Editorial | It’s Not About HarperCollins
Current models aren’t the final word Apr 1, 2011The more I think about HarperCollins’s decision to cap ebook loans at 26, the better I feel about it. No, I’m not in favor of a cap on lending. HarperCollins’s action, however, has provoked the most widespread, vociferous reaction among public librarians to any vendor policy in recent memory—even beyond that to audiobook format restrictions, which OverDrive eventually overcame (remember explaining to patrons why libraries didn’t have iPod-compatible audiobooks?).
Before condemning HarperCollins completely, take a look at what you’re paying for ebooks through OverDrive. As one librarian pointed out, even with the unlimited loan model, the prices set by publishers, not OverDrive, are all over the place. Some smaller publishers, like Bloomsbury, charge 50 percent above list price. Publishers often wait several months after the hardcover comes out to release the ebook, too, limiting libraries’ ability to satisfy user demand.
Among the big four publishers that license ebooks to libraries (Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t), there’s disparity as well. For example, the list price for David Brooks’s The Social Animal, published by Random, is $27 in hardcover, and it’s the same for the ebook with a one-book, one-user, unlimited circulation model. Given that many libraries get a 40 percent discount for a print trade title through their distributor, they’re already paying 40 percent more for the ebook.
Both before and after the loan cap, HarperCollins priced its titles at 20 percent below list price. Patti Smith’s Just Kids, published in January 2010 by Ecco: HarperCollins, lists at $27 hardcover; the ebook, released a few months later, was $20.99; when the $16 paperback published, the ebook went to $12.99—now with only 26 circulations. Of course, the retail price for these e-titles on Amazon is less. But even consumers have begun to balk at the sharing restrictions imposed by Amazon’s Kindle—and hopefully consumers’ push for change will eventually trickle down to the library community, too.
No matter how we look at it, libraries already are paying a premium for the privilege of licensing ebooks. While we haven’t experienced that with trade books before, discrepancies between individual and institutional prices aren’t new. Think about STM journals, videos, or library-edition audiobooks, for instance. On the audio and video side, librarians began to push back and purchase the retail edition. HarperCollins’s action has provoked librarians to question existing e-models loudly and to begin to suggest alternatives (returns for library ebooks that don’t circulate? lower prices combined with incremental charges for additional loans?).
Of course, unlike print books, ebooks aren’t sold outright to libraries. They’re licensed through the publisher to the ebook distributor, like OverDrive (or, more recently, ebrary, which in January added 3200 2010 popular fiction ebooks to its unlimited, multiuser access Public Library Complete subscription, an aggregated package). Licenses come with additional restrictions, and these are even more worrisome. What havoc will licenses or loan caps play with library catalogs, consortial buying, and regional and/or statewide lending, not to mention with users who expect titles that were there yesterday to be there today?
Librarians are all too familiar with the dysfunctional aspects of licensing, having weathered them for reference databases and, more so in academic libraries, journals. On the one hand, the shift led to widespread availability of resources and journals across all institutions; librarians chipped away at many of the more onerous licensing provisions. On the other hand, rising costs have led libraries to cancel subscriptions in the wake of declining budgets, which leaves publishers and vendors out in the cold.
Librarians—and forward-thinking publishers—don’t want libraries left out in the cold either. Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP, has said repeatedly that “a sale is a sale” and that she wants to “protect, even grow” the library revenue stream. And Josh Marwell, president, sales, at HarperCollins, also recognizes libraries’ value in the reading culture and the supply chain. They just have different approaches.
So thank you, HarperCollins, for taking the hit. It’s unlikely this will be your last revision—and it certainly isn’t librarians’ last word. Libraries play a critical role in fostering literacy and spreading reading—and no one wants to see that diminished.
| Author Information |
| Francine Fialkoff (ffialkoff@mediasourceinc.com) is Editor-in-Chief, LJ |
