The relationship between university presses, e-book vendors, and academic libraries: A platform theory analysis

University presses, as one of the major content providers in the scholarly e-book market, especially in humanities and social sciences (HSS), play a critical role in the production and distribution of new knowledge and culture. We investigate the relations among university presses, academic libraries, and e-book vendors, by examining university presses’ perceptions of academic libraries and e-book vendors, and presses’ perceptions of themselves and the university press community. Findings are drawn from one-on-one interviews with 19 participants from 18 different university presses in the United States during 2020–2021. We observe a market structure for HSS e-books where most presses were satisfied with Big Four e-book vendors, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, ProQuest, and JSTOR, and lacked strong incentives to search for new e-book vendors. We find that most presses often treat libraries, including the one from the same institution, as their customers with limited interactions; findings also show university presses’ varied self-imaging, along with a shared perception about the collegiality of the university press community. We then explore the question of why the market is dominated by the Big Four through the theoretical lens developed in platform literature, and further examine the factors contributing to the low communication between university presses and academic libraries related to e-book distribution.