Keeping the tradition vibrant!

Self-Publish

Silenced Dissenters
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Silenced Dissenters

The entire effort of the regime to end a century of our self-publishing history has been an effort to impose this move on ASALH in a very authoritarian fashion.  There has been no regard for building a consensus among either the Executive Council or the membership.  We shall never forget that a motion remains on the floor of the Business Session, despite the President’s attempt to usurp the authority of the membership to decide the issue by disenfranchising the membership.  Against the Constitution and By-laws, President Higginbotham brazenly claimed to the Business Session that the Executive Council makes the decisions for ASALH and our only option is to vote out people.  Now that the Executive Council has taken its rogue vote, every effort is being made to make sure that the membership does not know how board members voted.   Regimes want to perpetuate themselves–that’s what they do–and they will use extraordinary means to make it happen.  This is the latest effort to squash transparency and accountability.

From what I can gather, the rogue vote of the Executive Council took place on a conference call.   After some wrangling about secrecy, it was decided that the vote would be semi-secret with board members emailing their vote to three of the officers, including the President and the Secretary.  (Note, the Great Disenfranchiser herself got to know how everyone voted.  The leader of the movement to end tradition had perfect knowledge of who was for and who was against her program!)  The outcome of the vote was 15 to 11, not bad for a vote held under her watchful eye.

After the vote, I began asking people how they voted and it became clear immediately that people had a problem being accountable.  So many, even people who were known supporters of our tradition of self-publishing, were reluctant to say.  So I posted on facebook for members of the board to speak up and tell how they voted.  After all, the members of ASALH would ultimately need to know so that they can decide whom they should support for re-election.  Even the president said that the recourse of the membership would be to vote out the Executive Council for their actions.  Well, despite this, board members have been reticent–even when they are right with Woodson.   With a bit a peer pressure from facebook countering the peer pressure of the board, a couple of folks spoke up.

It seems some have conflated a secret ballot with an oath of secrecy.  A secret ballot simply protects the voter from telling the world how he or she voted, but every individual who makes a secret vote has the right to tell any and everyone how they voted according to their own lights.  If the vote were taken under an oath of secrecy, then all who vote must refrain from revealing even how they voted as an individual.  These are different rules of voting and should not be conflated.  By all accounts, there was no oath of secrecy.

Soon the new elections for the ASALH board will be held.  If people who are on the board run for re-election won’t tell us how they voted on their candidate’s statement–simply vote them out.  And if the folks who are running for the first time are not allowed to tell us where they stand, then the regime is not worth supporting with membership dollars.  At some point, transparency and accountability must prevail.

You Will Not Get Away with Disenfranchising the Membership of ASALH
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You Will Not Get Away with Disenfranchising the Membership of ASALH

 
 
Two days ago the Executive Council of ASALH, under the leadership of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham of Harvard, unconstitutionally arrogated to itself the authority to sign the contract with the University of Chicago Press. Our constitution requires us to follow Roberts Rules of Order, and now the president of ASALH has brazenly violated our rule.
 
When the legislative body of ASALH met in its Business Session at the 101st Annual Meeting in Richmond, the members, exercising their constitutional power, debated a motion to self-publish. Without constitutional grounds and in flagrant violation of Roberts Rules of Order, Professor Higginbotham ended the debate. Not only did she claim that the body had no such power to decide the issue, she asserted, in an autocratic move, that only the Executive Council makes the policies for our body and that our only recourse was to vote them out of office. Worse still, she announced that she herself was the authority to which any appeal of her ruling should be heard. The would-be dictator maintains she heard none! For sure, because she ain’t got no such power! The Vice-President of Membership, Greer Stanford Randle, concurred with this mockery of the constitution which clearly states that the function of the Executive Council is to carry out the policies set by the Business Session. Both must be held accountable.
 
The rogue vote of the Executive Council on Tuesday insisted on by the regime showed the rise of a principled opposition. Fifteen to eleven was much closer than the regime thought it would be. The regime was weakened by the last election, and they will eventually be removed. I commend those who have spent a year of their lives opposing the sell out of the principle of self-publishing, the foundation of our organization’s mission. I condemn those who would not only end our founding purpose but will do so at our financial disadvantage and against the rights of our membership. Just who are you to trample on our rights?
 
Many of you out here were at the meeting where the membership was disenfranchised and others have heard about it. Some of you have stayed on the sidelines concerned about bigger issues and sometimes your own careers. I understand. Yet in the new phase of this struggle to be right with Woodson, I will call on those of you who are members to sign petitions, to vote this year’s election, and to attend the meeting in Cincinnati, where we stand up for our rights against a handful of people who have lost their way.
 
Disenfranchising black people is not right with any major tradition in in black history, and our organization was founded on the belief that knowledge would expand, not contract, democracy.
Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions
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Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions

These former Presidents who signed the letter in support of taking the Journal of African History to the University of Chicago Press ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Here I speak of Betty Gardner, Robert Harris, Samuel Du Bois Cook, and John Fleming.  Gardner, Harris, and Cook held office when the journal was at Morehouse for that 25-year period, when Alton Hornsby kept the subscribers list and received all the revenue.  He often submitted reports saying they were broke without providing an accounting of the numbers. When the journal returned to headquarters, under the presidency of Gloria Dickinson, it came without either records of subscribers or documents about revenue.  In fact, back in those dark days when these former presidents sat the board, there were no IRS filings, and the only reports they had were cash roll ups.  I will never forget the day when I showed the treasurer that his numbers had to be false, and he sat behind a typewriter and created a new report without documents before him–he made it all up as I had suspected.  Oh, those were dark days–much different from those by the time of John Fleming who agreed to be president in part because I agreed to continue as Vice President for Programs.

So John Fleming should know better than much of what he says about the journal.  It was marginally profitable during his years.  Thanks to VP Franklin’s regular production of the journal and decisions to raise the price slowly from $40 to $150 today, the journal has had positive revenue all these years.  So much so that we started charging salaries and overhead.  Now Bob Harris would not know this, because he was gone.  And John Fleming left in 2009–before we went digital.  Since going digital the revenue increased from $75,000 to a highpoint of $130,000.  With JSTOR’s reduction in fees and leaving our current vendors, our revenue will tip $150,000 for the first time–but how would these past presidents know this.  They would not know about the current finances of the journal because there are no numbers provided by the regime they are supporting.

