Sometimes it’s all about the money, and sometimes it isn’t.  Here at Choice we’d like to think we’re about more than that.  At the same time, money is something we can’t totally ignore.  Choice is responsible for paying its own way in the world, and the work we do costs money.  To continue that work, we need enough money coming in to pay expenses, roughly half of which are for staff salaries.  No salaries, no people.  No people, no Choice.

This, of course, is a pretty familiar equation.  After all, take away the librarians, and what would be left of the library?  Something, I suppose, but it’s hard to see how it could be of much use to anyone.
So how does Choice pay its own way?  We sell stuff.  More specifically, in descending order of importance, we sell three things:

• Subscriptions to our print and online publications
• Advertising space
• Our reviews, which we license in electronic form to third parties who typically combine them with other content.

As you might suspect, subscriptions are our single largest revenue source.  However, they only account for one-half of Choice’s annual revenues.  An additional thirty percent comes from ad sales, review licensing brings in another fifteen percent, and the remaining five percent comes from a variety of miscellaneous sources.  In recent years, ad sales and subscriptions have diminished in importance due to rapid growth in licensing revenues, the newest member of the triumvirate.  (Although Choice began licensing its review content in the late 1980s, licensing revenues were essentially insignificant until the late 1990s.)

What does all this mean?  Well, one thing it means is that subscription revenues, while obviously of critical importance, are by themselves insufficient to keep the lights on here at Choice.  Take away our advertising and licensing revenues, and Choice would have to choose between basically doubling our subscription rates or folding our tents and going home, neither of which is terribly appealing.

A second implication is that Choice subscribers, whose job responsibilities typically include purchasing materials for their library, represent a highly desirable audience for publishers of academic books and electronic resources.  For scholarly publishers, placing an ad for a new scholarly book in Choice is akin to advertising a new chocolate confection in Chocoholic Magazine.  In fact, publisher ads in Choice represent a win-win situation for everyone.  For publishers, advertising in Choice provides an opportunity to communicate directly with an exceptionally valuable audience.  For our subscribers, those same ads are an opportunity to learn more about new and forthcoming titles that has the happy side effect of ensuring a significantly lower subscription price.

Which is why, although we occasionally receive complaints about ads in Choice, we’re not likely to give them up.  For one thing, we can’t afford to.  For another, we’re pretty certain that for most of our subscribers, publisher ads in Choice are almost as much of a service as our reviews.  This is why Choice has, from its inception, accepted advertising from publishers and is likely to continue to do so.  It’s about the money, yes, but it’s also about service and value, just what you’d expect from Choice.—IER