....now that we've gotten over the e-ISBN issue!
Today the company I manage publisher relationships for - James Bennett - announced a partnership with ebrary. James Bennett has worked with EBL for seven years and they are a major supplier to the business. And an important one. This new ebrary partnership does not change that. It adds to the James Bennett offer to Australasian libraries. In future, Baker & Taylor's Blio should also be integrated with James Bennett Online (JBO) so libraries can choose their preferred ebook platform. James Bennett also has publisher's own platforms and other digital offerings in there but there's one problem that we're waiting to see how the broader trade copes with - you know, those selling ebooks to consumers, and that is the e-ISBN issue.
We learnt the hard way about the e-ISBN issue. Nine years ago we started working on eTitle, which was launched in January 2003. We asked our publishing partner at the time to create individual - i.e. unique - ISBN for each title on the eTitle platform. They did it for the first 100 or so books they offered us but then it became one of those issues that just got bigger as we started working with digital reference and other ebook providers. Our legacy system, which is highly customised to meet the needs of ANZ libraries, used the ISBN as the PRIMARY IDENTIFIER for the book. As more and more ebooks started coming our way, the system started to fall down as each ISBN was linked to a vendor. But each e-ISBN could appear in multiple platforms. And don't start me on the publishers that used the print ISBN as the reference in their electronic databases. To them, they didn't want to create an e-ISBN as the electronic resources were managed on separate systems within their company. BTW I'm not talking about a small company here. I'm talking about one that had revenues of nearly $3 BILLION last year. But I digress.
James Bennett has taken several years to work through all the system issues associated with the e-ISBN issue. We know publishers didn't want to create multiple ISBNs for an ebook. Some did it by format (PDF, epub etc) but many just created one e-ISBN because they receive REPORTS from their ebook vendors and partners and it's a revenue stream in a separate way. They can search revenue by one e-ISBN and it makes sense from their point of view - but for us - a NIGHTMARE.
Our IT guys have worked on the best way to incorporate e-ISBNs into our system, particularly JBO and our wonderful JBS profiling & selection system, that then shows the right platform depending on the customer. There's nothing worse than sending a publisher an order for an ebook (because they sent us the e-ISBN on a data file first) and then realising it was actually meant for an ebook vendor (the publisher's data meant the ebook vendor's data failed, the record having already been on file, and linked to a publisher). But now, we've managed to set things up so libraries can see the right e-ISBNs for their platform.
Now all we have to work on is short-term loan pricing, rentals, different pricing policies that publisher's insist on for different market segments (academic vs public libraries for example), special pricing, and normal pricing. But that's something for another time and place. And another layer of complexity of course.... But I ramble (afterall, this is called Rachael's Ramble!).
Today it's about the e-ISBN and beating it at it's game. We've gotten around the bibliographic data issues and the library workflows for customers. We've integrated ebrary into our systems. And we're ready to roll with the next cab off the rank - which hopefully should be Baker & Taylor (our parent company) Axis 360 powered by Blio. Great product. We love it because it's a different experience to our current ebook vendors. At the end of the day, we're just glad we can bring multiple vendors to the Australasian library marketplace and give customers the workflows they need - and expect - from their library vendor of choice.
To read the full media release about ebrary and James Bennett please go to The Bennett Blog.
Showing posts with label EBL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EBL. Show all posts
07 September 2011
02 February 2011
Where ebooks really work
When I worked for Pearson, one of our largest group of expenses related to complimentary copies for lecturers at universities and TAFEs. Over the years, "comp" policies were refined and improved in attempt to bring down the cost but they were a necessary evil - you had to give a copy away in order to create the adoption and multiple copy sales. Apart from the marketing and sales reps costs, you had warehousing and distribution to add to the initial print and all associated development costs. So it all added up. It was part of the business model.
Earlier this week the company I work for held a joint forum with EBL on e-textbooks - librarians in one corner, publishers in the other. It was a really good discussion with around 100 participants but I'll keep my notes for that reserved for elsewhere. I only bring it up on my own blog because Wiley spoke about the inspection copy process being an expense but an essential part of the academic publisher's business model. They spoke about using ebooks as comp copies. Regardless of the platform being used, ebook comp copies are quick, efficient, cost effective (ultimately) and more importantly they deliver the content directly to the reader without a strain on the environment. Whether or not ebooks are greener than print I refer to a link from this blog from July 2009 and leave that discussion for those who are more "in the know" about these things than me.
As some of you who live and breathe ebooks will also know, Springer announced more than 10,000 books for review on their website. The online book review copy service is designed for journalists, editors and reviewers, who receive temporary reading access. Ten books are allowed for simultaneous review and access is for 6 months. Books that have not yet been published can be reserved and reviewers are notified by email when they are available. What I like about this is that the reviewers can then upload their published review and once it's date of appearance has been confirmed, they can order a print copy free.
