As journals have moved into an online environment and both libraries and publishers have sought to decouple electronic from print, the opportunity afforded to publishers to introduce variable, tiered, packaged and purely negotiated pricing in order to maximise sales and reach is substantial.

However, pricing cannot be divorced from sales strategy. Any pricing regime devised has to not only match tiered price to perceived value, but must also be simple enough to implement given the publisher's intended investment in sales and customer service which furthermore affects the selection of sales agents in more difficult-to-reach markets.

Developing a new pricing regime for a publisher involves a clear process which includes a detailed assessment of current clients, attrition, market penetration and resources available to the publisher.

Simon Inger has many years of experience in helping publishers devise the most appropriate sales and pricing strategy that meets most effectively their mission, be it for profit or for readership, or both. Pricing work has been undertaken for:

• a society publisher whose subscriptions were overpriced for small institutions but underpriced for larger institutions and which had suffered long-standing attrition
• a commercial publisher facing a dual challenge of being overpriced in most of its sectors and needing to maintain revenues whilst transitioning to a new pricing structure
• a society publisher needing to implement tiered pricing for the first time whose overall market penetration was low
• a commercial publisher needing to introduce tiered pricing to allow it to better target smaller institutions and increase readership overall