The letter also states that Woodson’s Appeal made no money.  Now, in 2008 we were getting $1000 plus donations for the appeal, some as high as $5,000.   They are so wrong about that they should be ashamed.  Yet, Cook would have no way of knowing that.  Bob Harris had left the board, and yet John Fleming and Bettye Gardiner should know better, especially John.  I will ask him to personally apologize for that gross misstatement of fact.

Now two of these presidents were involved with the major financial disasters of our time in ASALHland, the Que Street Debacle and the Lost Treasures.

 

 

How Can You Sign on to a Project When No One Gives You Anything Like This?  Selling Out Woodson Without Reference to Numbers, SMH

 

ASALH’s Que Street Debacle
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ASALH’s Que Street Debacle

Nothing is worse in the non-profit world than having more money than ever before, except also believing your organization should have more status and prestige than it does. This combination led ASALH to what some of us know as the Que Street Debacle. A new headquarters building was bought and yet ASALH never moved into the building. How this million dollar mistake was made is a cautionary tale about the failure to perform due diligence and operate with transparency. It is a lesson that has been lost again by current members of the Executive Council.

After receiving a 1.5 million grant from the now defunct Wachovia Bank and selling the Woodson Home to the National Park Service, ASALH had a cash position of nearly $2.5 million, more than it had ever seen in its 90 year history. For nearly three years, ASALH had been a guest on Howard University’s campus and there were many who believed that ASALH now could afford a place of its own–having only sold its Fourteenth Street headquarters only a few years earlier to escape crushing debt. The national real estate boom was in full swing, and property seemed a sure thing.

There were those who believed that ASALH should purchase a headquarters in Washington not far from Woodson’s home, and the property identified was 636 Q Street, NW. It was a residence, not a home, and it was said that the build out to make it functional as an office would be less than $150,000. The advocates of the position, led by a business person with vast experience in the hedge-fund industry, held that the building, once purchased, could qualify for a thirty-year municipal bond. Thus the fifteen-year loan that we would sign for would not matter so much as it would be temporary. Rather than take on a mortgage, or a mortgage alternative like a bridge loan, some of us believed that ASALH should relocate the headquarters to Maryland, where we could pay cash for a business condominium. The total cost, with build-out, would have been no more than $500,000 and ASALH would headquarters free and clear. Effectively we would have spent no more than we had made from the sale of Woodson’s home.

Before the Executive Council meeting, I argued the case for moving free and clear to Prince George’s County, and Rev. Richard T. Adams, whom I admire and consider my reverend, argued for staying in the city. Few would forget how he waxed on about how ASALH needed to be in the city, the nation’s capital, and not in the “cow pasture.” We all chucked at his humor, and most of the people on the board agreed with him. With the transaction in the hands of the hedge-fund manager and the incoming president of ASALH, no one else on the board, including me, felt compelled to examine the documents. In short order, we owned a building–the now notorious Q Street, and we would move in as soon as the modifications had been made.

ASALH never moved into Q Street. Although only authorized to make expenditures of approximately $150,000, the board member in charge of the project submitted bills for substantially more. Efforts were made to reign in the spending but the president’s efforts were rebuffed, and additional amendments to the contracts were signed. There was the unexpected new roof, termite abatement, facade shoring up, and numerous other challenges. Before all was done, the rehabilitation had run up to $500,000–and we still did not have a building that could pass inspection for occupancy. By this time the board member conceded that ASALH’s project would no qualify for a municipal bond–the size and the scale of the project, among other things, were inadequate for the minimum bond that the city would float. The hedge-fund guy who glibly talked about municipal bonds knew nothing about them! But that was not the bomb, nope. Brace yourselves, we had been lied to about the terms of the mortgage. It was not a fifteen year instrument. Nope, the mortgage was for five years–amortized over fifteen years–with a $600,000 balloon payment due January 1, 2012. Translated, the amount you would pay if you had a fifteen year mortgage but at the five year mark the rest of the money owed came due. Someone had signed a mortgage without appreciating or reporting the terms, believing, it seems, what we had all been told. The balloon had the ability to take the association under in three years. This is unfortunate for us. We know there were more affordable mortgages available. There are even mortgages to help new residents, allowing them to apply through their international credit reports, so they are able to settle in the states.

With great effort the project was brought to a halt. Leans were placed on the property by the building contractor and vendors involved, and bad feelings were everywhere because assurances had been given that we had the money to complete the project. Q Street became my mess to clean up. Everyone involved ran for the hills. Over the course of more than a year, I negotiated with the contractors and disabused them of the notion that would could honor our contractual agreements and survive as an organization. Eventually they let us out of the contracts, and Q Street became our unoccupied shell, would be headquarters. Under the presidency of Jim Stewart, we were able to sell the building at a great loss–having lost just under a million dollars on the project. Yet we were simply glad that we succeeded in selling before the balloon payment had taken us under.

So here we find ourselves once again business person, Gilbert Smith, lending his professional credential to persuade the board and the organization down a dubious path. While it is not his idea, he has lied about the Chicago Proposal. He and those involved have not done due diligence and vetted Chicago’s business plan, and no one has provided a cost benefit analysis. Worse still, the central documents have not been shared with board members and those who know most about the business affairs of the journal. Members are supposed to trust people who know nothing of publishing who have already been caught literally lying, representing revenue as profits. And to shut down opposition, they have resorted to efforts to stifle open debate and to overriden the constitution’s provision that allows the Business Session to make decisions that are binding on the board. The Que Street debacle may have cost a million dollars, but this debate over self-publishing has trampled over any notion of democracy and good governance.

(More on Q Street can be found in Duke’s Archives. Scholars interested in writing about Que Street may also contact me for my files. You can still find videos on the final renovation on YouTube. The new owners got a half-million dollars of free work from our debacle.)