So the ongoing costs of inspection copies for lecturers and review copies for the media is effectively handled by their ebook service. I love this model. It's quick, the content is fully available, and the print copy is still part of the equation. I wonder how much this service cost in terms of development and ongoing maintenance and what the ROI would be. Considering the number of gratis copies that publishers send out, I think this is a brilliant way of working the ebook technology to bring a better result to all involved. The financials would be fascinating to see, wouldn't you agree?
Earlier this week the company I work for held a joint forum with EBL on e-textbooks - librarians in one corner, publishers in the other. It was a really good discussion with around 100 participants but I'll keep my notes for that reserved for elsewhere. I only bring it up on my own blog because Wiley spoke about the inspection copy process being an expense but an essential part of the academic publisher's business model. They spoke about using ebooks as comp copies. Regardless of the platform being used, ebook comp copies are quick, efficient, cost effective (ultimately) and more importantly they deliver the content directly to the reader without a strain on the environment. Whether or not ebooks are greener than print I refer to a link from this blog from July 2009 and leave that discussion for those who are more "in the know" about these things than me.
As some of you who live and breathe ebooks will also know, Springer announced more than 10,000 books for review on their website. The online book review copy service is designed for journalists, editors and reviewers, who receive temporary reading access. Ten books are allowed for simultaneous review and access is for 6 months. Books that have not yet been published can be reserved and reviewers are notified by email when they are available. What I like about this is that the reviewers can then upload their published review and once it's date of appearance has been confirmed, they can order a print copy free.
So the ongoing costs of inspection copies for lecturers and review copies for the media is effectively handled by their ebook service. I love this model. It's quick, the content is fully available, and the print copy is still part of the equation. I wonder how much this service cost in terms of development and ongoing maintenance and what the ROI would be. Considering the number of gratis copies that publishers send out, I think this is a brilliant way of working the ebook technology to bring a better result to all involved. The financials would be fascinating to see, wouldn't you agree?
09 October 2010
In the year of the ebook, what counts and what doesn't....?
I'm writing this blog from the Frankfurt Book Fair. If you are keeping up-to-date with the press coverage from Frankfurt, it's the "year of the ebook", it's all about the digital marketplace, ebook here, ebook there, ebook everywhere. Yet for those of us who speak fluent "e" it's quite amusing. We've spoken ebooks for years. But it seems ebook sales in libraries don't count. Ebooks through publisher databases and web portals don't count. Most of my meetings with academic publishers now report on "p" vs "e" sales and the figures are quite interesting, depending on the depth of the "e" range offered to library ebook vendors, how long they've been active players in the ebook market, pricing of the books and simultaneous release. Some STM publishers are sitting above 60% "e" sales, however the majority probably sits around 30% and growing at double - or triple - digit figures. To hear it's the year of the ebook is funny for those of us in library supply. Because we don't count.
On the library front, the major ebook players are well established - EBL, ebrary, Netlibrary, myilibrary. How do they feel when they hear about the year of the ebook? Some of them have played in this ebook domain for over a decade. Their sales are not insignificant. But they don't count. They've worked on content acquisition with academic, professional and scholarly publishers for many years. It must be nice after being in the marketplace for over a decade, in some instances, to hear you are now in the spotlight. But it's not them that are in the spotlight. No, No, No.
You see it's all about the trade. It's about booksellers and how they fit into the equation. Not the giants - like Amazon (with the Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the Nook). It's about getting fiction and non-fiction titles to the general consumer through other players. Google Editions will be huge with retailers. Kobo is growing their marketshare here with the Red Group. Blio has launched in the US and will come to ANZ next year. Independent booksellers - large and small - can play in the ebook arena as long as they have a website.
But again, we're forgetting there are other players providing back-end service to booksellers - OverDrive, Ebooks Corporation, Gardners in the UK. The latter advised they have over 100 publishers and 100,000 ebooks in their offer to retailers. They've worked at their strategies for years. Nice to know their time has come! I'm sure they count. Because they supply to the wider book trade.
But let's extend the ramble. There is one really hot topic in all the noise regarding ebooks. And it's also to do with counting. However in this case, it may be counting the loss. TERRITORIAL RIGHTS FOR EBOOKS....
It came up in many of my meetings with publishers with regards to book distribution - not library ebook vendors. If you are distributing the print product, particularly in the academic and scholarly arena, you have seen library supplier sales change. Library suppliers work with ebook vendors who provide services that work with a library management system. Many sales are the "one-sies and two-sies" across an entire range. Overall it makes an impact to your business. But library supply, at say 10% of sales, is small. It's TRADE distribution that's going to hurt.
