From Global Times:

Ebooks might be convenient, but they come at a cost. The spread of ebooks has driven circulation down in China’s university libraries, and even caused some librarians to lose their jobs.

. . . .

Hankou’s library is now lending 68,000 less books a year compared to 2010. But ebook access at a nearby school has increased from 356 to 44,556 since 2009.

Link to the rest at Global Times

From Good EReader:

Overdrive has gained the support of over 3,000 libraries for a new pilot project to take ebook accessibility to an entirely new level. The intention behind this new initiative is to create a global “library book club.”

Library partners in the OverDrive network will be invited to participate in the pilot program beginning May 15 – June 1, 2013. Participating libraries will be provided no-cost access to the librarian-selected ebook Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone via Sourcebooks. This title will be prominently displayed on the OverDrive-powered library websites, and discoverable through the libraries’ catalogs. For the pilot, the ebook will be simultaneously available for any and all readers with a library card to browse, sample, and borrow. At the end of the pilot period, the title will be removed from the collection, but libraries can still buy it.

“We want to demonstrate once and for all the enormous influence of the library demographic, and that when libraries put an ebook in their catalog it serves a valuable role in increasing exposure and engagement with an author’s work,” said Steve Potash, OverDrive’s CEO.

Link to the rest at Good EReader

From GlobalPost:

There were times when electronic book readers and touch-screen devices like the iPad were touted as the saviors of the flagging publishing industry. But something went terribly wrong with the plot and now publishers are found describing e-books as killers rather than manna from heaven.

Unlike the previous experiences with journalism, music and films, industries which were irrevocably reshaped by the digital revolution, it seems technology itself isn’t as much a disruptive force for publishing as rapid changes to the market’s economic structure.

Through a wave of consolidation that was accompanied with the bad economy in the past decade, the market is now dominated by mega retail chains like Kyobo Bookstore and a few large corporations that control the most influential publishing houses. Diversity was hurt as small publishers were driven out or marginalized, an intellectual vacuum epitomized by the slew of self-help books that are often worse than useless.

. . . .

The lightning rod of the conflict has been ”Sam,’’ a new e-book service launched by Kyobo earlier this year, accessible to the buyers of the company’s own e-book reader.

Sam users could download five e-books for 15,000 won, seven for 21,000 won and 12 for 32,000 won, much cheaper than what they would pay for the physical versions of the books. It also provides a ”rental’’ service that allows users to read five books for six months at just 990 won.

Publishers went livid over Kyobo’s pricing policy, which they feared would push them deeper into a financial spiral at a time when book readership was hitting new lows.

. . . .

Han Ki-ho, director of the Korean Publishing Marketing Research Institute, claims that Kyobo has already pushed the publishing industry into a price war that will eventually benefit nobody.

”Deciding to rent out a book at 200 won when it’s paperback version is priced at 13,000 won is a graceless and ruthless marketing attempt that threatens the publishing market’s ecosystem,’’ he said.

”Korea’s biggest problem is that the disappearance of the culture of reading. It’s ridiculous to think that lowering prices alone will spark the sluggish growth of the e-book market and put retailers and publishers in a better place. This will only further hurt diversity and further fill up the market of low quality and opportunistic books.”

. . . .

A report from Statistics Korea last month showed that book consumption – measured by the sales of hardcovers, paperbacks and magazines – hit a new low last year with the average spending of households sinking below 20,000 won (about $18).

New books released by publishers decreased by a staggering 20 percent in 2012.

Link to the rest at GlobalPost

From The Economist:

Plastered on the wall of San Francisco’s main public library are 50,000 index cards, formerly entries in the library’s catalogue. The tomes they refer to may be becoming decorative, too. Not only can library patrons now search the collection online, they may also check out electronic books without visiting the library. For librarians, “e-lending” is a natural offer in the digital age. Publishers and booksellers fear it could unbind their business.

. . . .

A printed book can be borrowed only during opening hours and at the library, so many readers save themselves the hassle and buy their own copy. But e-lending is frictionless: any user with the right privileges can download a digital file instantly.

