, not for sale" on one of them — and was told that obviously this was sometimes done, but that other reviewers donated such copies to, e.g., prison libraries.
    (The books I saw were, of course, novels for general audiences, not academic books.). I concluded that some reviewers had more refined ethical sensibilities than others.

    Reply
  31. P.L. Henneky

    This thread is useful in that it is highlighting a new trend and gauging reaction to it, and it seems the reaction is largely negative. I just wanted to make a brief comment pushing back against the negative reaction. Although I read hard copies of fiction books, I've used online books for all my research for decades now, because interacting with an online book makes the research process significantly streamlined in comparison with using a hard copy. Examples: (i) you can find specific words/topics immediately with 'Control F' and immediately scroll between highlighted occurrences of the searched term, which is much faster than consulting an index and thumbing through the book by hand; (ii) when you want to quote a passage, copy paste (and yes, you can do this with PDFs with the TextSniper app) is much more expedient than … opening a hard book and hand-typing full paragraphs verbatim from the book; (iii) the portability of online books means you can take your full research library with you on the road anywhere (including, e.g., integrating it with Zotero).

    I understand that many people in fact *do* have the preference to have hard copies of books, and given this, I'm in support of reviews editors offering a flexible option to reviewers to receive a hard copy or digital copy. My point is rather than given the clear benefits of online books for research purposes, people's preferences for hard copies for research is (even if a deeply entrenched preference) not obviously in line with what would make most sense and seem more likely explained by either something like status quo bias, tech illiteracy, or worse – a desire to put books on a shelf for the sake of putting books on a shelf (which is an interest people might have, but not one instrumental to research needs themselves).

    Reply
  32. Jacco Bomhoff

    "The reviewer is constrained to notice in conclusion that this is the first volume which he has been asked to review in page proof, and this a volume published by the Clarendon Press. The circumstance is noted with a view of expressing the hope that, even in these times of economic depression, (which incidentally affect reviewers as well as publishers), such lapse in form, tolerable in the single instance, may not by repetition become a bad habit" (Hessel Yntema, University of Chicago Law Review, 1936)

    Reply
  33. Steven Hales

    I strongly disagree. I am tech savvy, and have read academic books in electronic format. The reflexive charge of Luddite! to any criticisms of technological solutions is neither helpful nor accurate. What I found is that I don’t mind reading novels electronically (although that experience is also inferior to that of a finely printed and bound book with sumptuous illustrations) but I deeply dislike reading scholarly books that way. The ability to underline, annotate, make marginal notes, or quickly flip pages to find a half-remembered section or passage, is poorly emulated electronically. You disagree, fine, read books any way you like. But let’s not have those preferences foisted on the rest of us by publishers hoping to save a buck.

    Reply
  34. Nick Byrd

    I also prefer and even require a digital copy in order to review anything, book or otherwise. And yes: it must be portable doc format (PDF) or else ePub. I will not review the book from a non-downloadable file viewable only in a web browser.

    I find this entire discussion odd. My entire library is digital. It allows me to have thousands of volumes in my pocket at all times. I made the switch the first time that I had to move with dozens of boxes of books—it just wasn’t worth all the trouble given the digital alternative.

    For those interested in making the switch: https://byrdnick.com/archives/6356/how-to-create-a-digital-library

    Reply
  35. Max Khan Hayward

    I am the Editor of Analysis Reviews, and I can confirm that most publishers have made this their official policy. I as Editor get sent very few hard copies. But more of an issue is the stated refusal to send hard copies to reviewers. Many reviewers want to read (and mark up) hard copies, and are reluctant to take on the role otherwise, and of course getting a free copy of the book is one of the perks for the unpaid labour of reviewing. Fortunately, we have found that presses (especially OUP) will send hard copies when we make a special request (even if we do this repeatedly), but it is annoying that their stated policy is that they won't.

    Reply
  36. Vicky L Brandt

    If someone prefers digital, fine; but when so many people feel they work better on paper, why not support their ability to do their best work? Digital and print media have distinct advantages, but my experience reading on the page is richer, more pleasantly multi-dimensional. Electronic searches for words are faster than indices, but going back and forth between several passages in a book and comparing them conceptually is easier for me with the book in hand.

    There's been quite a bit of research on whether and how the medium (electronic vs paper) affects reading comprehension, and it seems most studies find reading on paper produces a small but significant edge in comprehension and meta-cognition (the accuracy of one's awareness of one's level of understanding). See, for example, this meta-analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X18300101#bib36

    Incidentally, this effect does not seem to be generational. Among my biomedical research colleagues and students—a very tech-savvy bunch—the majority tell me they appreciate the convenience of electronic formats and digital libraries, but prefer paper for deeper reading, such as when a topic is more difficult or more important to them. And when it comes to page proofs for manuscripts I've written, I print them out. Errors that I completely miss on-screen practically leap off the page at me.

    Reply
  37. Grad Student

    A comment related to this post. I'm a grad student. I was sent an (unsolicited) email by OUP asking if I'd like to receive a new book just published by them. I was directed to a page with a button to click saying "Request Your Copy." That led to another page, this one warning me that, were I to go ahead and request a copy of the book without confirming that I'm an instructor using the book for a course (or considering doing so), I'd be "turned over to the authorities" for "appropriate action" because I'd be "posing as an instructor," which apparently is "both a violation of [my] school's honor code and criminal fraud." (All quotes from the OUP page).

    I have no idea how they know my school's honor code, or my jurisdiction's criminal statutes, or why they'd send me the initial email! Was it a dare?! Needless to say, I did not proceed. Very odd.

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