image by Paul Lowry
In these ever changing times, it is vital that we forge relationships with libraries and build a future together. We care about preserving the value of our authors’ work as well as helping libraries continue to serve their communities. Our ongoing partnership with the ALA is more important than ever, and our recent talks with ALA leadership helped bring everything into focus.
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The American Library Association held their promised meeting with major publishers today. The specific details have not been released, but based on the vague generalities in a note written by ALA President Molly Raphael, nothing much has changed.
If the ALA came out of the meeting without at least one of those softening their positions then the meeting was a waste of time. Molly’s complete statement is after the break.
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Earlier this week Penguin decided to make it little bit harder to get legal content; they’re no longer going to sell audiobooks to libraries via OverDrive.
The Digital Shift posted a copy of the email that OverDrive sent out to libraries today. Here’s the relevant section that explains the change:
“This change does not affect any Penguin audiobook titles currently in your library’s catalog. Your library will be able to purchase additional copies of titles released before 11/14/2011. However, titles released after this date and new releases will not be available, per instruction from the publisher.”
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If you’ve ever looked at your library’s ebook selection and been disappointed, I think I just found out why.
Sarah Houghton has just posted a fascinating expose over at Librarian in Black. She’s uncovered evidence that OverDrive has been less than upfront about what ebooks they can sell to which libraries, and why.
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OverDrive announced today that their contract to provide ebooks to the Kansas Digital Library Consortium had come to an end so the servers were about to be shut off. The KDLC decided to leave OverDrive some time back and they are currently beta testing the 3M Cloud Library, a recently announced alternative.
To be honest, we all knew this was going to happen. Back in June the Kansas state librarian announced that Kansas had signed a deal with 3M and were planning to take their ebooks with them. They left for the obvious reason: cost. OverDrive had jacked up their fees far more than the state was willing to pay and possibly more than they could have afforded to pay. The total fees would have jumped by almost 700% by 2014.
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There’s been growing attention on ebook subscriptions lately, with Amazon launching Prime Ebooks and several small startups coming out of the woodwork. But now it looks like the first successful launch will be coming out of left field.
Tim Coates, author and former m.d. of the Waterstones bookstore chain, announced today that he is about ready to launch Bilbary. This is going to be an ebook rental service, and it’s due to launch in either December or January with around 400 thousand titles (half academic and half trade). Current plans include a simultaneous launch in the US, UK, and Australia, and that’s going to have an interesting effect on ebook availability.
“Readers are going to be the obsessive focus of this site,” said Coates. “It won’t sell anything else. It’s the site to come to for everything, for readers’ groups, for recommendations, and it will be linked to Facebook.” He added: “The student can get hold of a book you can’t get from the university library direct from the publisher. Academic publishers see real potential.”
Coates is working out deals with 5 of the Price Fix 6 publishers, and he reportedly has agreements already in place with most major academic publishers. The service will be following the early Netflix model, not the late one. To be more exact, they’re charging for each rental individually (like any movie rental service of old). The projected rental cost is around 20% of retail, with publishers getting 80%. But they’re also going to be selling the ebooks.
That’s good for them and I’m sure the publishers like it, but I was really hoping for a flat rate service (like Netflix is now). On the other hand, Bilbary’s charges might tell us something about what publishers want. Bilbary might not have been able to get publisher to agree to allow for a flat rate plan, or it might not have been affordable (for Bilbary).
Format support includes Epub and PDF, and availability will depend on what the publishers provide. The loan period will be 20 days. You’ll be able to read online or download the ebooks and read them on an Adobe DE compatible e-reader (everything but the Kindle, basically).
I’ve been writing a series on library ebook alternatives, and this is one that I’ll definitely need to keep an eye on. I’ll try to get back to them when more info is available.
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About 5 days ago Penguin forced OverDrive to how libraries could use their ebooks, and about 36 hours ago OverDrive copped to the restriction. I’ve just learned that the restrictions have eased somewhat; libraries cannot buy new Penguin ebooks but patrons can send current titles to their Kindles again.
OverDrive posted the following on their blog:
‘Get for Kindle’ for all Penguin eBooks in your catalog has been restored as of this morning. Penguin titles are available for check out by Kindle users and the Kindle format will be available for patrons who are currently on a waiting list for a Penguin title. This does not affect new releases, which remain unavailable.
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Well now this is truly turning into a Monday.
Overdrive just announced that they’ve been forced to restrict access to ebooks supplied by Penguin. i asked and they don’t have any more details to share. And I’m still waiting to hear back from Penguin.
Last week Penguin sent notice to OverDrive that it is reviewing terms for library lending of their eBooks. In the interim, OverDrive was instructed to suspend availability of new Penguin eBook titles from our library catalog and disable “Get for Kindle” functionality for all Penguin eBooks. We apologize for this abrupt change in terms from this supplier. We are actively working with Penguin on this issue and are hopeful Penguin will agree to restore access to their new titles and Kindle availability as soon as possible.
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OverDrive are reporting today that they’ve seen a record number of new ebook patrons over the past year, as well as a vast increase in app installs, mobile checkouts, and a vast increase in ebook checkouts.
It’s been a stellar year at OverDrive, with total ebook turnover looking to hit 16 million checkouts, which would be triple that of 2010. They’ve also seen a near doubling of new users signing up, with nearly 2,000,000 already joined this year. Those new users have also added to a spike in installs for OverDrive reading app; there’s now over 9 million copies of the OverDrive Media Console in use, including over 2 million on iOS and Android.
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I’m sure you caught the news this morning that Amazon and OverDrive have started rolling out Kindle library ebook support today. They’ve already enabled about 60 libraries from OverDrive’s 11 thousand partner libraries here in the US, and more are being added by the minute. There’s one bit of news that probably got buried in the noise, and it could be critically important to TouchPad owner.
The library ebooks will work with all the Kindle apps, and according to my contact with OverDrive that includes the Kindle for TouchPad app. This is very big news because I have also been told that OverDrive are not planning an app for the TouchPad. [Read more →]
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