Publishers being wowed by ebook vendor arrangements for booksellers - particularly Kobo, Blio and Google Editions - are not always thinking about their agent or distributor on the ground in Australasia. They are not thinking about cannibilisation of print. They aren't thinking about inventory, publicity, sales and marketing. All important roles of the agent. They aren't always thinking about communications to their sales agents and distributors about the possible effects. They are going directly to the retailer via the ebook wholesaler - bypassing the normal and traditional book supply chain.
I've discussed it before on this blog, but in the year of the ebook (in the trade, that is, not libraries!), how are we going to carve up the ebook pie. There isn't enough to go around. The role of the sales agent/distributor is going to change. And substantially change. Wholesale terms cannot be applied to both the distributor AND the ebook wholesaler (the Blio's, Kobos etc). The ebook wholesalers have their terms. For a distributor, a revenue or commission stream is all that one can really hope for. How is the publisher going to account for that, what will the percentage look like, and will it be enough to sustain the supply chain we've known and loved all these years (yes, that was sarcasm in case you missed it).
Publishers are trying to hold onto world ebook rights because carving up the digital world is not what many want to do. Distributor roles are changing and substantially. Publishers need to keep in mind they have a sales and marketing partner in the ANZ region who performs a core role with placement of product, raising profiles of authors, publicity, service etc. There are costs associated with these services. Offer the books on the ebook platforms that bypass that arrangement and don't communicate that to your agent. Priceless. Yes, that will make it the year of the ebook for sure. With consumer demand growing for ebooks and print sales constantly under threat, how many distributors will walk away from the print altogether? Publishers need to think about their established business relationships and partnerships in this territory - and find some way to blend it all together in a way that grows the business and recognises the important role a distributor plays. Because look at the fine print of your contracts - to sign up with all these players selling directly to the retailer is no doubt a contractual breach. Publishers overseas need to take a good hard look at the ebook supply chain, work out how they are going to play with the ebook vendor to retailers, what the role of the sales agent/book distributor is in all of that, and how to carve up that pie. There's a new business model out there. What it looks like I don't know. But I do know: we all need to make it work and it has to count for something.
On the library front, the major ebook players are well established - EBL, ebrary, Netlibrary, myilibrary. How do they feel when they hear about the year of the ebook? Some of them have played in this ebook domain for over a decade. Their sales are not insignificant. But they don't count. They've worked on content acquisition with academic, professional and scholarly publishers for many years. It must be nice after being in the marketplace for over a decade, in some instances, to hear you are now in the spotlight. But it's not them that are in the spotlight. No, No, No.
You see it's all about the trade. It's about booksellers and how they fit into the equation. Not the giants - like Amazon (with the Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the Nook). It's about getting fiction and non-fiction titles to the general consumer through other players. Google Editions will be huge with retailers. Kobo is growing their marketshare here with the Red Group. Blio has launched in the US and will come to ANZ next year. Independent booksellers - large and small - can play in the ebook arena as long as they have a website.
But again, we're forgetting there are other players providing back-end service to booksellers - OverDrive, Ebooks Corporation, Gardners in the UK. The latter advised they have over 100 publishers and 100,000 ebooks in their offer to retailers. They've worked at their strategies for years. Nice to know their time has come! I'm sure they count. Because they supply to the wider book trade.
But let's extend the ramble. There is one really hot topic in all the noise regarding ebooks. And it's also to do with counting. However in this case, it may be counting the loss. TERRITORIAL RIGHTS FOR EBOOKS....
It came up in many of my meetings with publishers with regards to book distribution - not library ebook vendors. If you are distributing the print product, particularly in the academic and scholarly arena, you have seen library supplier sales change. Library suppliers work with ebook vendors who provide services that work with a library management system. Many sales are the "one-sies and two-sies" across an entire range. Overall it makes an impact to your business. But library supply, at say 10% of sales, is small. It's TRADE distribution that's going to hurt.
Publishers being wowed by ebook vendor arrangements for booksellers - particularly Kobo, Blio and Google Editions - are not always thinking about their agent or distributor on the ground in Australasia. They are not thinking about cannibilisation of print. They aren't thinking about inventory, publicity, sales and marketing. All important roles of the agent. They aren't always thinking about communications to their sales agents and distributors about the possible effects. They are going directly to the retailer via the ebook wholesaler - bypassing the normal and traditional book supply chain.
I've discussed it before on this blog, but in the year of the ebook (in the trade, that is, not libraries!), how are we going to carve up the ebook pie. There isn't enough to go around. The role of the sales agent/distributor is going to change. And substantially change. Wholesale terms cannot be applied to both the distributor AND the ebook wholesaler (the Blio's, Kobos etc). The ebook wholesalers have their terms. For a distributor, a revenue or commission stream is all that one can really hope for. How is the publisher going to account for that, what will the percentage look like, and will it be enough to sustain the supply chain we've known and loved all these years (yes, that was sarcasm in case you missed it).
