The book publishing industry — like other creative industries such as the musical (Hracs, 2012), the cinematographic (Currah, 2006) and the advertising (Bugge, 2011; Evans, 2008) — is facing a process of technological change that confronts it with new challenges (Donoughue, 2010). In fact, the publishing world is undergoing a profound transformation in the wake of the digital transition, both in terms of the product that it offers and in the processes of production and distribution to the market, this extends throughout the entire value chain of publishing businesses (Bockstedt, Kauffman, & Riggins, 2006; Carolan & Evain, 2013; Galuszka, 2015; Lichtenberg, 2011; Tian & Martin, 2010). Specifically, the companies operating in it have had to face the new challenges posed by the innovations and technological changes associated with the Internet, the e-book or print on demand, among others (Benghozi & Salvador, 2016; Ho, Wang, & Cheng, 2011; Tian, Martin, & Deng, 2008).

The Spanish publishing sector contributes 1.1% to GDP, accounting for more than 34% of all cultural activities in Spain, this sector being the one generating the greatest wealth within the Spanish cultural industries, thanks to the volume of business it generates, the number of jobs it offers and the possibilities of growth and development derived from facing the new challenges of innovations and technological changes (Magadán & Rivas, 2018).

In the Spanish publishing industry there are very different businesses in: size, turnover, productive specialization, model of labor relations. At the same time, large multinational groups coexist together with small companies of almost artisanal production.

Regarding market share by size, it can be noted that: a) small publishers only represented 37% of the editorial structure in 1996, while, two decades later, they accounted for 75% of the total, b) medium-sized publishers have only lost one percentage point, going from 11.7% in 1996 to 10.9% in 2016, c) large publishers remain very stable, around 3% and d) only 26.7% of all publishers belongs to some business group.

During 2016, the Spanish publishing production was developed by 3,026 publishers. However, during the last twenty years the discontinuation of publishing activity has been much more frequent than the new additions. This is due to technological changes that are challenging the existing business models up to now and that encourages companies to reexamine their product portfolios and their basic competencies (Øiestad & Bugge, 2014), which implies that many of the companies decide to leave of the market rather than readjust themselves to the new changes.

Scholarly publishers are those publishing mainly books of interest to the scientific, academic and/or university community or that deal with scientific disciplines. In Spain, there are currently 673 publishers whose books are classified in disciplines such as Science, Technology, Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences (Giménez, 2017). Currently, this figure of scholarly publishers equals approximately 20% of all Spanish publishers.

The volume of Spanish scholarly publishing production represents up to 20% of the whole publishing production (Giménez, 2017). From this figure, at least 81% corresponds to books devoted to Humanities and Social Sciences, and 19% to titles of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The Spanish scholarly publishing sector is a clear example of the publishing diversity existing in Spain: in fact, approximately 68% of publishers declare annual turnovers below one million euros, something that is in relation to the reality of the Spanish publishing sector, where up to 83% of them are small size publishers.

The present study has two main goals: a) to determine the degree to which digitization is affecting the existing business models in Spanish scholarly publishing and b) to identify the emergence of new business models in the Spanish scholarly publishing sector.

To carry out this research, an empirical analysis was conducted by means of surveys sent to a sample extracted from the population of scholarly Spanish publishers, following the criterion of stratified random sampling (by company size).

The structure of this work is as follows: in Section 2, the qualitative changes implemented in the Spanish publishing industry are shown; in Section 3, the methodological foundations for the empirical analysis are specified; in Section 4, the results obtained from the surveys are shown and, finally, in Section 5, the research will be concluded offering, from the discussion of the results, answers to the initially proposed questions.

Currently, the Spanish publishing sector could not be understood without linking both process and product innovation. On the one hand, new products are developed, such as the e-book, but on the other hand, the production processes of the book are improved -both on paper and electronic-, to which new features are also added, such as augmented reality and print on demand, thus integrating design and manufacturing technologies (Betz, 2003; Krishnan & Ulrich, 2001; Magadán, 2017; O’Leary-Kelly & Flores, 2002; Rogers, 2010).

In order to carry out this research, the stratified sampling method has been chosen to facilitate the identification of possible differences among the scholarly publishers’ behaviour facing the phenomenon of digitization according to their size (in terms of annual turnover).

To apply the stratified random sampling method, the empirical work starts with an objective population (see Table 1), formed by 673 active scholarly publishers in the Information Provider for Spanish Book Sale (DILVE).

The subgroups or strata in the target population are made according to the size of the scholarly publishing company according to its annual turnover. Thus, three strata are established to characterize respectively large (more than 50 million euros), medium (between 10 and 50 million euros) and small (up to 10 million euros) size scholarly publishers. Regarding to this classification (see Figure 2), the objective population is formed by 7 (1%) large, 124 (18%) medium and 542 (81%) small scholarly publishing companies.

The questionnaires were sent by email and the information was received and treated statistically during the second quarter of 2018.

On the stratified population, a simple random sampling is applied, for each stratum, until reaching, for each one of them and, therefore, for the whole sample analyzed, a weight of 89.15% of the population universe (600 scholarly publishers).

