In reply to Margo Warner Curl's message on SERIALST, I am pleased to address each of the five "concerns" she mentioned. I hope these responses are satisfactory and look forward to responding to other comments and questions regarding Subscribe. I can be reached at rowe@rowe.com. Margo noted comments from others about Subscribe's attractive cost savings and that Subscribe seems a "solid product." I don't take issue with either of these points. In addition, she mentioned a number of "concerns" about RoweCom. 1) Limited number of publishers. Approximately 5,700 publishers are involved in the 20,000 serials titles in the Subscribe catalog. For the beta test 87 publishers worldwide participated. Only a few publishers have requested paper checks. There is no cost to publishers for the software or the service and no risk. Just about all of the major publishers have expressed definite interest in Subscribe and are waiting to see the response of libraries. They have made it clear to us that if this is a service libraries want, they will participate. 2) Limited number of libraries. We limited our beta test to a small number of libraries with whom we have worked closely in refining the service. The ten with whom we are now working in beta mode include San Diego State, UC San Francisco Medical, UC Berkeley, UPittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State, Mass General Hospital, Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, Yale Medical, and Westinghouse Electric. Their responses to the service have been uniformly positive. The software is now in production and ready for wide distribution and use. Since ALA in San Antonio, a large number of libraries have downloaded version 2.0 of Subscribe from our web page. Based on the responses of our betas sites we expect many libraries will use Subsribe for their 1997 orders. 3) ILS interfaces. INNOPAC libraries are not required to input manually their titles into Subscribe. Our partnership with Innovative Interfaces, which we jointly announced at San Antonio, enables you to perform a simple download of your serials titles from INNOPAC to Subscribe with no manual entry. In order to achieve transparency between an ILS and any subscription service, four crucial links are needed: ..Order information (ILS to Subscribe) is ready for III and SIRSI. ..Invoice information (Subscribe to ILS) is ready for III and SIRSI. ..Claims entry (ILS to Subscribe) is ready for III and SIRSI. ..Claims replies (Subscribe to ILS) INNOPAC at the moment has no place in its system to record claims replies. We are working with them on this facility which will be supported by Subscribe. We are eager to work closely with each of the major ILS vendors and expect to have interfaces available for most of them in time for the 1997 orders, especially those systems which accept industry standard formats. Subscribe uses the x.12 and z.39 formats and Internet security systems which are standard in the industry. In no case should one need to do more work with Subscribe than is done with a traditional agency that uses these standard interfaces. In fact, the work of managing your own subscriptions with Subscribe is substantially less than with a traditional agency. There is no paper transfer and no re-keying risk for your orders and claims. 4. Custom titles $10 fee. RoweCom charges the *net* cost of a serial (i.e. the discounted price which is usually about 5% below list) plus a flat fee of $5. per subscription for every title in RoweCom's 20,000 title catalog. "Custom," titles, which are not in the basic catalog, will be added to the catalog for an additional $10 per title. Provided RoweCom has two or more orders for these titles in any one year, these titles will be included in the standard catalog the following year and will not have a surcharge. It is easy to determine your cost savings with Subscribe. You can use Subscribe to create a "quote" which compares your traditional agency cost (list plus a service charge that you specify) with RoweCom's cost. In our experience so far, cost savings range from 5% to 9% compared with traditional agencies. 5. Claiming. The claiming system provides libraries with a positive feedback loop from the publisher which, for the first time ever, gives libraries automated feedback on the status of their claim. The system can provide you with the dispatch date of the issue being claimed. You also have in your system the publisher's confirmation of order and payment. That information automatically goes with any claim you send. Claims go over the Internet directly to the Internet address specified by the publisher for receiving claims. We have little practical experience with Subscribe claiming since our first orders were processed for 1996 and, so far, claims are few and far between. With Subscribe there should be fewer claims to begin with, since there are fewer sources of error, and valid claims should be resolved much quicker and easier than before. In the event there is a problem that needs RoweCom's attention, we have a client service representative available on a toll free line from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. EST Monday through Friday. 6. Comparisons with INFOSERV. In the early 80's Faxon led the way in automating serials processesing. INFOSERV was an early attempt to reduce the cost of subscription processing and the number of times data had to be processed and handed over. Although in most respects there are few resemblances between INFOSERV and Subscribe, Subscribe is, in a sense, an extention of our earlier efforts to use information technology to reduce the cost of serials acquisition and management. Subscribe is a transformative service that helps you manage your own subscriptions and saves you both time and money. But, don't just take my word for it. Take a look at it yourself. Its available and ready to use. Try it out with a few titles this Spring. That will help you decide whether or not to use Subscribe for your 1997 orders. You can download it, free of charge with no obligation, at (http://www.rowe.com). Richard R. Rowe, Ph.D. RoweCom 37 Goden Street Belmont MA 02178 rowe@rowe.com 1 800 ROWECOM