. . . .

In publishers’ eyes librarians are “sitting close to Satan”, declared Phil Bradley, president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. He was addressing indignant librarians who recently gathered in London to swap tales of e-lending woe. Some publishers have refused to sell their e-books to public libraries, made them prohibitively costly or put severe restrictions on their use. Although 71% of British public libraries lend out e-books, 85% of e-book titles are not available in public libraries, according to Mr Bradley. In America the average public library makes available only 4,350 e-books (Amazon, an online retail giant, stocks more than 1.7m).

. . . .

Some even wonder if e-lending is in the libraries’ interests, since it encourages people to stay at home, rather than use them as a public space (one reason why they enjoy taxpayers’ backing). One critic privately calls e-lending the “Librarian Unemployment Act of 2013”.

Link to the rest at The Economist

From My San Antonio:

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff is an unabashed book lover with 1,000 first editions in his private collection, but even he sees the writing on the wall.

Paper books have lost their allure, and future generations may have little use for them, Wolff contends.
So when he embarked on a mission to create a countywide library system, he decided it should be bookless from the start.

Today, after months of planning, Wolff and other county leaders will announce plans to launch the nation’s first bookless public library system, BiblioTech, with a prototype location on the South Side opening in the fall.
“If you want to get an idea what it looks like, go into an Apple store,” Wolff said.

. . . .

[N]o entire public library system is bookless, and unlike others, Bexar County’s BiblioTech library system won’t have a legacy of paper. It’ll be designed for, not adapted to, the digital age, Wolff said.

“We’ve called everywhere and I don’t believe anybody’s done this before,” he said.

Link to the rest at My San Antonio and thanks to Abel for the tip.

As a note, PG believes that the title of County Judge in Texas is the equivalent to a county commissioner in other states.

From TUAW:

This Slashgear writeup about a newly awarded Amazon patent just caught our eyes here at TUAW Central. Apparently, Amazon may be exploring an online used digital goods market.

Amazon proposes to establish an “electronic marketplace for used digital objects.” If that sounds a little ridiculous and yet curiously intriguing to you, well, you’re not alone.

. . . .

Obviously, the technology would cover a transfer of rights from one owner to the next, but how would one value and implement these transfers? Would there be a fixed cut or fee to the facilitator? Does the rights-holder get a cut? And how could one assign a monetary worth to a “new” license versus a “used” one? (After all, the bits are the same, aren’t they? “There are five new copies of this product and three used ones” just sounds wrong when it comes to digital goods.)

Link to the rest at TUAW and thanks to Joshua for the tip.

Passive Guy would caution that it is extremely difficult to use a patent to predict product or service plans. These days, there are many reasons a company might obtain a patent other than that it is planning to commercialize something the patent covers.

From The Deseret News:

The book publishing world is in upheaval. As print books wane, Amazon, Apple and Google are changing the landscape of e-books. The big six publishers (Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette and Simon & Schuster) are beginning the process of rethinking and repositioning. Penguin and Random House recently announced they are going to merge.

Caught in the fray are public libraries.

Publishers are reluctant to let the public have the same library access to e-books that they have to physical books. They fear a loss of sales, but a new survey shows that fear may be unfounded — and that libraries may take the place of bookstores as places where people discover the newest books.

. . . .

King says libraries are being excluded from many e-books produced today. There are three main digital distributors that provide e-book access for libraries: OverDrive, 3M and Baker & Taylor.

“The problem with these services is, for the most part, the big six publishers do not sell e-books to libraries,” King says. “They’ll sell it to you and me through big distributors like Amazon, but they won’t sell those books to libraries.”

King says libraries can subscribe to services such as Overdrive, but the most popular books are not available for checkout.

“The new J.K. Rowling book? We can’t get that,” King says, “because it is not sold to libraries. We can get the print format, but we cannot get the e-book version, and that is just strange.”

. . . .

Burleigh says publishers need to realize how important it is to have e-books available through the library “for the sheer discovery.”