A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports
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A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports

Much can be said about the Executive Council Meeting of February 24th, but the Regime is denying that the 102nd Business Meeting in Cincinnati has authority over the decision to self publish the Journal of African American History or take on the University of Chicago Press as our publisher.  Pretending that they still have the issue, they are ignoring the much more profitable self-publishing option made possible by the changes in JSTOR’s Current Journals Program.   Never mind that there is three times the profit is self-publishing.   Yet the truth about the superiority of self-publishing is not clear because the Regime is not interested in putting out a projection of the revenue versus expenses for going to the University of Chicago Press.  After more than four months since the 101st Annual Meeting, where Gilbert A. Smith represented $100,000 of revenue as profit, he has still not provided the math.  There still is neither a cost-benefit analysis or a set of expenses that will remain during the period of the proposed Chicago contract.   The latter takes perhaps more work than then regime cares to perform, but the latter is something that a head of household can produce.  If one did not know better, the board will vote to go to Chicago without numbers.

Why Not Present a Draft Report with Everything but the Trivial Amount?

We hear that the numbers are not definitive yet because the current expenses are not accurately known.  Gee, how did we get this far if the board has no handle on the numbers?  And Chicago is poised to make the deal even though it admits it does not have good numbers.  The numbers in question have to do with the current revenue and expenses for print subscriptions.  The other expenses are well known and make up the bulk of the expenses, indeed, the provisional numbers would only change the bottom line on print expenses by roughly 10% to 20%, or $600 to $1,200.  It all involves whether we ship out print an additional 30 or 60 customers.  It is a trivial expense.  Some might call it akin to spoilage.

What Reason or Reasons Would There Be to Not Presenting a provisional Draft?

Well, there is no good reason since the report would be between 98% and 99% accurate.   The problems are twofold.

  1. Such a report would demonstrate that the Chicago Proposal is almost $200,000 less profitable over five years than self-publishing.
  2. It would be also be the proof that Gilbert A. Smith, CPA, misrepresented revenues as profits–in a very major way.

Those who believe in self-publishing produced a comparative report using the same base of data.

Despite This Failure to Do Due Diligence, the Executive Council Gave Him a Vote of Confidence

The Executive Council revealed itself once again more concerned about being on the best terms with one another regardless of how the membership, the legislative body, has been lied to as it was in Richmond.  Never forget that Gilbert A. Smith told the standing-room only crowd at the 101st Business Session that $100,000 in revenue would be profit.  Clearly taking issue on my blog and social media posts about the treasure’s mischaracterization of the $100,000, a board member called for a vote of confidence in the treasurer.   Gilbert easily won the vote–imagine that–despite never addressing the issue of revenue and expenses!  And the board was aghast that roughly a quarter of their members–mostly new–voted no confidence.

Hope for the Future as the Board Is Changing Before Our Eyes

The board was audibly surprised and upset by the number of new board members who were not on board with the sell out.  The truth is, you cannot get many people to sign on to the sell out.  Indeed, I was surprised at a couple of people who put their sympathy for Gilbert A. Smith above his role in lying to the membership by knowingly calling revenue profits.  Yet, everyone on the board should know that they are at odds with the membership on this question.  And Chicago should take note.  The people selling out tradition will be sent packing from the board.  Too many of these folks are here to be self-important at our Annual DC Black History Luncheon.  That becomes clearer every year.

 

 

Self-Publishing Made Viable by Serving the Community More than the Academy
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Self-Publishing Made Viable by Serving the Community More than the Academy

Let a Strategy from Our Past Be Our Future

In the 1930s, when the foundations that had been assisting Carter G. Woodson and the Association closed their purses, Carter G. Woodson turned directly to the community to support our efforts to get black history before the community.  Over the last four decades, ASALH has sold its journals to university and colleges, and while we did not get rich, we were satisfied enough with the revenue and now it dries up.  The University of Chicago contract is at best a temporary solution, because they have no means of increasing sales of product that the academy can no longer afford.  By staying an independent publisher, ASALH can look to the community, especially our branches, to sustain our publishing program and get our journals to teachers and students.

As the academic market for new scholarship continues to decline, JSTOR has just launched a new program that will allow to remain an independent publisher and increase our subscriber base and revenue by teaming with our branches and community organizations across the nation.  Working with them, we can get the digital Journal of African American History, Black History Bulletin and Fire!!! before students, teachers, and community members.  More than ever, Woodson’s journals will be in the hands of schools and civic organizations such as museums, community organizations, and public libraries.

Prior to now, we could not combine our new digital files and our century worth of back files into a single product.  We could not even bundle them together because they were on different delivery platforms. But with the JSTOR New Journals Program, we now can do so.  We can price the entire run of the Journal of African American History—over a century—and make them available to entire local school districts, local libraries, and museums.   We can get a grant to digitize and make available the entire run of the Black History Bulletin as well.

How would this unprecedented access to the community be paid for?  By relatively minor donations from local corporations raised by ASALH’s branches and other civic groups in our community.  Organizations such as the Links, the Prince Hall Masons, and the Greek Letter organizations can help.  They also understand that increasingly backwards voices in America are retreating from teaching the truth about slavery and Jim Crow.  They know our children are not learning about themselves and their ancestors’ accomplishments in the curriculum.  They know culturally inclusive education may be the goal of teachers but not the priority of those who control the budgets.  We can stop the movement backwards and increase our subscriber database and revenue by making our publishing program more in keeping with our original mission—to spread the truth about our past.

The Structure of the New Program

  • Local or regional corporations will be asked to donate approximately $2,000 to $2,5000 to the branch or civic organizations.
    • $500 of these funds will be used to buy a bundle subscription to the Black History Bulletin, the Journal of African American History, and Fire!!! respectively.
    • The remainder of the funds would be retained by the branch or civic organization to promote and sustain the program and other activites.
  • This will help build and promote our branches
    • It will expand our number of partners nationwide.
  • The local corporate sponsors would affirm the values we share with them
    • The importance of knowledge in a democratic society
    • The centrality of diversity to our country’s progress
    • That corporations must be good citizens of the community
  • ASALH will increase its revenues and its reach into the community
    • The subscription would take care of the $15 fee from JSTOR who would deliver the digital journal to the institutions in the same manner they currently do schools and colleges.
    • ASALH will be able to extend its subscriber base beyond where we have been since the late 1960s—when the journal were in local schools and public libraries before budgets were cut.

