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Is the 20th century law publishing model broken?

An interesting and potentially worrying story here from the Life of Books Blog on how Reed Elsevier and Thomson Reuters are losing yes losing money. From the introduction to the Blog post " just looked up Reed Elsevier?s and Thomson Reuters? stock quotes for the recent past. In the case of Thomson, Yahoo! Finance?s charts only go back a couple of years, and in the case of Reed Elsivier they go back much further. If stock is any indication of anything at all, it?s the company?s profitability. And over the long haul, both companies are not doing well at all. The charts show a general decline"

So why would these two companies be losing money in this manner? One word say the author "foresight"..."failed to create the next generation of information product when they had the means. They?ve stayed loyal to what they know: sell what you?ve got, and keep it that way! Instead of innovating and using the tools at their disposal and distributing their product with the greatest of ease, they have priced themselves and their products out of existence"

I don't entirely agree with the assertion that they have "priced themselves and their products out of existence" life has certainly become more difficult for Legal Publishers. This will continue for as long as we're in the grip of a recession as Law Firms and other organisations consolidate their hard-copy and online subscriptions. But the end of these companies....perhaps not...

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on April 06, 2009 (boomark / email).