As Hancock at the Salt Lake City Public Library puts it, “library users are also book buyers.”

. . . .

Bookstores used to be the mainstay of book discovery. People would go to a bookstore and browse the shelves and displays. That environment has been changing with hundreds of bookstores and even book chains closing — such as Borders and Waldenbooks.

But libraries still serve the same function as a source for book discovery. As the survey says, the public library is the primary source of book discovery for 57 percent of the people who check out e-books

“Libraries are where people discover new books and new authors,” Burleigh says. “Libraries will discover a new important role as a new showroom for materials, both physically and digitally.”

Link to the rest at The Deseret News

From Forbes Blogs:

Libraries and big six publishers are at war over eBooks: how much they should cost, how they can be lent and who owns them.  If you don’t use your public library and assume that this doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong.

In a society where bookstores disappear every day while the number of books available to read has swelled exponentially, libraries will play an ever more crucial role.  Even more than in the past, we will depend on libraries of the future to help discover and curate great books.   Libraries are already transforming themselves around the country to create more symbiotic relationships with their communities, with book clubs and as work and

meeting spaces for local citizens.

For publishers, the library will be the showroom of the future.  Ensuring that libraries have continuing access to published titles gives them a chance to meet this role, but an important obstacle remains: how eBooks are obtained by libraries.

. . . .

The solution to the current pricing problem lies in understanding that the argument publishers and libraries are having is the wrong argument.  It is based on the paradigm of the printed book and as such presents a series of intractable challenges for both publishers and libraries.   By changing the model for pricing an eBook, both parties could find a clear and equitable resolution to the current impasse.

. . . .

Do libraries increase book sales or cannibalize them?  This is the issue at the heart of the struggle between libraries represented by the American Library Association (whose president is Maureen Sullivan) and the Big Six publishers.

. . . .

Libraries have struggled to understand their role in communities as technology has changed.  In addition to encouraging children to read and lending books, they have migrated from providing access to online databases to cataloging the web then providing computer terminals and now broadband access as the needs of the citizenry for information has changed.  The shift in reading towards eBooks presents a particular problem for them because it’s happening with startling rapidity and presents significant technological challenges.

. . . .

The central issue for libraries is simple: they believe that withholding eBooks from libraries entirely, pricing them higher or limiting lends all undermine the library’s core mission. Robin Nesbit, of the Columbus (OH) Metropolitan Library System told me that although her eBook circulation of 500,000 lends annually is only 3 percent of the system’s total, that number is growing by more than 200% a year.  “Plus it’s at least 10% of our budget.”  Between the cost of eBooks and a technology component, providing access to eBooks is three times as expensive for her as physical books.

. . . .

Dye and others who work for big publishers and deal with eBooks have another challenge that library directors do not: layers of management that already believe that eBooks may kill large publishing houses and view their growth as more of a threat than an opportunity.  A big part of the problem is data – there’s a paucity of it.  Dye has reviewed the Pew Report on library usage extensively to inform pricing decisions.  But if the institutional bias among publishers is to see eBooks as more threat than opportunity, title and library-specific data will be needed to prove that either friction or cannibalization are less than expected in order to justify consumer pricing for libraries.

Link to the rest at Forbes Blogs and thanks to Meryl for the tip.

From The Literary Platform:

Swedes have always gone about their business in their own particular way. To quote a phrase: ‘Swedes think different’. Take e-books: Swedes are usually early adopters of new technologies and formats, but, despite a small bump in the figures when Apple launched their iBookstore in Scandinavia in 2011, the market for e-books has remained small by comparison to the global market.

This seems odd given that Swedes are heavy consumers of books and geared up to the eyeballs with smartphones and tablets. The fact is that Swedes do in fact read e-books, it’s just that they don’t buy them. Numbers from Svenskbokhandel (the Swedish national book trade magazine) show that six times as many e-books were distributed through the library system than through all commercial outlets combined in September this year.