The New Self-Publishing Program versus the Chicago Proposal

While this program is not wholly conceivable with the University of Chicago Press.

  • They carry only one of our journals, so logistically it is much more cumbersome and expensive. We would have to run dual staffing.
  • Because they would be our publisher, they would claim a 50% chunk of the revenue that is assigned to JAAH. Indeed, they might even want as much as $200 of every bundle.  Yes, they would be owed this money even though we would have published more than 98% or more of it without them.

By staying with JSTOR and taking advantage of their New Journal Program, we will enjoy the following benefits.

  • JSTOR picks up the Black History Bulletin. This is itself a major advantage of the program, placing both of our journals on the same platform.
  • The BHB, Fire!!!, and JAAH will all be on the same platform—for the first time ever!
  • JSTOR reduces its fees on the hosting of new scholarship from 25% to $15 a customer, which on a $350 subscription is less than 4.2 percent.
  • In comparison with Chicago, it is a no brainer. Chicago’s 50% split on a $350 subscription would cost us $175.00 versus $15.00 with JSTOR.

The only other cost with JSTOR is a platform fee of $2,000 for each journal, which is the price of a high traffic, managed website.  One with IP address authentication, a necessary component, is thousands of dollars more.

A New Revenue Stream Made Possible by Self-Publishing

ASALH has been looking for a new revenue stream and this is it.  Rather than having come up with a new publication or a new national sponsor, we can take advantage of creating a new product from our existing publications!  We can build on our existing expertise and our treasure of black history.

If we are able to get a hundred new institutional subscribers for both the Black History Bulletin, the Journal of African American History, and Fire!!! This bundle of new subscriptions would bring in $50,000 in revenue.  The cost against this would be $4,500.  With the University of Chicago Press, the cost against the JAAH share it would be $25,000 or more and entail negotiations.

 

Self-Publishing, Self-Love, and $250,000
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Self-Publishing, Self-Love, and $250,000

The Regime’s effort to take our century-old Journal of African American History to the University of Chicago (Bae) is once again in trouble.  Other than money, the Regime could never point to any reason to go to Chicago except the pleasure of the esteemed press’s company.  Sharon Harley virtually said there was nothing in the deal for Chicago, except what they thought of us and our Journal of African American History.  It was beyond money.  That never satisfied many ASALHites since we have always loved ourselves and been wary of suitors promising things in return for control.  We have believed in the Woodson tradition of having a platform from which we could speak the truth about our past without a concern over whether someone would moderate what we publish.  Sensing that the love, trust, and belief in some other  entity, especially that university where White City used to stand, would not sway the rank and file of ASALH, the Regime resorted to the claim that revenues were profits.  Oh, we were told in our 101st Business Session that we were being wooed with money and free journals.  Oh, yes, there would be $100,000 in profits and a free journals in every mailbox.   Some of us knew better, but why would a certified pubic account, Gilbert A. Smith, simply lie like that?  And they had lots of folks fooled–including a number of retired former leaders who have been lobbying for the sell out.  (More appropriately, they are trying to stage a love out. T’aint no money in it.)

JSTOR Drops a Game Changer for Self-publishers

For months those of us opposed to the move have argued that the journals are currently as profitable as the Chicago offer, especially when the journal’s remaining expenses are charged to it and when the price of the so-called free journals are added.  Their Bae, we knew, has made no such promise.  They don’t love ASALH like that.  It’s about future positive revenue for them, and they will only spend so much in pursuit of it.  We also put $55,000 on the table for a reserve fund against future revenue decreases until we could put the journal on more stable financial footing.  These prudent measures had no effect on the love outs on ASALH Executive Council.  Functioning like a regime, they continued their plans to love out, ignoring our legal assertion that because there was still a motion on the floor of the Business Session.  Their contention remained that only the Executive Council had the authority to make the decision, and yet they knew their power over the council was waning.  New members had been elected precisely to stand for self-publishing.   We were poised to slog it out in today’s Executive Council meeting just like that, then JSTOR dropped a bomb.

The Short Version of the JSTOR New Journal Program and the Numbers

In response to the University of California Press and the University of Chicago Press both leaving their Current Scholarship Program, JSTOR is ending it.  It was predicated on a 25% charge for marketing and other services.  To keep new scholarship alive and flowing into its main product, their archive, JSTOR has decide to function purely as a journals host.  This will save ASALH over $20,000 a year.  The effort to secret this program from the Executive Council failed, and now it is manifestly clear that self-publishing is a better financial move than going with the University of Chicago Press.

2018 Self-Publishing versus Chicago Revenue Promise minus In-House Costs

 

The financial outcomes of self-publishing get better in 2019 as we are able to reduce our costs because we are self-publishing.  Some of the expenses associated with VP Franklin’s unique editorial style and the creep from 600 to 800 pages per volume can be remedied.  This can be done not by cutting articles published but by reducing front and back matter, publishing reviews digital only, and ending the unnecessary indexes not needed in the digital age.

 

Where Is the Due Diligence of the Regime?

The regime enters the Executive Council meeting today without having provided the members of the board any of the things associated with such a major change in operations.  We have been self-publishing for a century–a hundred plus years–and none of the following has been proffered to justify the move.

  • No cost benefit analysis
  • No history of expense-revenue reports that are produced quarterly.
  • No face-to-face meeting with the proposed publisher.
  • Chicago, the regime says, was given the charge of handling our affairs with JSTOR, their competitor.   At best, this was incompetent and a violation of the board’s fiduciary responsibility.

We have heard rumors that the University of Chicago Press representatives might appear in person, but we have heard conflicting rumors that they will at best Skype in.  We believe it will be the latter because there is not any money in this for Chicago.   As I have written elsewhere, this contract for Chicago represents an effort to control a catalogue of intellectual property and build an archive.  The efforts to sell back tiles to existing customers stands virtually little chance to let them make of their $100,000.