The response rate obtained was approximately 40.83% (245 companies answered the questionnaire), which allowed to work with a sampling error of ±5 per 100 for a confidence level of 95% (see Table 2).

Once the collection of surveys was finished, the recording and data filtering were performed. In this phase, the content of the questionnaires was analyzed to detect possible errors when answered.

In addition to the general identifying questions and those about various aspects of scholarly publishing activity by the interviewed companies, nine key questions were selected for the development of this study and are presented in Table 3.

The sales revenue from academic books represents up to 30.2% from the total turnover among the surveyed scholarly publishers (see Figure 3). Most of the respondents — 92% — combine the scholarly publishing with other subjects (novels or poetry among many others) due to the continuous decreasing revenue from academic books in the last decade. For this reason, they substitute a part of the scholarly production by other products. Only scholarly publishers belonging to university institutions, whose financial funds come from university budgets, focus exclusively on scholarly university books.

Regarding the second question raised, 79.7% of the scholarly publishers surveyed publish their books in both forms. Only 12.2% of respondents use exclusively paper form and 8.1% solely electronic form (see Figure 4).

With respect to the whole scholarly publishing production, only 10.2% is published exclusively in digital form. This usually corresponds to legal texts that need to be updated (see Figure 5).

The most used form by scholarly publishers is PDF, with 84.1%, due to its versatility to show graphs, tables and equations, as well as allowing a better view for the user (see Figure 6).

In relation with on-demand publishing, only 55.1% of respondents offer this, mainly: a) in case of out-of-print books or b) due to low demand, as it is not lucrative to produce a print run of less than 500 copies in offset (see Figure 7).

While 39% of scholarly publishers surveyed offer the option of printing a single copy from a digital file displayed on a digital distribution platform or in the publisher’s own website (see Figure 8), 44.1% offer this same option in case of digital books (see Figure 9).

Regarding the new business models emerging from the digitization of the book industry, 76.3% of respondents opt for the subscription model, using international platforms external to their own companies, such as Digitalia or Elibro. Only 12.2% make use of the fragmented content model, which they mainly develop through their own website. The publishers surveyed, who carry this out, are large size ones and they belong to publishing groups with a strong presence in the Spanish and Latin American markets. A 10.2% of scholarly publishers apply the model of payment for consumption and this is carried out through platforms external to the company. In relation to the open access model, medium and small size scholarly publishers (83%) are reluctant to implement it, since they consider that in this way they do not recover their investment and they see no way to tap other channels of income, unless authors pay for allowing open access to their works, or when they can be subsidized by public administrations. Publishers belonging to large groups and those belonging to university institutions are the ones most in favour of open access, as they consider it a way of promotion (See Table 4).

Finally, to carry out the implementation of the new business models, the Spanish scholarly publishers surveyed outsource technological platforms and developments required for their publishing activity.

The Spanish scholarly publishing companies analysed have been acquiring digital knowledge and have tried to position themselves to respond more effectively to changes operated both in markets and technology.

The present study had two main goals: a) to determine the impact of digitization on the existing business models in Spanish scholarly publishers and b) to identify the emergence of new business models in the Spanish scholarly publishing sector.

As seen throughout this study, the scholarly publishers best adapted to all these changes have been the large and medium-sized companies. Nevertheless, far from opting for publications located in what could be defined as “knowledge frontiers,” they choose to produce scholarly handbooks, giving a rising priority to digital form: a) with less costs associated, b) providing easier periodic updating of contents, and c) promoting global distribution through digital platforms, usually outsourced by publishers.

In short, there has been a Darwinian natural selection among publishers, which has led to an increasing market-share concentration by the largest publishing groups that, in many cases, have ended up “cannibalizing” the minor ones.

Regarding the responses obtained from the conducted survey, there are significant empirical evidences of the impact from digitization over existing business models: a) most Spanish scholarly publishers opt for the digital form; b) digitization seems of special interest for publishing documents that need regular updating; and c) digital books are the new base for on-demand printing.

Finally, in respect of the new business models adopted by Spanish scholarly publishers, the subscription model must be considered as the most widely spread, followed at a great distance by the open access model and the rest of the remaining models. Nonetheless, it is striking to note that the change of business model among Spanish scholarly publishers has not spread in a more generalized manner and new forms of publishing still coexist with traditional ones.

The lack of joint scholarly digital publishing initiatives is causing the entrance of new actors outside the publishing sector, such as hardware manufacturers and Internet service providers, overcoming the traditional industry players in the creation of new business models for digital content (Magadán & Rivas, 2018).

Several limitations of this research should be noted: firstly, the survey conducted is merely a snapshot of Spanish scholarly publishers’ attitude to digitization and the way in which all the technical changes are internalized into their existing business models or provoke the adoption of other new ones. A time series analysis about Spanish publishers’ behaviour in relation to this matter might be of interest; and secondly, some Spanish scholarly publishing companies excluded by the stratified random sampling method could distort the obtained results. In this end and considering the small number of companies in the universe, a survey launched to all of them would be a good strategy if looking for a higher rate of response, avoiding thereby a random exclusion of relevant publishers in the strata considered.