For Libraries, Merged University Press Group Becomes Big Player in E-Book Sales

News from Wired Campus, posted by Jennifer Howard on March 10, 2011:

The list of joint nonprofit ventures angling to sell university-press electronic books to libraries just got shorter. Two of the leading contenders, Project MUSE Editions and the University Press E-Book Consortium, or UPEC, announced today that they will join forces “to collect, host, and market scholarly e-book collections to the library marketplace.”

The five presses involved in planning UPEC—the University of Nebraska Press, New York University Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, Rutgers University Press, and Temple University Press—had put out a request for proposals for potential partners, and Project MUSE was the winner.

The resulting partnership, called the University Press Content Consortium, or UPCC, will make its debut in January 2012, says the announcement, with preselling to take place this fall. The consortium will market collections of new and backlist scholarly monographs to libraries, with what it calls “minimal DRM,” or digital-rights management. It will not sell titles individually.

Read entire post here.