I am a librarian who works with digital media, so I see this industry close up as part of my job. So a few things:
The vast majority of libraries are not NYPL, LAPL, King County PL, etc. Most are medium to small and servicing almost every town in the United States. They are arranged in a dizzying array of geographic, bureaucratic and budgetary configurations. I once worked with a library that was a unified system with shelf level access to items, but every municipality funded its own local branch, so money went into a central system and had to be accounted for when purchasing items. They handled 15 different budgets. It was staggering.
This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials. And though there are sales, digital materials are unquestionably more expensive. I work in a system with a service population of about 500,000 (it's a statewide consortia of local libraries), and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title. If the title is from Penguin Random House, it will likely cost more than $50 per copy, leading to thousands of dollars just to keep hold times down to a few months. If the publisher is Harper Collins or Simon and Schuster the price will be more reasonable, but we lose copies as we check them out. For example, say we buy 15 copies that have 52 checkouts each. As soon as we've checked those 15 copies out 52 times, we're down to 14 copies. It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this. And our that our most popular device, the Kindle, is controlled by a vendor that is fanatical about its control over the service and was dragged kicking and screaming into working with libraries.
But physical materials still remain our most popular items. E-book sales have stagnated at around 35% (not including Amazon's nebulous self-publishing numbers) and we've seen the same in libraries. That makes it difficult to shift staff. As a colleague of mine once said, "In government I can't lay everyone off and rehire people with the right skills". Over time it will work out, but in the short term the budgetary challenges are limiting access.
All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
> This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials.
But how is that different than your previous interactions with the wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of physical books because its more new.
> and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title
How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books. I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?
> It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this
Sure, but if you could exert perfect influence you'd get the books for free ;)
Look, I'm not saying we've reached an optimal system for ebooks and libraries but its fairly easy to understand the publishers position. Too many people get caught up in the physical costs of books, which are not what the publisher is worried about. They are worried about recouping all the pre-production IP costs and marketing dollars they put into the things that don't sell. That they've fallen back onto a model that poorly mimics physical books is probably unfortunate, but completely unsurprising.
> All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
Completely and totally agree and can think of few groups of people more likely to adapt to the new information dense world than librarians. I'm much more worried about the publishers...
What do you mean by this? At least at my library, there is no monetary cost to be on the hold list for any resource, but you can only put a hold on a limited number of resources; and Overdrive checkouts work just the same.
> But how is that different than your previous interactions with the wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of physical books because its more new.
Because working with wholesalers is different than working with agency pricing, especially once you bring DRM into the fold. Previously, publishers controlled the creation of materials, now they control the pricing as well. Additionally, only a few vendors have the capability of distributing ebooks, and those vendors also control the devices for consumption as well. So if a user comes in with a nook, an iPad, a Kindle, etc, we also need to come up with mechanisms to get that content to their devices. This means we're working with vendors who either have contracts with Amazon (of which there is only one), the ability to operate Adobe DRM licensing servers, or the ability to make a good mobile app. We control almost none of the process. NYPL is currently working on an app to unify ebooks across vendors but because of DRM this requires vendors to play ball as well, and as a result it's a less than optimal experience for the user. The barriers to entry in this market are huge. (Also, most public libraries do not rebind, and often then do their own processing and do copy cataloging through a coop (OCLC).)
Once physical materials leave the publisher, they have lost control of the process, pricing, distribution, etc. Now a small number of players control everything from the creation, sale, distribution and even reading experience for that item. A few big players can hope to crack this market, but most libraries can't rely on their budget from year to year, making even unified pressure difficult.
> How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books. I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?
I would argue that e-books are harder to get than physical ones, especially if you are already a regular library user. You have to own a device and be tech savvy enough to get through the setup process. But setting that aside, this doesn't change the fact that it's more expensive to meet digital demand than physical demand.
I predate ebooks in this industry, so I have seen it evolve a great deal. The prices have come down, the user experience has improved ten-fold, and cooperation has improved among libraries to the point that even the smallest library can offer e-books. But until libraries can make their own devices, build their own software, break the agency pricing model, and get rid of DRM it will never reach the point physical materials have.
But as I said, we focus on the bad, and not the good. Usage of audiobooks has increased 20% every year for the past several years, driven almost entirely by electronic titles (this is our only format where electronic circulation is higher than physical). E-books are far more accessible for users with disabilities or simply older readers who struggle with seeing or even holding books. E-books never get stolen or damaged, nor do they wear out (indeed, this is the argument Random House made when they increased their pricing). Publishers have discovered they want to work with libraries because libraries are big spenders and buy materials that would otherwise not sell (especially backlist titles).
The larger "threat", if you want to call it that, of e-books is not major publishers, but Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, etc. The industry is changing and increasingly, creators do not need to work with a publisher to be successful. A large chunk of the market for materials is being hoovered away into silos. Personally I feel the library's future is in its physical space.
The vast majority of libraries are not NYPL, LAPL, King County PL, etc. Most are medium to small and servicing almost every town in the United States. They are arranged in a dizzying array of geographic, bureaucratic and budgetary configurations. I once worked with a library that was a unified system with shelf level access to items, but every municipality funded its own local branch, so money went into a central system and had to be accounted for when purchasing items. They handled 15 different budgets. It was staggering.
This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials. And though there are sales, digital materials are unquestionably more expensive. I work in a system with a service population of about 500,000 (it's a statewide consortia of local libraries), and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title. If the title is from Penguin Random House, it will likely cost more than $50 per copy, leading to thousands of dollars just to keep hold times down to a few months. If the publisher is Harper Collins or Simon and Schuster the price will be more reasonable, but we lose copies as we check them out. For example, say we buy 15 copies that have 52 checkouts each. As soon as we've checked those 15 copies out 52 times, we're down to 14 copies. It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this. And our that our most popular device, the Kindle, is controlled by a vendor that is fanatical about its control over the service and was dragged kicking and screaming into working with libraries.
But physical materials still remain our most popular items. E-book sales have stagnated at around 35% (not including Amazon's nebulous self-publishing numbers) and we've seen the same in libraries. That makes it difficult to shift staff. As a colleague of mine once said, "In government I can't lay everyone off and rehire people with the right skills". Over time it will work out, but in the short term the budgetary challenges are limiting access.
All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.