Telling the story about the serial crisis from the opposite perspective

The serial crisis was mainly told from the perspective of libraries. The plot in short is, that the large capitalist companies like Elsevier have increased the price for the academic journals, and the poor libraries don't know how to pay. What was ignored is the financial situation of the academic publishers itself.

Let us take first a look into mainstream publishing companies. Newspapers like the New york times, and book publishers Penguin Random House have reached it's height decades ago. That means, the business model of selling printed information is outdated and was replaced by the business model of internet company. The result is, that the product of a printed book can't be sold anymore.

Academic publishers have the same problem. In the past, they were focussed on a single product which was the printed academic journal. There was a high demand for this product and the companies have made a big profit. With the upraising of the internet, the demand for printed academic journals has become lower. As a result, the economical situation of academic publishers is bad: I've found at least two reports about bankruptcy and near bankruptcy of academic publishers:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Publishers-Bankruptcy-Filing/140103

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/02/swets-bankruptcy-will-cost-libraries-time-money

Ironically, the libraries and the students are in the strong position, but the academic publishers are in the weak position. The simple fact is, that the printed academic journal is a product from the past, and if a publishing house is focussed on this single product, the probability is high, that it economic outlook is negative. Sure, large companies like Elsevier and Springer are in a good position. They have recognized early, that they must change their bushiness model into the direction of electronic distribution. But many smaller academic publishers doesn't have the ressources for doing so. They will run into bankruptcy or they will merge with larger companies. Basically spoken, all the publishing companies are under pressure.

Let us investigate what an academic publishing house is doing from the economic perspective. It has customer who are paying money for the journals. This is in most cases a research library. This money is take to create printed journals which includes printing, typesetting, technical peer review, grammar review and marketing. If the customer of the academic publishing houses has a smaller demand, the publishing house can't finance it's costs anymore and it will run into bankruptcy. That means, the research library is not the victim of the serial crisis, but it's the academic publisher who is under pressure.