Blackwell’s Book Services, a major supplier of books and bibliographic support products to colleges and universities, collects extensive data on the content and price of titles the company recommends for acquisition by academic libraries. These data, available for humanities titles generally as well as for various individual categories of humanities titles, provide rough measures of both research output in the humanities and the publication opportunities available to humanities scholars. The Humanities Indicators includes data on book publications rather than publications in scholarly journals because the book remains the primary means by which humanities scholarship is disseminated. Moreover, while the natural and social scientific communities place considerable emphasis on journal publications, academic employers in the humanities continue to focus on book publications in gauging humanities scholars’ productivity.

Figure IV-12a depicts the number of new academic humanities titles that were published between 2000 and 2005. (The Blackwell’s humanities category encompasses the disciplines of philosophy, history, religion, folklore/mythology, and language. The company also has separate categories for literary texts, literary criticism, fine arts, and performing arts; these categories, along with Blackwell’s humanities category, are accounted for in the figure.) Over the course of those five years, the overall trend was upward, for a net increase of over 1,500 titles. The greatest increase occurred in 2001, and although the number of new titles dropped substantially the following year, there were still approximately 500 more titles published in 2002 than in 2000. The number of titles spiked again in 2003. Then, from 2003 to 2005 the number of titles continued to increase, but less dramatically.

Figure IV-12a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-12b depicts the trends in the number of new titles in the humanities, using Blackwell’s categories. Among these categories, literary texts saw the greatest absolute increase in the number of new titles between 2000 and 2005. But in terms of percentage growth, the fine arts category was the standout, with 64% more new titles released in 2005 than five years earlier. The numbers of religion, history, and performing arts titles also increased by substantial percentages.

Figure IV-12b, Full Size Supporting Data

As Figure IV-12c shows, when price figures are adjusted for inflation, the average list price of new humanities publications increased only modestly over the early 2000s. In 2005, humanities titles, on average, cost $52.05, up from $50.98 in 2000, a smaller percentage increase than for most other fields. This figure also reveals that humanities volumes were consistently the least expensive category of new book title—and by a considerable margin. In 2005, the average price of physical science books, the most expensive category, was 140% higher than that of humanities titles.

Figure IV-12c, Full Size Supporting Data

Among humanities titles, language and literary texts were the extremes in terms of average list price (Figure IV-12d), with language titles being consistently more expensive and literary texts less expensive than other types of humanities books. While the price of other categories of humanities titles ranged from approximately $55 to $65 in 2005, new language titles were priced at $90.65, on average. In contrast, literary texts, on average, were priced at $25.96. Language texts also experienced the greatest percentage price increase (15%) over the 2000–2005 period. The prices of literary criticism and religion titles increased by smaller percentages (9% and 5%,). Other types of humanities titles saw price declines over the period, with fine arts titles dropping by the greatest proportion (12%).