Robert Boissy of Springer on the Future of Ebooks and Libraries

In preparation for the Virtual Ebook Summit sponsored by Library Journal and School Library Journal on September 29, several vendor participants are providing their perspective on ebooks via three basic questions.

Robert W. Boissy (robert.boissy@springer.com, Director, Network Sales, Springer, responds below.

How long do you think it will take for libraries ebook collections to outpace print book collections? (If ever...)

Dating from the start of the ejournal era around 1996-97, it took approximately thirteen years for scholarly ejournals to get from 100% print to 75% electronic in the U.S., where no value-added tax (VAT) is associated with electronic journal purchases. In Europe the VAT on electronic journals can reach more than 17%, somewhat slowing full migration. The halfway migration point for migration from print journals to electronic journals took about eight years in the U.S., and about 12 years in the rest of the academic world. Projecting from the electronic journals experience, and benchmarking the substantive launch of STM eBooks in 2006 with the start of comprehensive portfolios published in sync with print, eBooks should outpace print books in the U.S. Academic STM market by 2014, and in the rest of world on or before 2018. Judging by the new Stanford University Engineering Library, it could be earlier than 2014 when scholarly eBooks outpace print books on many academic campuses. At Stanford the science librarians were willing to trade a larger existing space and a trade lot of print books (moved to off-site storage) for the chance to move physically closer to their students and faculty, and go almost entirely electronic with their collections. More stories about science libraries making such moves can be expected.

What role do you foresee for libraries in the digital book world?

Libraries will continue to select and purchase digital content to meet the needs of their users just as they did in the print era. Academic libraries will purchase more and more ebook content following the path they understand from their electronic journal experience. Other types of libraries such as public libraries and community college libraries will definitely want to offer collections to suit their user communities. Fiction borrowing from public library sites for limited periods of 14 days or so can work, as long as the borrowing is for constrained numbers of concurrent users. This preserves the library lending model without unduly harming the revenues of the publishers. The shift in readership habits will be much more gradual in areas like the consumer fiction market, but the sheer number and ingenuity of the available ebook reader devices will help there. Public libraries will always serve the larger proportion of their book content as print books, while academic libraries will offer more and more eBooks for their users; but all types of libraries will continue as a refuge for readers, and guardians of the accumulated knowledge of mankind.

How does your company's digital strategy reflect this?

Our company strategy with electronic books is radical. We are an electronic publishing company. Since 2005 we have pushed for 100% of our books output to be available in electronic form when the print book is ready. Springer is going to sell eBooks on as many retail outlets as possible. Retail sales will be individual ebooks with full digital rights management. Springer has already made a splash selling large subject packages of our eBooks at volume discount directly to academic library clients. Sales to academic campuses feature unlimited concurrent use by faculty, staff, and students, with no digital rights management. We have limited or completely eliminated the print runs of most of our books in favor of the print-on-demand approach. We offer a very nice print-on-demand service called MyCopy for academic libraries who have bought our eBooks packages. The MyCopy service allows any user on the campus to order a print copy of an ebook for their own use for $24.95 (including shipping). MyCopy editions are soft cover, color cover, with black and white text. The MyCopy service allows academic libraries to make the investment in offering our ebooks for their users, while still offering a very inexpensive print option to users who want to read that way. Most scientific ebooks are not read from cover to cover, but rather are briefly consulted over and over again like reference works for study and research. For this type of reference use, an eBook offers the best, fastest results. Science ebook users want a quick answer, and the ability to use the answer, cite the answer, and find it again easily.

To sign up for the summit, go to www.Ebook-Summit.com.