In an earlier post I talked about how firms with a large set of distinct items to sell - a cable television provider with many channels; a museum with many rooms - would find it most efficient to offer only a package deal to customers, with no a la carte offerings, even when customers complain that they really only want a very small sample of what is on offer. An example I did not give at the time was academic publishing. But publisher's strategies follow this same model. As an example, I will use Taylor & Francis, although I will note … [Read more...]