Time to End This Time-Consuming, Pride-Driven Love Out–Take the $250,000 Advantage in Self-Publishing

The opportunity to end this mess is before the Executive Council.  A vote to go to Chicago will be challenged in court, if necessary.   Not only would it be a violation of fiduciary responsibility, it would also run counter to the motion on the floor of the 101st Business Session that forbids the board from ending self-publishing without the permission of the Business Session.

A year is along enough to make a case for ending self-publishing.  The Regime has not even attempted due diligence.  They have nothing.  Gilbert A. Smith has misrepresented revenue as profits, and he has not adduced any expenses against the $100,000 for anyone to explore because it would be an admission that he lied.  Remember, the good CPA reported that the Chicago money was all profit.

We have a $55,000 reserve fund added to positive revenue over five years that approaches $200,000.  This is a $250,000 advantage to self-publishing.

The opposition needs to lobby the fence sitters, and put a motion on the floor the charge the Executive Director of ASALH to sign the contract proffered by JSTOR for the Current Journals Program.

Oh Snap, JSTOR Cuts Fees and Enhances Our Self-Publishing Program
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Oh Snap, JSTOR Cuts Fees and Enhances Our Self-Publishing Program

Since this effort to sell out ASALH’s century of self-publishing began, I have urged members of the ASALH Executive Board to talk to JSTOR, our twenty-year business partner, to see what they can do to keep our business.   Imagine my consternation every time I’ve been told that the University of Chicago Press, the firm trying to win our business, is handling discussions with our existing partner! You think Chicago will inform you of what advantages JSTOR might hold for you?  Of course not, and for some this heresy was never about money–it was about love and status.  When the money was close, it was obscured, but now JSTOR has a new program that reduces our self-publishing cost dramatically and makes it much more profitable to stay independent publishers.  It is now Self-Love versus the Love of Status.

Well there is good news!  And I knew there would be.  JSTOR, which has greater revenue than the University of Chicago Press and is much more profitable, had to respond to the loss of business with the University of Chicago Press and the University of California Press in 2015.  That development had to cause a shake up since they constituted the bulk of the New Scholarship Program.   Small publisher (and in the world of publishing even Chicago is small) all hoped that JSTOR could save our declining subscriber base by growing our business globally.  That failed because the move towards STM globally has limited the appetite for the humanities and social sciences journals from the US in Asia and the Middle East.  (Chicago is now pretending it can have success even without its own sales representatives, smh).  Recognizing that global and domestic marketing did not result in hardly enough new customers, it is starting a new program that is a godsend to those independent publishers do not want or really need to sign up with a publisher who has not clue on which ways the winds of academic publishing are blowing.

JSTOR’s new journals program  does two major things.

  • It eliminates the 25% marketing fee.  Wow!   This reduces cost by more than $20,000 a year.
  • It charges a minimum platform fee–one-third the cost of firms Allen Street.    The price in line with a managed hosting wp-press site–but it comes on a stable platform with IP authentication.
  • It charges a fee per subscriber that is similar to a paypal transaction fee and much less than commercial alternatives for closed access.
  • It will allow publishers–that would be us and not Big Pappa–to offer its customers the entire back files of the journal in question.  In the past, back files revenues were dealt with as part of JSTOR’s Archive Program only.

At the same time, ASALH would be able to pivot from the academy as its primary source of new institutional subscribers and reach out to institutions and groups within the African American community.  This is what we have historically done when the university system was not our way of making it in the world.  We can enlist our branches and our members to reach out to various civic organizations charters schools to offer a century of black life, history, and culture not simply via the Journal of African American History, but all of our publications.  This is bigly!!!

With this decrease in cost and the ability to offer a new product, we can grow our customer base without a split if 50-50 with would-be Big Pappa Chicago.  If we are independent, we can go to a local foundation and get underwriting for the entire run of all of our journals, including the Journal of African American History, and not share a red cent with the University of Chicago Press, or anyone else.  We could reach out to the Urban League or NAACP Act and make Woodson’s independently published journal available to youth who are in writing programs on grants that they have.  In the age of austerity, we find a way through as we have for a century and remain the oldest independently published scholarly journal in the entire world!!

To bring the point home: this offers ASALH great advantages over Chicago.

  • Unlike with Chicago, we would not have a 50% split of new scholarship subscriptions with Chicago.
  • Unlike with Chicago, we would not have a 50% split 50% of our royalties.  Yes, Chicago wants reverse reparations for the century of intellectual property they had no role in publishing.
  • Unlike with Chicago, our back file sales would not be subjected to a 50% split.
  • Our new scholarship will continue to be part of the JSTOR Archive program.

Why is JSTOR doing this, not love but to protect its JSTOR  Archive business.  It is a $85,000,000 a year not-for-profit primarily because of the global reach of its archive.  Where it failed at selling new scholarship abroad, its archive is gold.  JSTOR has decided to create a program that sustains independent publishing because it depends on it.

If the regime had done due diligence and talked to our long-term business partner, they would have heard of this program long ago.  But it was not their desire to continue self-publishing.  They are bent on going for the supposed status of a university press as their publisher even though JSTOR continues to offer services that are at once more stable and sustainable.

 

The University of Chicago Seeks to Take a Bite Out of JSTOR’s Archive Market?
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The University of Chicago Seeks to Take a Bite Out of JSTOR’s Archive Market?

In 2015, the University of Chicago Press, along with the University of California Press, pulled its journals out of JSTOR’s New Scholarship Program, and two years later, JSTOR, the most venerable of all the humanities and social sciences databases, has had to reshuffle its program for journals.  By looking at the University of Chicago Press’s new model for hosting its own journals and JSTOR’s new offering to its publishers, we can learn much about the leading developments in hosting scholarship, new and old, where STEM is not concerned.  What emerges from the darkness is the University of Chicago Press business model that makes it as interested in old scholarship as new.  Put another way, it is playing the long game and it wants to take a chunk out of JSTOR’s main business–JSTOR Archive, which brings it most of its revenue.  To succeed at this, it needs to sign up independent publishers and ask them to hand over control of their intellectual property, old and new.

