The recent announcement about the partnership between Sony and Overdrive in the support of supplying eBook distribution for libraries has me wondering if we are on the brink of a huge power shift in publishing.
In traditional publishing models, publishers have viewed the library market as significant, but very small compared to retail outlets. The library model is (of course) that they buy once, and lend it out for free to their patrons. Patrons were generally a local geographic community. Publishers have never worried about retail sales being cannibalized by library borrowings.
But, now we have the eBook world, growing very rapidly, being supported by hardware and download technologies that make it easy for readers do download and read eBooks. Sales of eBooks in the past 2 quarters are higher than they were in the previous year before that.
Publishers are seeing this shift, and while many don’t believe that eBooks are cannibalizing print book retail sales, others are not so sure. Amazon, with its retail power is forcing the price of eBooks into a range under $10 – and traditional publishers are already wringing their hands saying that their businesses are unsustainable at that price level.
But what happens to publisher revenues if it is as easy for a reader to go online, and download an eBook for free from their library, as it is to go on Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com and pay $10 for it?
Where is the value to the reader to pay money for an experience you can have for free? The way Amazon works, you can’t lend your copy of an eBook to anyone else anyway. Since few if any people will ever see your eBook collection, do you need to keep them around after you have read them anyway? Sometimes, perhaps, but not always. And so what, if the book is unreadable in 60 days you probably finished it anyway? Certainly there is value if these conditions of free are not acceptable to the reader, but, for many titles, they well may be.
Additionally, library patrons no longer have geographic boundaries. Going online, it’s just as easy for me to join a public library in California as it is in Massachusetts.
The rise of eBooks may mark a new, more powerful, era for libraries, and will probably cause a massive consolidation among them. However, publishers will need to contend with library sales cannibalizing retail sales. And as eBook procurement becomes easier for the reader, eBook reading will eventually cannibalize print reading. Print books will become souvenirs of a reading experience, and may be some source of revenue, but only a pittance compared to the current print models.
I’m afraid this bodes significant challenges for all publishers, but most especially the big ones, whose massive infrastructures need to be supported. Smaller, more nimble publishers who see themselves as author services companies, will be the only ones who can create business models that are sustainable.
The real question is: will this be good or bad for the reader?
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>>>Going online, it’s just as easy for me to join a public library in California as it is in Massachusetts.
Um, no. NYPL will charge you $100/year for a Card as an outsider (and don’t do it; I don’t want “foreigners” competing for eBooks at *my* library!) — and some libraries do not allow out-of-town/city/state card holders at all.
Library systems are awash with conferences and plans for metadata. That’s where the future is going. These flat, standalone, and disconnected ePub books can introduce people to electronic reading but, as you know I’ve been saying, they will ultimately fail.
[...] The Rise of Libraries in an ‘e’ world of Books?Fran Toolan of Firebrand Technologies takes a look at the implications of Sony’s recent partnership with Overdrive. [...]
I don’t think that e-Books will ever kill paper books. I just don’t enjoy reading on a screen. I want to feel the pages flip between my fingers as I look back a few chapters to remind myself of something about the protagonist or villain. There’s nothing like the crisp contrast of printed letters on a cream-colored page. No way will I consider an e-reader until it can duplicate the full BOOK experience.
It’s definitely an emerging market and will continue to grow… but I’m not worried that print will die, or that libraries will kill publishers.
Mike,
Metadata is important, and I thinnk that sometime in the next 5 years, many of the disconnects between publishing, library, and ebook distribution systems regarding metadata will be worked out. Now, they are three completely separate models, and it’s a real pain.
However, people don’t buy, or borrow metadata, they want the information. (call it a book, research article, story, graph or whatever). I think with the trajectory of the print-on-demand world, you can easily see a time in the not-to-distant future where libraries will shift from being generalists to being very specific curators of certain types of information.
Dave,
I’m not thinking that print books are going to be killed, but all of the current models for how to determine when, where, how, and how much to print are being severely challenged right now. this type of planning is a cornerstone to how most publishers project their business, and reproject their business.
This is going to severely challenge the way publishers operate, and may curtail their ability to publish as many books.
I’ve always thought that libraries would stick around, regardless, simply because of their nature. They’re here to help people with information: in the early days of print, it was access to information.
Today, it’s helping people filter through the myriad of sources to find exactly what they’re looking for.
I don’t think ‘e’ versus ‘p’ has anything to do with it.
In fact, I’d almost say that the rise of ‘e’ will guarantee the existence of libraries — maybe not the libraries we got used to while growing up, but libraries nonetheless.
Best,
Heather S. Ingemar
http://ingemarwrites.wordpress.com/