Picking up where Jane Friedman, publisher of Open Road Integrated Media, left off yesterday at Digital Book World, when she urged publishers to broaden the participation of libraries in the distribution of ebooks, LJ’s Josh Hadro moderated a panel today that helped publishers understand why, and how, that must be accomplished.
“Consumers and library patrons are two sides of the same coin,” Hadro said to a roomful of publishers, who included execs and others from the big five publishers, smaller houses, university presses, and distributors. The current one book, one loan ebook model somewhat “mirrors the print” buying and lending (though the analogy to print is also increasingly strained, he noted); “DRM [digital rights management] software [protects publishers] caus[ing] the lend to expire at the end of the loan period,” explained Hadro.
Yet many publishers still don’t sell their latest ebooks to libraries. “Current content is king,” New York Public Library’s Chris Platt said, pointing out his frustration that, “We can’t get Freedom (FSG) as a download for our library. And even though Keith Richards made a public appearance at NYPL, “We couldn’t put his epub [Life (Little, Brown)] in our collection,” said Platt.
Librarians are left trying to explain to their users both that the publisher has not made the book available through the library and that many ebooks won’t work on their users’ ereaders.
Platt further made the case that “We teach people literacy…we point [them] to your new books….Libraries are connected to many of the people you want to reach, on Twitter, Facebook.” As the price of smartphones drop, he said, libraries will be able “to serve all parts of the community.”
Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP, reinforced Platt’s remarks. “A sale is a sale,” she said, noting that libraries are a revenue stream that publishers like Random want to “protect, even grow.”
Baker & Taylor’s VP for libraries and education, George Coe, told attendees that the “acquisition model will change drastically” with the ebook. “Library budgets can’t change,” he said, but users can become buyers with “buy buttons” on library online catalogs. He cautioned, however, that by using different formats, publishers are “confusing our patrons.”
OverDrive’s CEO Steve Potash also said that the idea of a library purchase “cannibalizing sales couldn’t be farther from the truth…we’re converting library borrowers into point of sale users” in the digital world. As for the one book, one user model, Potash said that OverDrive recently made Liquid Comics ebook graphic novels available via a multiple user subscription model.
A comment from Twitter summed up the panel: “Lovely to see a friendly back-and-forth about eBooks between publishers and libraries that feels authentic.”
Reader Comments (5)
Congratulations, Josh. You've done us all a great deed by moderating this panel
and opening up conversations between libraries and publishers. Thanks! Sue
Posted by Sue Polanka on January 26, 2011 09:54:20PM
Absolutely! Sharing eBooks doesn't cut into a publisher's revenue stream, it
grows it by letting more people try the books out before buying them. We're
creating a website, Booklends, that will make it easy for Kindle and Nook users
to find and share books with each other, and then purchase the books once their
14 day trial is up. Visit http://www.booklends.com to sign up for our mailing
list, and we'll let you know when our site is finished (probably within a week or
so).
Posted by Booklends on January 26, 2011 10:41:18PM
A book is a book.
Nothing less than the same rights as you have with paperback
books will do in the ebook arena.
We the consumer deserve to own the books we purchase, rather
than some dubious rights scam the publishers are trying to
push down our throats.
One ceo of a major publish house said that libraries had
been a thorn in the publishing industries side for over 100
years and he could care less what happened to them as far as
ebooks go.
These are the kind of people were going against in this
arena.
Either they straighten up or we can work toward a
legislative solution that gives purchasers full rights to
remove the DRM they cripple their products with.
Since they don't want that although its probably legal
already to remove the DRM from your books according to fair
usage rights, they will probably give libraries the support
they need to accomplish the social mission they were created
for.
The knowledge of mankind is too important to allow it to
pool in the hands of publishers who may or may not be here
in a hundred years to keep up the DRM schemes they are using
thus insuring the books do not become useless.
Another factor publishers would be idiots not to see is the
millions of books available on the internet free. The
quality of some are not very good, but others are great and
the authors are just giving their creative works away.
I personally have enough free ebooks already to last me a
lifetime, but I do enjoy some mainstream authors too.
I won't buy their books as long as they are crippled with
DRM though.
I have a site dedicated to creating a national digital
library system that all of you are welcome to check out. No
ads, not trying to sell you anything, just trying to get
people organized to make sure that all our information is
available through traditional channels and methods as it has
been since the beginning of modernity.
http://sentinels-of-
sovereignty.123living.org/2010/05/03/the-future-of-the-
library-system-the-beginnings-of-the-national-digital-
library-initiative/
Posted by Elvenrunelord on January 26, 2011 11:55:47PM
Interesting. I listened to both Life and Freedom via Overdrive, so digital *audio* is different.
Posted by Julie on February 1, 2011 05:12:18PM
As far as I know DRM is still protected by Copyright Law. It is not legal to remove it except in a few cases.
Posted by Jan Elkins on February 2, 2011 01:41:53PM