The Dashed Hopes of Global Markets for American Humanities and Social Science Scholarship

Most academics, including those leading ASALH presently, seem to be oblivious to the reality that the market for humanities and social sciences journals is shrinking.  When digital platforms like JSTOR, Metapress, and Project Muse appeared, it was hoped that global sales would make up for a declining domestic market.  Recently, Oxford University Press, with its long-standing global footprint, has created digital platform for new scholarship, and major history journals such as the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History signed up.  And over time, a number of university presses such as Duke and now Chicago and the University of California Press have entered the digital platform business. Chicago pretends it can increase your sales globally, but they do not have sales representatives abroad.  Everyone else, including Chicago, has found out that there is not lots of money overseas.   The humanities and social sciences are not hot overseas anymore than here.  In fact, Japan, the most Western of the Asian nations, has announced it will shut down its state-run humanities and social science colleges entirely.  That, of course, takes a lot of would-be libraries out of the market for American humanities and social science journals.  Worse still, consortia are popping up in a number of countries, which is leading digital journal providers to sell their goods are dramatically reduced prices, and they are merely following the trend in the United States where consortia are popping along side athletic conferences.  Then there are two other problems with increasing overseas sales.  Some nations are not big on secondary and tertiary journals in any field, especially the humanities.  They do not care to hear what every academic in America has to say, only the ones publishing in the leading journals.  Why do they care to hear lesser known scholars in lesser known journals wax on pedantically. Finally, who cares about American humanities and social sciences all that much?   Some folks are trying to spend their dollars on their own domestic and regional cultural and intellectual traditions.  Why not let expand on their experiences using the same European theorists?  Really, how much of this can anyone afford when STEM is taking over everyone’s journal budgets?   With a declining domestic market and small foreign markets, the future of humanities and social sciences journals is bleak.

The Back Files Are Where the Humanities and Social Science Money Is

The academy’s appetite for old journals, called back files or archives, is greater than for new scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Almost all libraries in America, ranging from universities to local libraries, buy the discounted back files.  Indeed, librarians forced to cut a journal title from their collection console faculty by saying that we have the articles once they turn three years old, when they go into the archives (back files) of companies known as aggregators.   If they are sophisticated, they tell them that most articles do not become important until they are available at a deep discount.  The best known of the players in the journal archive business is by and far JSTOR; it is the gold standard among librarians.  The other players are EbscoHost, Cengage, and ProQuest.  We know most of the profitability of these archives by looking at JSTOR, which lives largely from their Archive even as they have recently branched out.  By selling the back files of thousands of journals, they have made their parent company, Ithaka Harbors,  a not-for-profit with $86,000,000 in annual revenue. Libraries do not pay back file providers much per title, but it is the volume of articles–millions of them–that brings in the lucrative contracts for JSTOR and others.

Back File Archives Are so Profitable Because They Cost So Little

With new journal subscribers dwindling, most publishers now regret signing contracts some twenty years ago that allowed the aggregators to scan and market their journals.  No one had the money to scan the documents, especially if they had an eight or ninety years of journals.  The money offered miniscule and the journals were still very profitable.  The money for back files were seen as pure profit, money left on the table if one declined.  And would you not want to be part of databases where the other journals would be?  And what was the harm of this marginal technology?  The articles would be made available on CD Roms, which would be used at a PC in a corner of the library.  Print was still king.  Oh, but then came the internet and the pdf, and electronic copies of a journal became a different thing.    Today, no one would sign those contracts anew.

Article Archives Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs

One can argue that in the humanities and social sciences the aggregators or archives are inadvertently killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  If the libraries of the world can live with scholarly articles that are three years old or more in those fields, then how are the journals generating them supposed to survive?  The aggregator money, which used to be 5 to 10% of the budget, is increasingly becoming 25% of the budget.  I would not be surprised and I am praying that it does not become more than 50% of the budget for the Black History Bulletin and the Journal of African American History.  I am sure that the University of Chicago Press and the University of California Press would not admit it, but they left JSTOR’s New Scholarship Program precisely because they were facing declining revenues.  Given that they had dozens of titles, the declining revenue had to be addressed.  JSTOR was charging them marketing fees, roughly 12% of sales, and that money was a waste.  Yet by leaving JSTOR, they are cutting cost, not increasing revenue.   Leaving JSTOR to reduce cost had to be coupled with a plan to make money.

Chicago and California Enter the Back Files Market

And low and behold, both Chicago and California now have a new product–back files for all their journals.  Yes, they have entered the back file business.  This strategy has two facets.  First and foremost, by offering back files they can sell existing customers access to the whole run of the journals they publish for an additional subscription free, typically an additional thirty to forty percent.  If a library does not want to pay for the large bundle of 2000 plus journals offered by JSTOR, they can buy the individual titles they truly need.  And as important, the back files as a separate product solves an additional problem.  When print was king, libraries would drop a title from their collection, it was gone forever.  They would hardly ever renew a title once dropped because they would have to pay a premium to catch up the back issues.  Sometimes the titles could not be replaced because they were out of print, and only over the years did companies come along to address that concern, but it would be costly.  Now, however, with back files, this problem can be overcome easily digitally.  But until recently this would be done via the subscribing to JSTOR’s Archive program.  Chicago is probably hoping that with the back files program, they can be that solution and they can hope for better days in the academy and profit therefrom.   Again, the long game.

Chicago Is Investing in New Journal Titles to Create Their Own Archive

As the very moment that humanities and social science titles are at the brink of insolvency even with JSTOR and Project Muse having been created to save them, the University of Chicago, wholly new to the digital platform world, is recruiting independent publishers like ASALH to join them.  The lure is more, roughly $20,000 a year of black ink, for five years.  Chicago has no way of increasing revenue in the shortrun, so this is a long-term investment.  Chicago has been in the journal business for over a century.  Perhaps they are betting that libraries will see better times.  More likely, they are believing that by increasing the number of journals they publish will get hooked on the five-year contracts it will put them in a better market position–even if they lose money in the short run.  After a decade of having their new stable of journals without new contribution to other companies’ archives, the value of those title will decrease for JSTOR and other aggregators but increase in value for Chicago’s new archive.  So in a decade, their investment in new scholarship will pay off–it will be an investment that increases in value.  And because they are requiring the back rights of their new customers, Chicago in a decade will have a way to make money even if new issues are not valuable in themselves.   In this way, Chicago is trying to bite into the tens of millions that JSTOR makes on archives.

