Re: Report of Library E-Book Acquisitions Survey

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Michael,

These are excellent notes.  One comment:

You ask if publishers want to get into the metadata/cataloguing 
game. That's 2 separate questions.  Some publishers will get into 
the cataloguing game, however reluctantly.  But all publishers 
will get into the metadata game.  They have no choice.  No one 
else cares as much about this as they do.  They also are dealing 
with the decline if not outright collapse of the 
bricks-and-mortar sales channel, which puts greater pressure on 
online sales.  For online sales all a publisher has is metadata; 
there is no point-of-sale merchandising possible (except as 
expressed through metadata).  In this instance, libraries are not 
the primary concern, but if a publisher develops robust metadata 
for Amazon and other online venues, why would it be withheld from 
a library?

Joe Esposito

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Michael Zeoli <mzeoli@ybp.com> 
wrote:

> Thanks to Duke University Press for making this report public.
> It really highlights nicely recurrent themes vendor-service
> providers are hearing in academic libraries and raises some
> important questions:
>
> -> packages good for high quality content *if* discount is
> significant
> *   Trend steering away from packages to more integrated
> approaches (e/p approvals, PDA, firm and series ordering)
> *   One argument mentioned for packages is savings in selector
> time, but what are the hidden costs and other trade-offs! (Not
> discussed)
> *   Who manages duplication issues for packages that include only
> a portion of the publisher's titles?  Can aggregators be expected
> to manage this *gratis* for libraries when the vendor stands to
> lose a significant piece of current business?  Can that vendor
> then decrease overall discount to a library based on a
> significantly reduced level of business? And this becomes a much
> larger issue for consortial deals.
> (Not discussed)
>
> -> Metadata/Cataloging, but is this a business publishers really
> want to wade into?  Should they be expected to, particularly
> given that good cataloging is expensive and the report repeatedly
> cites demand for "free" records?
>
> -> zero tolerance for e/p duplication (unless patron requested 
-
> the same has  always existed for p/p dup)
>
> -> little taste for deeply discounted print added to e packages
>
> -> Consortial models raise several questions which vex vendors as
> well as libraries currently.  In no case can a consortium say we
> want a PDA plan without negotiating with publishers one-by-one ex
> novo.
>
> Dio ci aiuti when monographic content begins to get shredded, and
> charged by pages or chapters and the recombining of these...
>
> Many thanks to Duke for opening this report for discussion.  They
> are far ahead of most presses (trade as well as UP) in engaging
> eContent sales to academic libraries.  One of the interesting
> things about Duke UP, is that although they began selling
> packages to libraries directly several years ago, they did not
> exclude any of the other sales channels. At YBP, they remain
> among our 'Top 10' UPs in sales (excluding OUP and CUP), and lead
> most other publishers in providing front list content for
> eApproval plans, where we have seen their sales grow by over 100%
> in the past year via one of the ebook providers we offer (other
> UPs have seen 3-4 times that growth, but only because they
> started with far fewer ebook titles available).
>
> Mike
>
> Michael Zeoli
> YBP Library Services