Publishers are trying to hold onto world ebook rights because carving up the digital world is not what many want to do. Distributor roles are changing and substantially. Publishers need to keep in mind they have a sales and marketing partner in the ANZ region who performs a core role with placement of product, raising profiles of authors, publicity, service etc. There are costs associated with these services. Offer the books on the ebook platforms that bypass that arrangement and don't communicate that to your agent. Priceless. Yes, that will make it the year of the ebook for sure. With consumer demand growing for ebooks and print sales constantly under threat, how many distributors will walk away from the print altogether? Publishers need to think about their established business relationships and partnerships in this territory - and find some way to blend it all together in a way that grows the business and recognises the important role a distributor plays. Because look at the fine print of your contracts - to sign up with all these players selling directly to the retailer is no doubt a contractual breach. Publishers overseas need to take a good hard look at the ebook supply chain, work out how they are going to play with the ebook vendor to retailers, what the role of the sales agent/book distributor is in all of that, and how to carve up that pie. There's a new business model out there. What it looks like I don't know. But I do know: we all need to make it work and it has to count for something.
19 February 2010
My Presentation at the Digital Symposium
Ebooks and libraries: two subjects that are often discussed separately but when taken together produce such a wide range of reactions from publishers. In many ways, publisher responses to ebooks for libraries actually help define the publisher, their business model, the way they approach their content, and the role they play in the full supply chain. It is easy to identify those that are dynamic and those that are traditional or tied to the “mother ship” overseas as is often the case. Those who are willing to engage with the full spectrum of customers - in our case, libraries - and those that won’t. Those who are preparing for the digital future and those we feel will be left behind.
As many of you know, James Bennett has been supplying public and academic libraries for over 40 years. With digitisation, we’ve seen one of the most challenging periods of our history. If we rewind the clock back only seven years, it was a time when library suppliers were selling dozens of multi volume reference sets to our customer base - encyclopedias with price tags in the thousands. Multi volume reference sales were priority products with targeted marketing campaigns and good margins. Fast forward to today and print reference sales have been cut dramatically as libraries opt for online versions, a site license, perhaps a direct relationship with the content provider, and in some cases no purchase at all because patrons choose to use freely available web content. Trading terms are very different. The goal posts have moved.
Of course it made sense for the reference market to shift to online as the product could be kept up-to-date, thereby making it more valuable to the library patron. Some libraries still order a print version but we’ve seen a massive shift to online reference. One of the leading players in the reference market kindly advised us prior to this Symposium that in Australia a staggering 75% of their sales are now from their online products. The sales channel has evolved.
This discussion is not about digital reference. I use the example merely to highlight what’s happened in the last few years. For library suppliers, it was digital reference that prepared us for the ebook world. It was a sign of things to come…
James Bennett entered the digital world in 2003 with our own ebook platform – Etitle. Allen & Unwin was the major publishing partner and a handful of other publishers supported the product in its early days. Targeting university libraries – a small market in terms of numbers but large in annual dollar spend – we offered only Australian scholarly and academic titles. Back then, publishers were concerned about their existing contracts and ebook rights, they cited lack of resources and time to review, there were issues with conversion costs, return on investment in such a small market, when to issue the ebook, pricing models, file security and of course the cannibalisation of the printed work.
These issues haven’t changed. The marketplace did. Etitle became superseded as bigger players entered the academic library market. Being solely Australian, Etitle could not compete with the larger players who had the breadth of product libraries wanted – US, UK, European published materials as well as Australian content where it was available. Ebook vendors with hundreds of thousands of ebooks on offer – as opposed to our hundreds. In the past five years, the major ebook players have become well and truly established in the academic library supply chain. EBL – Ebooks Library from Ebooks Corporation based in Perth, Netlibrary, Ebrary, Myilibrary from Ingram, Dawsons in the UK and Blackwell Book Services came up with their own products. Publishers too created their own platforms, investing money in digitisation even when their ebooks were already in the portals of the ebook vendors, but it was about controlling the content and having direct access to the end user.
We supported ebook platforms where available however this was complicated with the single e-ISBN issue that we now needed to address. Yes, silly us! We used the ISBN as the primary identifier in our database! Despite recommendations from the international ISBN agency, not all publishers created a separate ISBN for their ebook vendors and this created more than a headache or two for us as an onseller of these products across multiple platforms. We entered a whole new bibliographic world, one that was slightly more complicated when we started selling both publisher portals and via ebook vendors. Which platform did the customer have? Where was the order to go? With so many technical workflows and with limited time today, we’ll save the e-ISBN issue for another day, another soapbox.
