To the Library Community,
Presented below is an open letter to e-book creators and sellers inviting them to continue the relationship they have had with libraries and books in hard copy into the e-book and e-publication space.
If you agree with the letter’s proposal, please send copies of the letter to the book vendors you have relationships with and otherwise encourage them to offer e-books to the library community in ways that work with our business model.
There are few arguments as persuasive as a customer telling a vendor about things they would like to buy!
Thank you for your support!
An Open Letter to E-Book Creators and Sellers from Library Customers,
Libraries and their customers have a long and mutually beneficial relationship with authors, publishers, and vendors, based on the printed word – books. Now, with the emergence of popular e-books and e-book readers, libraries are positioned to continue that partnership with these exciting new products.
Libraries have much to offer e-book sellers as you work to establish a new successful business model around the e-book format. At the same time libraries need e-book providers to offer e-pub materials in ways that enable and support use by libraries and library users. Here is the deal.
We will help you sell popular e-books.
– When users find e-books in library catalogs or on websites, they can borrow them and may have the option to rent or buy them.
– Libraries buy lots of books, spending about $2 billion annually.
– Libraries are a big part of the reading public’s lives. They help people develop a passion for reading as children and indulge it as adults. Public libraries alone report 1.4 billion visits and 2.1 billion circulations annually.
– Library staff will develop customers for you. Librarians are great at helping the public learn about technology and will help readers learn about e-books and e-book readers
In order for us to help you sell and promote your e-books, we need you to sell or license them to us in a manner that works with our business model.
– Provide for electronic check-out to customers similar to how we lend hard copy items.
– Offer popular titles at reasonable prices.
– Provide e-books in standard format with standard digital rights management.
– Offer them to individual libraries and allow libraries to pool resources by selling to groups and consortia.
Books! Books! Books! – Writers, book sellers, and libraries have a long and mutually supportive relationship based on books! Please work with libraries and help us offer new popular e-book titles to libraries so we can continue this relationship as we move into this exciting new future!
Thank you for your consideration!
Linda Crowe
Executive Director
Pacific Library Partnership
Charlie Parker
Executive Director
Tampa Bay Library Consortium
Henry Bankhead
Principal Librarian
Los Gatos Public Library
Al Carlson
System Administrator
Tampa Bay Library Consortium
Heather Teysko
Manager
Califa
Chad Mairn, M.L.I.S.
Information Services Librarian
St. Petersburg College
I don’t understand this letter.
libraries buy print books from distributors. and then we loan them out without any restrictions. is this the model the letter is suggesting for ebooks?
let’s say I’m a publisher and I’m interested:
other than this letter, where is a working model? as a publisher, how do I know that libraries can store my ebooks and loan them in the same manner they have been doing with books? (and not let them be downloaded 50,000 times.)
Is there a library that already purchases ebooks directly from a publisher, stores them on local servers, and “loans” them to its patrons? Libraries have storage shelves for print books; where will we store the ebooks? Is any library doing this?
or does the letter want them to sell new books to an already established ebook vendor like Overdrive?
I could see this working, except that publishers will now have a better way to value their books with our statistics. I can see them adding a “borrowed” count to a contract so they will know how many times a particular book was loaned so they can use that data to negotiate prices in the future. Print books have never given publishers that luxury. They can know how many are sold, but they never really know how many times the print title was borrowed.
So other than this letter, I’d like to see the business model, either a totally new one, designed by libraries, or the one used by companies like Overdrive. Because this letter doesn’t give me enough information.
There are libraries and
There are libraries and consortium that provided ebooks from their own servers.
Clarification of some points in the open letter
When we buy hard copy books from distributors now, there is one lending restriction that we take for granted: we can lend a hard copy to only one patron at a time. That is one way to lend eBooks, though not the only way. It is, however, a way distributors can get their heads around, as pricing models are created.
In most current cases–all, so far as I know–the eCopy is never stored on the library’s server. It stays on and is downloaded from and is DRM’d by the vendor’s server. Again, it doesn’t have to be this way, but this approach provides comfort to vendors and may make them more willing to sell to libraries.
I like the idea of building usage into future pricing. It gives both sides of the deal some chips to bargain with and makes the process more transparent.
One purpose of this open letter was to stimulate someone in the library world with good financial and marketing skills to devise and articulate one or more business models. If we had a really good one now, we would have shared it.
–Al Carlson
Unfortunate tone
It’s like they’re groveling.
My $.02
Although Marshall McLuhan in the 1960’s predicted that the end of print was near and eBooks have existed for nearly 40 years, I haven’t been too worried about the library’s role in providing eBooks until recently. This is why, I think, this “open letter” is important and timely. This is nothing new, but people are getting very comfortable having unlimited access to just about anything they want, whenever they want it while having the ability to share it easily with the world. This is exciting, but libraries are in many respects falling behind here because the Amazons and the Apples of the world are pushing ahead very quickly. I am not saying that libraries need to compete with these companies because we would fail miserably, but we should figure out ways to work with them and our vendors/publishers so that all involved can benefit.
Patrons come into my library all the time with their new eBook readers and they expect to be able to transfer a library eBook to their device. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as it looks on TV and it becomes a frustrating ordeal in many cases. On the other hand, when a user walks into a Barnes and Noble with their Nook or when using Amazon’s Whispernet, a reader can have most any book downloaded to their device within a minute or two. This doesn’t happen as smoothly when they walk into my library because we may not have the format that works on their device and/or the one electronic copy that we did license is already “checked out.” Nonetheless, libraries could provide similar Barnes and Noble/Amazon experiences if we more clearly and distinctly communicated our values to our vendors/publishers. Again, this is what this “open letter” hopes to accomplish.
There is a digital divide in that not everyone can afford an eBook reader or perhaps they don’t see the value in getting one just yet. I don’t own an eReader (unless you count the few applications I am using on my iPod Touch, my laptop, and my BlackBerry) and I am a happy reader for the most part. Times are changing very quickly, however, and I think libraries shouldn’t focus on the “perfect” reading device[s] because there won’t be one! Instead if libraries focus on content and work to help influence their vendors/publishers into providing less restrictive ePublications {DRM with more flexible formats (e.g., EPUB)} then we can become truly “device agnostic” and more capable of providing a huge and popular collection of eBooks etc. that can transfer straightforwardly onto a variety of eReading devices. So, if libraries provide ePublications that are “device agnostic” then more and more people will be able to read ePublications on any device and they will probably buy eBooks etc. from Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et al. when these titles aren’t readily available in their public libraries. It seems to be a win/win on both sides, but without an “open letter” to help encourage communication one side (or both sides) may never see it as a win/win situation and someone will lose. I realize in the real world this happens all the time and many industries (not just libraries) are dealing with an evolving market and some aren’t successful and this is unfortunate, but I am convinced that we can prevent this from happening in the library market.
There is evidence now that eBooks will become more flexible and accessible because applications are being developed that allow users to read eBooks on whatever device they want (e.g., Kindle iPad app, Barnes and Noble BlackBerry app). This is another reason, I believe, why we need to continue this conversation with other librarians/vendors/publishers so that libraries don’t miss the window of opportunity again!
Forgot to “sign” the ‘My $.02’ comment above …
— Chad Mairn