Chicago Is Asking for the Role of Publisher of Articles It Did Not Publish

To recover their initial investment, giving journals profits where they do not exist, the University of Chicago is asking for something JSTOR and other archives and aggregators do not ask–they are asking for the publisher’s position and a publisher’s pay–even for back files.  Indeed, in exchange for five years of revenue guarantees that will certainly out pace the market, Chicago wants publishers rights to journals it had no role in publishing.  It was 50% of the revenue of journals published a century ago–or last year.  They are taking serious risk, so they hope for serious gain.  They are arguing, in effect, your back files are worth pennies in existing archives but we will give your journal half of its take.

JSTOR throws a Monkey Wrench in Chicago’s Effort:  Let Publishers Have More of Their Revenue from New and Old Scholarship

Having lost about a third of its journals with the pull out of Chicago and California, JSTOR has responded by ending their New Scholarship Program.  In its place they are simply going to host new scholarship journals for scholarly societies without assuming a marketing role.  They call it their Current Journals  program.   Rather than charging a 25% fee on revenue for all sales, JSTOR has implicitly acknowledged that it cannot replace domestic subscribers with global ones–no one can.  Rather than continue to pretend that it can–as Chicago now pretending–it is acknowledging that the market for journals is at best flat and removing the premium being paid for marketing.  In contrast to Chicago’s demand for a 50-50 split, JSTOR will charge a modest fee.  For the price of an inexpensive website fee, and what amounts to inconsequential subscriber fee JSTOR’s Current Journal’s program is a no brainer for anyone who can see beyond what amounts to Chicago’s five-year signing bonus.  In many cases, JSTOR’s fees structure will amount to savings greater than Chicago’s signing bonus.  With JSTOR, you get virtually all of the gross revenues–between 92 and 95 percent.  And you do not have to worry what happens after five years if Chicago’s program fails.  Indeed, if subscribers for new scholarship continues to decline, there is no way for Chicago to pay the increasing amounts it implies you will make with them.  Journals that were moved to Chicago will find their annual income drop as much as fifty percent in five years as the war on the humanities and social sciences continues.

Is Chicago Cynical?

Chicago is not coming clean with anyone with its business plan.  Rather than stating that the past is more profitable than the present, it is indeed pretending that they are bullish on the future of new humanities and social science scholarship.  In its marketing and its rhetoric, it is pretending they can double sales–which they have to do, or so it seems, to justify the bloated revenue promises.  Even at ASALH those involved in weighing the Chicago Proposal cannot see how they are making money because the offer implies it will immediately double ASALH’s sales if they are going to break even.   The members at the Annual Meeting were told that Chicago wants our Journal of African American History because it is a great journal and the University of Chicago is rich.  How non-black firms are rationalizing this move is unknown, but Chicago is not irrational nor are they great philanthropists as any Southside boy knows.  Chicago has an intention in making money and the tell lies in their insistence that they are treated like the publisher over all articles already published.  That is the closest they come to being honest about how the past is at least as important as the future.  They are pretending they were publishers of our journals all along and they are actually buying into that past with five years of bonus money.  The moment of truth comes down the road.

President Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s Alternative Facts for ASALH Branch Presidents
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President Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s Alternative Facts for ASALH Branch Presidents

 

It is never becoming for historians to enter into the world of historical fiction, and it is wholly destructive for them enter the world of alternative facts.  Yet when we get caught in modern-day controversies and are actors as well as scholars, the need to defend untenable positions can lead even the best scholars astray.  This has happened in the case of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham as she responded to my letter to the branches.  Her letter is filled with misrepresentations and even alternative facts to justify her position that the Executive Council still has the authority to make a decision on the future of the Journal of African American History.  Moreover, she wants to erase or soften the debacle of the 101st Business Session, where we were lied to and disenfranchised for the sake of selling out our history of publishing Woodson’s journal.  Mind you, she never explains why we have to cease our self-publishing after a century.  It is not money, so it must be status.

I Reassert, Revenue Was Represented Falsely as Profits

In my letter, I argued that Gilbert A. Smith flat-out lied about the University of Chicago Proposal.  He said repeatedly that the $100,000 promised by Chicago was profit,  not revenue.  How silly.  Just because someone says you can do what you want with money they give you does not make it profits.  You do not have to be a certified public accountant to know that if you have obligations to pay, it isn’t profits.   What alternative world is the President trying to construct?  As long as the journal has significant bills to pay–and there are tens of thousands of them to be paid from the $100,000, then the money is not profit.

Indeed, Evelyn and VP Franklin both say so themselves in post-meeting statements.  After the 101st Annual Meeting, VP Franklin sent out an email in which he said part of the $100,000 would be spent on Journal expenses.  In his words:  “In light of the proposals submitted to publish the JAAH, there was no need to continue to ‘self-publish’ since the university press would cover publication expenses and guarantee an annual income to ASALH to cover all of the editorial expenses in producing the JAAH.”  VP was utterly honest about this.  In the letter to the branch members, Evelyn states “It is not fair to V.P. Franklin, now on a retiree’s income, to spend his own money on the Journal.”  So, indeed, the money is not profit as Gilbert told everyone.

So profits were not profits, they were revenue.  Gilbert A. Smith is not only a Christian gentleman associated with the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, DC.  as Evelyn of Harvard states in her letter, he is also a Certified Public Accountant who had and has a fiduciary responsibility to report profits as profits and revenue as revenue.  To suggest he did otherwise in front of 250 witnesses is to promote an alternative fact.  When a CPA represents revenue as profit to a legislative body, he is lying about the business proposal.  Revenue reported as profit is an alternative fact.  The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2003, which requires disclosure of financial information to decision makers does not allow alternative facts.  Rather than taking the treasurer to task for misleading the people, our president is painting him as a victim.  For reasons of status they are dedicated to ending a century of independent black publishing.