The academic publishers in the room would know that James Bennett has been an agent for EBL for several years now. A few years ago EBL sat comfortably in our Top 30 suppliers, then the Top 20, the Top 10. Astounding growth figures – from 2008 to 2009 270% growth in dollar value, 578% in units. This year ebook sales continue to track between 100-200% growth on previous periods. They have become a major supplier to our business and to our libraries.
If we go back a few years, ebook sales were a little hit and miss. We’d get a six figure sale one month and then nothing for months. Academic libraries were moving more slowly than we originally anticipated to “e” – often using special budgets - and we were all navigating the ebook waters together.
As we worked our way through bibliographic data issues we also had to come to grips with different margins and different workflows. Receiving and invoicing processes had to be totally reworked for ebooks, afterall you aren’t physically handling anything! New title workflows, promoting through our kit service for example, the role of the sales representative, all had to be reviewed. And of course, over time, ebook sales started coming out of the library monograph budget. Sales patterns were changing.
Ebooks are now part of our daily workflows for our customer base. These days, academic libraries are very experienced with ebooks and ebook selection. They understand digital reference and ebook requirements for their patrons. Some like Charles Sturt University prefer to order “e” over the “dead tree”. Many are talking about simultaneous release and ordering “e” only. YBP Library Services now offers ebooks on their approval plans and believe around 10% of publishers are actively pushing simultaneous release. The delay in providing both formats is being noticed by key libraries and library vendors. Libraries ask us to put pressure on publishers to bring both to market at the same time particularly with overseas based university presses. Once they know about the “p”, students, academics and researchers are searching the library catalogue for the “e”. Their expectation is that it will be available. But publishers delay – and hope to get two bites of the cherry. This is not going to last. The larger libraries will continue moving to “e” in line with demands of their patrons. It’s their level of expectation that is pushing us all forward and publishers will have to address it sooner rather than later.
In addition to reading ebooks via the nominated ebook platform, academic libraries are also looking at the handheld devices. QUT for example is looking at trialling ebook readers this year. The library currently offers 60,000 ebooks across most subject areas. An additional 10,000 titles will be made available to patrons in 2010. While their policy has been formed around ebooks being available on their network they are now looking at the next stage of development and take a leadership position with students and staff.
As the academic library market matures with regard to ebooks, the public libraries start experimenting. In many instances they have been slower to adapt, with the exception of larger libraries – Gold Coast, Brisbane, Yarra Plenty, Sutherland. Those that service a wider demographic and have the book budget available for print, ebook and audio.
As Australian publishers stalled on making ebooks available to libraries, players like OverDrive in the US have done quite the job sewing up the larger library accounts here thank you very much. When we speak to OverDrive’s customers, they advise us the audio downloads are currently the most popular of the products offered. Nevertheless we know OverDrive is now engaging Australian publishers in discussions about content and paying more attention to rights. They got into the market first and like the other ebook vendors have an extensive range to offer their client base. We are seeing the pattern repeated in the public library sphere, albeit some six or seven years later than the academic.
Ebook interest – mainly due to the content that has been available and the slow take-up of e-readers – has been small but that will change as more content is made available and the level of reader interest picks up. And of course the launch of the iPad changes the landscape yet again. At the supply chain meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year one of the most senior representatives said the ebook world will change with the entry of another player and in his words “It will be Apple, it will be cool, and everyone will want one”.
Nevertheless where libraries are concerned, e-reading devices are not essential. For those who don’t know how it works now, a reader taps into the library’s website, searches through the catalogue, selects the relevant title and checks out their ebook. Using the freely available Adobe Digital Editions Reader, the content is downloaded within seconds to the patron’s computer. They can then transfer it to an e-reader, if they have one, or can read on screen. Say the book you wanted to read was The Slap. When the book is downloaded, your computer and your e-reading device clearly shows the time remaining for the loan. At the end of the period, the book expires and is no longer accessible either on the computer or on the device. It’s accessible, convenient, easy, quick and what’s more, to the library patron it’s free. For libraries, it’s already the digital reality.
While the user doesn’t pay, it’s worth mentioning the EBL model (as referenced with this example) is not a free for all. Each copy of a title comes with a restricted number of access days per year. If a title is extremely popular with students, the library’s access runs out and that library needs to purchase an additional copy of the ebook. Translating that same arrangement to the public library market, a large public library such as Yarra Plenty in Melbourne or Sutherland in Sydney would need to purchase multiple copies of an ebook version of a Matthew Riley title, just as those same libraries now purchase multiple copies of print editions.
Access models vary. Some ebook portals don’t let you “borrow” the title if it’s already out i.e. a single user model. Others allow multiple concurrent access depending on loan periods purchased by the library or the original pricing. Some ebook portals allow short-term loans, rentals even. There are many considerations from printing, downloading to computers and devices, the whole DRM spectrum that ebook vendors must take into account based on the publisher’s requirements. One of the popular offerings from EBL is the demand driven model i.e. automatic or mediated purchase based purely on patron demand. We know only too well that what libraries often want and what publishers are prepared to give will naturally vary. But when hasn’t it? There is a lot of work in developing a successful ebook model that pleases all but it can be done.