So why is this? Pundits speculate that it’s a consequence of the vertical integration of the Swedish book market: three big houses, each part of a group that also controls its own retail outlets. Margins from selling physical books are good, so why not postpone the migration to e-books for as long as possible? It has also been suggested that if nobody is buying e-books, Sweden is more likely to remain out of Amazon’s sights, and its disruptive effect. Maybe there’s some truth in this, or maybe it’s just the kind of conspiratorial thinking that pundits thrive on.

. . . .

In the case of e-book lending, the model that prevails in Sweden was drafted over a decade ago by representatives from the library sector and the Association of Swedish Publishers. Whilst the dominant model internationally is based on the idea of licensing ‘copies’ of e-books, in Sweden the library treats e-books as a ‘service’ with titles available concurrently to any number of patrons, for free. In Sweden you never have to wait for an e-book to become ‘available’ which of course means you can borrow as many as you want, simultaneously.

. . . .

Whilst e-book lending is lucrative for publishers (even if e-books are free to library patrons, the library pays for every transaction) there is a growing nervousness that a commercial market may never develop on account of readers having come to expect that e-books are free. In an effort to counteract this many publishers are now windowing their e-book releases, releasing them to libraries only once they have gone cold commercially.

This practice of windowing has attracted strong criticism from librarians culminating in the national lobby group taking out a full page advert in Sweden’s biggest national newspaper slamming the practice, and criticising publishers for mercantile behaviour and failing to see libraries as strategic partners in reader and audience development for their books.

. . . .

‘Dual licensing’ is a term borrowed from the Open Source movement and describes how a product can both be sold for profit and shared freely under different sets of terms. The pilot applies the concept to e-books in the following way: libraries help digitise publishers’ backlist and get decent lending terms in return.

In the pilot the library will pay for the digitisation of 25 e-books which are then made available to the library at a fixed price subscription for a period of eleven years. Furthermore the publisher agrees to make all their new e-book titles available to the library on release.

We believe this model has legs because it serves the interests of all the parties involved. Publishers in a language area as small as Sweden face the challenge that their audience simply isn’t big enough to finance serious backlist digitisation – that is why there are no more than ten thousand titles available as e-books on the Swedish market today. With most new publications just about breaking even, exploiting the long-tail by making their back catalogue available in all formats – PoD and e – becomes essential to their survival.

Link to the rest at The Literary Platform and thanks to Ellen for the tip.

From The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Forget all those tiny Dewey Decimal stickers on the spines of books. 3M’s library business has gone digital.

Last month, the Maplewood conglomerate unveiled its eBook Lending Service in libraries in Ramsey, Dakota and Washington counties. It’s the first big rollout in Minnesota since 3M started a pilot program with the St. Paul Public Library in April.

Instead of combing through aisles of books, patrons can check out five e-books at a time for 21 days without ever stepping into a library. All they have to do is download 3M’s Cloud Library app to a smartphone, PC, tablet or e-reader (except for Kindle).

3M expects its Cloud-based app to reach 1.4 million Minnesota library cardholders and give them access to 225,000 e-books from 300 publishers, including Random House.

. . . .

With its new software, 3M acts as a virtual distributor. The company buys e-books from 300 publishers and then sells them to libraries. Libraries pay 3M anywhere from $5 to $80 for a single e-book. The publisher sets the prices, but 3M gets a slice of the proceeds.

. . . .

3M’s entrance into the e-book arena pits it directly against Overdrive, a well-known e-book software program that lets patrons “check out” five e-books at a time.

To compete, Mercer said 3M focused on a system that’s simple to use. 3M is gaining fans.

“It’s much easier,” said Mary Wussow, cluster support manager of the Wescott Library in Eagan. The library has a reading bar lined with Nooks, Kindles, iPads, iPhones and other e-reader devices for patrons to try. 3M launched the service there last month.

The reading bar sits next to a 3M kiosk, where visitors can scan their library card, tap the screen and browse e-book catalogs by category, author or title.

Maureen Gormley, information services manager for the Dakota County Library System, said “I have used the 3M Cloud. Personally, I do find it more user-friendly than other e-book products.”

Link to the rest at Star-Tribune