(And let us not lose sight of the fact that VP Franklin will only edit the journal one more year, so this should be a non-factor.  Others are willing to edit the journal  without compensation from ASALH.)

After Promising a Journal in Every Mailbox, the President Prepares to Renege or Go Broke

In my letter, I pointed out that the Gilbert A. Smith and Sharon Harley promised that if JAAH goes to the University of Chicago, the members of ASALH would all receive a hardcopy of the journal.  In her long response, Evelyn gives the impression that everyone will get a hardcopy of the journal, then suggests everyone read a letter from Sharon Harley written after the October 6th Business Session and sent out.  That letter silently breaks faith with the promise by saying in effect that everyone will not get a copy of the journal as she, Gilbert, and VP Franklin all promised in the meeting.  Instead only life members and branch members will get copies.  This may go over well with branch members, but what of the graduate students and the regular members who were sold a bill of goods by the president, the treasurer, the journal editor, and the publications committee chair?

It is rather clear that the regime, feeling the pressure from the business meeting, went beyond what they had planned in giving away journals.  Indeed, in the handout to the membership, Sharon Harley stated that Chicago would pay for all eligible members to receive a hardcopy of the journal.  Mind you, the University of Chicago proposal makes no such promise, so any journals received would be paid for out of that $100,000.   Chicago charges members $20 for hardcopies.  Not knowing the facts, she puts it at 500, which would cost ASALH $10,000 out of the $100,000.  The cost to meet the current promise would be roughly $28,000.  And the cost to meet the big promise made in the Business Session would be $44,000.

 

Shortly after the meeting, having pandered to the unwashed, disenfranchised membership of ASALH–the legislative body–of our organization, the leadership of the sellout started to walk back the promises.  Here is a link to the Harley document, sent to all the members.  In her letter to the branch leadership, she attached that post-101st Annual Meeting letter. Here is an excerpt:

The Chicago Proposal makes no such promise of free journals to anyone, so all of these journals will be paid for will come from the $100,000 of revenue.  Mind you, ASALH now provides this to members as we self-publish.  This means that the financial advantage of selling out shrinks by $20 with each journal given away.  Indeed, if the promise made to the membership is kept, then there is no financial advantage of going to Chicago and we would make more money by continuing to self-publish.

The President Misrepresents My Seconded and Debated Motion to Deny It Is Controlling and that the Executive Board Must Now Yield to the Members on This Issue

At the 101st Business Session, the motion I put on the floor was the ASALH to cease and desist in any and all efforts to let any other firm publish our scholarly journals.  That motion was seconded and debated but a vote was refused.  The president did not say the motion was out of order–and that matters when you are following Roberts Rules of Order, and she had her paid parliamentarian there.  Here she is trying to construct an alternative fact by altering the motion I put forward.  By claiming that my motion was to break or end an existing contact, she trying to construct an alternative fact.  You see, if my motion concerned a non-existing contract then it could be ruled out by a point-of-fact violation of Roberts Rules of Order.  This is what she is suggesting happened.  By putting an alternative fact in my mouth for my motion, she is trying to change the narrative so she can say she ruled it out for good reason.  But, that, too requires another alternative fact–my motion was never objected to before it was seconded and discussed.  Indeed, we discussed it for more than thirty minutes before she pulled the plug for other reasons.  Below is her material alteration of the motion I made.

 

The Most Disturbing Part of These Misrepresentations

What I find most disturbing about the president’s response to my letter is that she writes as if no branch leaders witnessed the spectacle.    The presidents of the South Florida Branch, the Tampa Branch, the Jacksonville Branch, the Chicago Branch, the Detroit Branch, the Julian Branch, the Manasota Branch, and others were all there.  There were innumerable branch members and general members, numbering some 250 people.  Many of you and your members know that $100,000 in revenue was called profit.  Everyone heard the promise that all members–all members–were promised a hard copy.  And you saw the President of ASALH–after my “cease and desist motion” was properly read, seconded, and discussed for more than half an hour was refused a vote.  The motion was not called out of order.  No, we were told that the Executive Council, not the Business Meeting, could make this decision.  And not a mumbling word was heard about Associate Members–and if the president knew anything about ASALH she would know that there are less than a dozen associate members out of 2,200 or more members!  This is a scam on the scale of the Republican claims of a tainted voters pool.

The Petty Claims in President Higginbotham’s Letter

I won’t spend but a moment on the petty claims that act as filler in the President’s effort to deny that the members now legally own the outcome of the self-publishing issue.  Higginbotham is ultimately responsible for having the police sicced on me at the 101st Annual Meeting but she poses as a victim because I said she had done nothing worth talking about before becoming president.  She made no significant contribution and she nor anyone else would dare list one.  It would be another alternative fact.  Her lack of experience is why she does not understand that there will be mailing cost that ASALH has to pay if the journal goes to Chicago.  While Chicago will ship the journal, books and manuscripts in various stages of preparation are shipped, often by federal express, to and from the editorial office to headquarters.  This high-priced mailing costs about in the $2,000 range.  Had the president not rejected my offer to head the publications committee when I was president, she might know that.  Enough of the petty.

We Are Not Deterred, the Decision Legally Belongs to the Business Session in Cincinnati

We will stick to our guns.  Gilbert A. Smith should be recalled for lying to the membership gathered in the Business Session for representing revenue and profits, and thereby grossly misrepresenting the financial advantage of going to the University of Chicago.  And we note for the record that Gilbert A. Smith did not speak up to refute my claim.  He knows he is in deep.  More importantly, the decision on the Chicago Proposal and any proposal from a publisher cannot be acted on until that 102 Business Session meets in Cincinnati.  We will remain strong and firm, and yes we will go to court if necessary.  We will not be disenfranchised, and unless it is the will of the membership in session, we will not break faith with our founder.  And there is certainly no financial reason to do so.  Under separate cover, I will show how the journal can be more profitable self-published rather than published by Chicago.

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