Another plus for ebooks is that patrons no longer have to wait for the physical book to be returned to the library, no more holds. A popular author can be accessible to readers without these delays. But it’s more than timing, it’s about providing library readers with the content they require. It’s about servicing additional markets. A library in Queensland told me a few months ago they are responsible for some islands off the coast and on one of those islands is a disabled man. He finds it very inconvenient to come ashore as he is in a wheelchair. He has asked the library about ebooks and is currently reading them from a variety of sources. An avid reader and supporter of his library, he wants them to provide him with an ebook service. Some public libraries also mentioned keeping their readers longer. Young adults, particularly females, give up on the library in their teens and don’t come back until they are parents with their own children. Libraries want to keep these people reading and if reading ebooks on computers, hand-held devices, mobiles are the way to do it, then that’s what they want us to consider. Libraries, like their suppliers, are looking at their role in the wider book supply chain and the services they can offer their community.
Ebooks get a lot of column space as we all know. Meetings we have with publishers are totally devoted to ebooks at times. But they are still not mainstream in public libraries. We’ve done a lot of research and we can see why this is. Expectations differ across the board. Some libraries want to engage, others don’t want to consider ebooks, devoted to the printed word as they are. For many there are budget restraints.
With regard to content there is no common ground – well apart from all wanting Twilight! If it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer, it was whatever the book of the moment was. Last year libraries wanted The Slap. A lot is author driven. Tim Winton was a popular request. When you start breaking it down further, there isn’t a lot of common ground. Movie adaptations and classics were popular but libraries were divided when it came to popular science, computing, cooking, foreign language, childrens, reference so on and so forth.
Some public libraries were very uncertain about the role of ebooks, some are preparing for ebooks, some are buying e-readers with little understanding about acquiring content, some don’t want to think about it. And then there are those that do – they want to provide patrons with ebook content and as the leading library supplier in this country, we are who they come to for answers and solutions. Whether it’s “p” or “e”, libraries generally work with only a few chosen vendors. It is the library supplier who must be able to provide the library with what they require for their collection development needs. It’s about consolidation and supply chain efficiencies, regardless of format. We offer them more than supplying a product. We must provide the service, the workflow, the access to content, and competitive and efficient distribution for “p” and “e”. Not every library can afford the outlay for EBL or OverDrive. So library suppliers need to look at how content can be sourced and priced for libraries factoring all of the publishers issues in terms of availability, accessibility, security, and sales models – to name but a few. These are challenging and interesting times for all of us.
Libraries are generally early adopters and we’ve seen this in the academic market. The public market will catch up in the years ahead. Publishers should remember libraries are one of the most important ebook markets at present to consider as part of their ebook strategy. The role of the library supplier or vendor in that market is another piece of the puzzle. Talk to us about libraries – we know our customers, we’re visiting them constantly. And please please please if you haven’t already, get your digital strategies underway. Content is king. It’s what libraries and their readers want. Your competitors will take advantage of the growing ebook market in the trade, direct, and library markets. Are you prepared to be left behind?
As many of you know, James Bennett has been supplying public and academic libraries for over 40 years. With digitisation, we’ve seen one of the most challenging periods of our history. If we rewind the clock back only seven years, it was a time when library suppliers were selling dozens of multi volume reference sets to our customer base - encyclopedias with price tags in the thousands. Multi volume reference sales were priority products with targeted marketing campaigns and good margins. Fast forward to today and print reference sales have been cut dramatically as libraries opt for online versions, a site license, perhaps a direct relationship with the content provider, and in some cases no purchase at all because patrons choose to use freely available web content. Trading terms are very different. The goal posts have moved.
Of course it made sense for the reference market to shift to online as the product could be kept up-to-date, thereby making it more valuable to the library patron. Some libraries still order a print version but we’ve seen a massive shift to online reference. One of the leading players in the reference market kindly advised us prior to this Symposium that in Australia a staggering 75% of their sales are now from their online products. The sales channel has evolved.
This discussion is not about digital reference. I use the example merely to highlight what’s happened in the last few years. For library suppliers, it was digital reference that prepared us for the ebook world. It was a sign of things to come…
James Bennett entered the digital world in 2003 with our own ebook platform – Etitle. Allen & Unwin was the major publishing partner and a handful of other publishers supported the product in its early days. Targeting university libraries – a small market in terms of numbers but large in annual dollar spend – we offered only Australian scholarly and academic titles. Back then, publishers were concerned about their existing contracts and ebook rights, they cited lack of resources and time to review, there were issues with conversion costs, return on investment in such a small market, when to issue the ebook, pricing models, file security and of course the cannibalisation of the printed work.
