A 23-day-old online petition against HarperCollins's decision to cap ebook circulations at 26 has caught fire in the last few days, rising from a few thousand signatures to 58,452 as of Thursday morning.
The petition was launched by Andy Woodworth, an adult services librarian at Bordentown Library in New Jersey and a 2010 LJ Mover & Shaker.
"I was in the middle of the New Jersey Library Association Conference [held May 2-4] and I kept getting these text messages saying, 'You should look at your petition,' " Woodworth told LJ. "It went crazy. It had 3000 signatures about three weeks ago, so to go from 3000 to 58,000 was pretty significant"
On Monday, Carol Scott, the education editor for change.org, which hosts the petition, told Woodworth that the petition was going to be featured to a greater portion of the site's membership, and the response was immediate.
"It is one of the more popular petitions on the site," Brian Purchia, the communications director for change.org, told LJ. "50,000 people is a heck of a lot of people for our site, and it's moving rapidly," he said.
The highest number of signatures for any petition on the site is 170,000, Purchia said.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins said the company is aware of the petition and continues to seek a balance among all the interest parties, including libraries.
"We have been, and continue to be, actively engaged with the library community regarding the changes to our e-book policy," Erin Crum, VP for corporate communications, told LJ. "In addition to one-on-one discussions with consortiums across the country, we have engaged in a dialog with EQUACC, a key ALA working group, and are in the process of scheduling a discussion with the Urban Libraries Council. We are participating in library-run panel events, and will have several people at the ALA conference in June," she said.
HarperCollins, which changed its policy in February, was one of the first publishers to make ebooks available to libraries. Publishers such as Macmillan and Simon & Schuster still do not allow their ebooks to circulate in libraries.
Scott, of change.org, initially approached Brett Bonfield about launching the petition. Bonfield is the director of the Collingswood Public Library in New Jersey and a co-founder of the boycottharpercollins.com site.
"Carol approached me about it first, and we said we didn't want to do a petition as our specific piece of the boycott," Bonfield told LJ. "But Andy's half an hour away and I knew he would be the perfect person to coordinate this and I put them in touch," he said.
Woodworth said he had no specific numeric goal.
"As many as it takes for HarperCollins to drop this policy, that's the ultimate goal," he said. "The long term goal is to have authors, publishers, and libraries come together and talk about ebook circulation and lending models that make sense in a digital age."
When the petition is signed, an email is sent to the petition's target, change.org's Purchia said. As Crum said, HarperCollins wants to hear from libraries.
"We invite librarians to continue to discuss their concerns with us, to actually use the model and to give us constructive feedback," she said.
Reader Comments (7)
Our new policy (as of last month) is to no longer purchase ebooks from HarperCollins.
I have books in the library that have circulated 100+ times, and are still in decent condition. I don't know where they came up with the number 26. That makes me wonder about the quality of the binding in their books.
Posted by James on May 6, 2011 12:48:16PM
While profanity of greed is probably the only possible explanation to HarperColins' reason for the self-destruct of the e-books after 26 uses, anybody out there who is proficient at breaking "secure" sites? I was thinking something along the line of the "Mission Impossible" opening of each episode
with "This automobile shall self-destruct in 5 seconds because too much usage by its lessor-owner," placed into each one of the company's upper echelon executives'
cars. It wouldn't really happen, (well, at least not totally) but it'd be hilarious watching the fat cats scrambling to get out, wouldn't it?
Posted by george on May 7, 2011 08:47:32PM
How do I sign the petition and send it along to the other librarians in my school district, Loudoun County, as well as the the public librarians in the county.
Posted by Nancy on May 8, 2011 06:52:38AM
To sign the petition click on the word "petition" in the first line of the article. Alternatively, go to the website change.org and you can find it there.
Posted by Madeleine on May 9, 2011 10:49:43AM
ebooks should be allowed the same circulation rights as print books! In most cases we're paying just as much for a copy that cost less to produce.
Posted by Michelle Kelley on May 10, 2011 11:02:45AM
>>While profanity of greed is probably the only possible explanation to HarperColins' reason for the self-destruct of the e-books after 26 uses<<
Really? You don't think the desire not to go out of business might have anything to do with it?
Come on. Instead of sneering remarks about "fat cats" how about you consider the right of authors and publishers to be paid for their work and NOT to have it made available forever for free download in digital form to anyone who wants it? Digital rights MUST be managed in some equitable fashion, or the content providers will cease to provide content. (Equitable is the key word there.)
In Europe, authors and publishers are paid royalties each time a book is loaned from the library. That seems the fairest solution of all, but usage-based licenses are much easier to administer (since libraries wouldn't have to provide royalty accounting and payments).
I do believe there should be different price points, with different usage-rates per price point. $10 - 20 loans, $25 - 100 loans, etc.
One thing seems very certain to me, unlimited digital loans for the price of a single ebook is NOT the solution.
On a separate note - A friend told me she downloads ebooks and audiobooks from her local library and that if she downloads to her computer, they disappear after a period of time. BUT if she downloads to her mp3 player, the files are there forever. So, basically, her library is facilitating copyright infringement. This is also a problem.
How all this will shake out, I don't know. But we're far more likely to find a solution by working together rather than casting blame, taking sides, and demonizing each other.
Posted by Cheryl on May 12, 2011 08:18:43AM
This checkout limitation imposed by HarperCollins will make me think twice about buying their books.
