libraries, publishers, ebooks

[Terry Ehling <ehling@cornell.edu>]

Of interest to the list:

Thoughtful paired posts by Rick Anderson and Joe Esposito, posted 
yesterday to the Scholarly Kitchen:

"HarperCollinsGate: Some Thoughts"
Rick Anderson
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/03/21/harpercollinsgate-some-thoughts/

"[W]here once the library would purchase an HC ebook once and 
lend it an unlimited number of times, the library now effectively 
subscribes to the book, and the subscription must be renewed 
after a certain number of circulations, making popular books more 
expensive for a library to keep in its collection than 
less-popular ones.
[ . . . ]
"Readers have little brand loyalty when it comes to publishers; 
we love authors, not imprints. (Try to imagine someone saying "Oh 
honey, if you're going to the library, would you pick up a 
HarperCollins book for me?") So if a library has to buy fewer 
ebooks because of an HC price hike, that dip in sales is just as 
likely to hurt the HarperCollins list as any other publisher's. 
In other words, a library that is forced to buy a bestselling HC 
ebook three times may well forego the purchase of two other 
unique HarperCollins titles--not in a spirit of boycott, but 
simply because the money for those extra purchases has to come 
from somewhere."


"The Vexed Problem of Libraries, Publishers, and E-books"
Joe Esposito
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/03/21/the-vexed-problem-of-libraries-publishers-and-e-books/

"Librarians as a matter of course have wanted to bring the new 
generation of e-books into their collections, but they have been 
largely stymied.  There are several reasons for this, and it's 
worthwhile to consider what those reasons are, as the problem of 
making e-books available through libraries is a vexed one for 
which no one has yet offered a wholly satisfactory solution. The 
situation is made even more difficult in that many people seem to 
believe that this is an easy problem to solve and that only the 
stupidity and cupidity of publishers prevent librarians from 
doing what they have always done before, but this time in digital 
form.

"As Mencken said, for every complex problem there is an answer 
that is clear, simple, and wrong."

terry ehling
cornell university
ithaca [ny] 14850
ehling@cornell.edu