These issues haven’t changed. The marketplace did. Etitle became superseded as bigger players entered the academic library market. Being solely Australian, Etitle could not compete with the larger players who had the breadth of product libraries wanted – US, UK, European published materials as well as Australian content where it was available. Ebook vendors with hundreds of thousands of ebooks on offer – as opposed to our hundreds. In the past five years, the major ebook players have become well and truly established in the academic library supply chain. EBL – Ebooks Library from Ebooks Corporation based in Perth, Netlibrary, Ebrary, Myilibrary from Ingram, Dawsons in the UK and Blackwell Book Services came up with their own products. Publishers too created their own platforms, investing money in digitisation even when their ebooks were already in the portals of the ebook vendors, but it was about controlling the content and having direct access to the end user.
We supported ebook platforms where available however this was complicated with the single e-ISBN issue that we now needed to address. Yes, silly us! We used the ISBN as the primary identifier in our database! Despite recommendations from the international ISBN agency, not all publishers created a separate ISBN for their ebook vendors and this created more than a headache or two for us as an onseller of these products across multiple platforms. We entered a whole new bibliographic world, one that was slightly more complicated when we started selling both publisher portals and via ebook vendors. Which platform did the customer have? Where was the order to go? With so many technical workflows and with limited time today, we’ll save the e-ISBN issue for another day, another soapbox.
The academic publishers in the room would know that James Bennett has been an agent for EBL for several years now. A few years ago EBL sat comfortably in our Top 30 suppliers, then the Top 20, the Top 10. Astounding growth figures – from 2008 to 2009 270% growth in dollar value, 578% in units. This year ebook sales continue to track between 100-200% growth on previous periods. They have become a major supplier to our business and to our libraries.
If we go back a few years, ebook sales were a little hit and miss. We’d get a six figure sale one month and then nothing for months. Academic libraries were moving more slowly than we originally anticipated to “e” – often using special budgets - and we were all navigating the ebook waters together.
As we worked our way through bibliographic data issues we also had to come to grips with different margins and different workflows. Receiving and invoicing processes had to be totally reworked for ebooks, afterall you aren’t physically handling anything! New title workflows, promoting through our kit service for example, the role of the sales representative, all had to be reviewed. And of course, over time, ebook sales started coming out of the library monograph budget. Sales patterns were changing.
Ebooks are now part of our daily workflows for our customer base. These days, academic libraries are very experienced with ebooks and ebook selection. They understand digital reference and ebook requirements for their patrons. Some like Charles Sturt University prefer to order “e” over the “dead tree”. Many are talking about simultaneous release and ordering “e” only. YBP Library Services now offers ebooks on their approval plans and believe around 10% of publishers are actively pushing simultaneous release. The delay in providing both formats is being noticed by key libraries and library vendors. Libraries ask us to put pressure on publishers to bring both to market at the same time particularly with overseas based university presses. Once they know about the “p”, students, academics and researchers are searching the library catalogue for the “e”. Their expectation is that it will be available. But publishers delay – and hope to get two bites of the cherry. This is not going to last. The larger libraries will continue moving to “e” in line with demands of their patrons. It’s their level of expectation that is pushing us all forward and publishers will have to address it sooner rather than later.
In addition to reading ebooks via the nominated ebook platform, academic libraries are also looking at the handheld devices. QUT for example is looking at trialling ebook readers this year. The library currently offers 60,000 ebooks across most subject areas. An additional 10,000 titles will be made available to patrons in 2010. While their policy has been formed around ebooks being available on their network they are now looking at the next stage of development and take a leadership position with students and staff.
As the academic library market matures with regard to ebooks, the public libraries start experimenting. In many instances they have been slower to adapt, with the exception of larger libraries – Gold Coast, Brisbane, Yarra Plenty, Sutherland. Those that service a wider demographic and have the book budget available for print, ebook and audio.
As Australian publishers stalled on making ebooks available to libraries, players like OverDrive in the US have done quite the job sewing up the larger library accounts here thank you very much. When we speak to OverDrive’s customers, they advise us the audio downloads are currently the most popular of the products offered. Nevertheless we know OverDrive is now engaging Australian publishers in discussions about content and paying more attention to rights. They got into the market first and like the other ebook vendors have an extensive range to offer their client base. We are seeing the pattern repeated in the public library sphere, albeit some six or seven years later than the academic.
Ebook interest – mainly due to the content that has been available and the slow take-up of e-readers – has been small but that will change as more content is made available and the level of reader interest picks up. And of course the launch of the iPad changes the landscape yet again. At the supply chain meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year one of the most senior representatives said the ebook world will change with the entry of another player and in his words “It will be Apple, it will be cool, and everyone will want one”.
