Re: Usage-based pricing (was ebooks in libraries a thorny problem)

[dillon@mail.utexas.edu]

The Univ of Texas has been accessing e-books on a patron-driven 
pay-per-view model (along with with an automatic purchase of 
frequently used titles) for several years.

Budgeting has been a snap.  We have ebook usage data for our 
campus going back to the late 1990's and extrapolating this data 
(X number books in our profile set, with an expected usage rate 
of Y, with avg cost-per-use of Z equals - the budget).

Buying books on spec in the traditional manner is simply too 
risky a behavior for our library to unthinkingly continue doing 
in this type of economy.

We run performance numbers (circulations) for every publisher in 
both print and ebook formats, and then eliminate automatic 
purchasing plans for any high priced or low performing publishers 
- and move these low performers/high-priced publishers to strict 
title-by-title firm order purchasing, which is performed by 
subject specialists working within a firm budget.

We are not going back to wholesale speculative book purchasing 
anytime soon - too many of our books purchased on spec are simply 
not read in the first few years, or ten years, or sometimes ever. 
We cannot afford these kinds of opportunity costs when there are 
other needs that our readers are clamoring for.

Library purchasing of books requested via inter-library-loan, the 
loading of MARC records into OPACs and then paying for our users 
to instantly read the ebooks they are interested in, designing 
plans to let users' select print-on-demand, current paper 
imprints, or even out-of-print titles by interacting with the 
OPAC or other discovery tool- all of these kinds of efforts 
insure that every book we purchase or rent will find a reader.

We believe that there is ample room in the market for fewer books 
to be purchased on speculation, and for more publisher revenue to 
be generated by usage-based pricing, patron-driven selection, and 
print-on-demand options.  Moving to usage-based pricing and 
patron-driven selection means publishers and librarians have to 
rethink some paradigms and be more in tune with their readers, 
but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Dennis Dillon
Associate Director for Research Services
University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin
78713-8916      512/495-4269     FAX: 512/495-4347


On 4/14/10 3:33 PM, "Eric Hellman" <eric@hellman.net> wrote:

As I said, the trick is to control the budget. Consider this
variant. Suppose a library system put out a tender for ebook
supply totalling 1 million dollars per year. Publishers
participating in the tender would be paid a share of the $1M
based on usage of the books they supplied.

Please ignore for the moment the technical difficulties of
measuring usage and consider whether such a system would provide
the correct economic incentives. The publishers would have
incentives to get their stuff used. The library would get a fixed
expense. No one would have their usage rationed.

I would also argue that many OA models are usage-based pricing,
where the "price" is advertising exposure.

Eric

Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar, Inc.
Montclair, NJ 07042
USA
eric@hellman.net
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/