Nevertheless where libraries are concerned, e-reading devices are not essential. For those who don’t know how it works now, a reader taps into the library’s website, searches through the catalogue, selects the relevant title and checks out their ebook. Using the freely available Adobe Digital Editions Reader, the content is downloaded within seconds to the patron’s computer. They can then transfer it to an e-reader, if they have one, or can read on screen. Say the book you wanted to read was The Slap. When the book is downloaded, your computer and your e-reading device clearly shows the time remaining for the loan. At the end of the period, the book expires and is no longer accessible either on the computer or on the device. It’s accessible, convenient, easy, quick and what’s more, to the library patron it’s free. For libraries, it’s already the digital reality.
While the user doesn’t pay, it’s worth mentioning the EBL model (as referenced with this example) is not a free for all. Each copy of a title comes with a restricted number of access days per year. If a title is extremely popular with students, the library’s access runs out and that library needs to purchase an additional copy of the ebook. Translating that same arrangement to the public library market, a large public library such as Yarra Plenty in Melbourne or Sutherland in Sydney would need to purchase multiple copies of an ebook version of a Matthew Riley title, just as those same libraries now purchase multiple copies of print editions.
Access models vary. Some ebook portals don’t let you “borrow” the title if it’s already out i.e. a single user model. Others allow multiple concurrent access depending on loan periods purchased by the library or the original pricing. Some ebook portals allow short-term loans, rentals even. There are many considerations from printing, downloading to computers and devices, the whole DRM spectrum that ebook vendors must take into account based on the publisher’s requirements. One of the popular offerings from EBL is the demand driven model i.e. automatic or mediated purchase based purely on patron demand. We know only too well that what libraries often want and what publishers are prepared to give will naturally vary. But when hasn’t it? There is a lot of work in developing a successful ebook model that pleases all but it can be done.
Another plus for ebooks is that patrons no longer have to wait for the physical book to be returned to the library, no more holds. A popular author can be accessible to readers without these delays. But it’s more than timing, it’s about providing library readers with the content they require. It’s about servicing additional markets. A library in Queensland told me a few months ago they are responsible for some islands off the coast and on one of those islands is a disabled man. He finds it very inconvenient to come ashore as he is in a wheelchair. He has asked the library about ebooks and is currently reading them from a variety of sources. An avid reader and supporter of his library, he wants them to provide him with an ebook service. Some public libraries also mentioned keeping their readers longer. Young adults, particularly females, give up on the library in their teens and don’t come back until they are parents with their own children. Libraries want to keep these people reading and if reading ebooks on computers, hand-held devices, mobiles are the way to do it, then that’s what they want us to consider. Libraries, like their suppliers, are looking at their role in the wider book supply chain and the services they can offer their community.
Ebooks get a lot of column space as we all know. Meetings we have with publishers are totally devoted to ebooks at times. But they are still not mainstream in public libraries. We’ve done a lot of research and we can see why this is. Expectations differ across the board. Some libraries want to engage, others don’t want to consider ebooks, devoted to the printed word as they are. For many there are budget restraints.
With regard to content there is no common ground – well apart from all wanting Twilight! If it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer, it was whatever the book of the moment was. Last year libraries wanted The Slap. A lot is author driven. Tim Winton was a popular request. When you start breaking it down further, there isn’t a lot of common ground. Movie adaptations and classics were popular but libraries were divided when it came to popular science, computing, cooking, foreign language, childrens, reference so on and so forth.
Some public libraries were very uncertain about the role of ebooks, some are preparing for ebooks, some are buying e-readers with little understanding about acquiring content, some don’t want to think about it. And then there are those that do – they want to provide patrons with ebook content and as the leading library supplier in this country, we are who they come to for answers and solutions. Whether it’s “p” or “e”, libraries generally work with only a few chosen vendors. It is the library supplier who must be able to provide the library with what they require for their collection development needs. It’s about consolidation and supply chain efficiencies, regardless of format. We offer them more than supplying a product. We must provide the service, the workflow, the access to content, and competitive and efficient distribution for “p” and “e”. Not every library can afford the outlay for EBL or OverDrive. So library suppliers need to look at how content can be sourced and priced for libraries factoring all of the publishers issues in terms of availability, accessibility, security, and sales models – to name but a few. These are challenging and interesting times for all of us.
Libraries are generally early adopters and we’ve seen this in the academic market. The public market will catch up in the years ahead. Publishers should remember libraries are one of the most important ebook markets at present to consider as part of their ebook strategy. The role of the library supplier or vendor in that market is another piece of the puzzle. Talk to us about libraries – we know our customers, we’re visiting them constantly. And please please please if you haven’t already, get your digital strategies underway. Content is king. It’s what libraries and their readers want. Your competitors will take advantage of the growing ebook market in the trade, direct, and library markets. Are you prepared to be left behind?
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