PLA 2012: The State of Ebooks in Public Libraries and Publishing

Katie Dunneback LOC
Jessica Moyer, University of Wisconsin
Publishers are doing bad things.  Overdrive marks up their prices quite a bit.  Ebsco has a new ebook service, fair pricing scheme, they bought out NetLibrary.

Have purchasing habits of ebooks changed in last 6 months?
We buy more, I think.  Harper Collins still sells to libraries.  3M is hopeful.  People feel stuck in Overdrive due to the purchased content.  ILS and ebook companies blame each other for lack of compatibility.  We feel like they may trick us into thinking we can keep content and then switch to not offering that to new libraries after we see them be nice to a few to attract us.  We're leery to buy much because it's so cumbersome, slow, and changing so much.  More ebooks than audio.  Circulating readers.  Should we get video?  Reference titles bought outside of Overdrive.  Low-comfort titles, such as GLBT, erotica, etc.  Hard to move money around sometimes.  Getting same materials, but in eformats.  Suggestions via email vs. Overdrive's "want it now" button, libraries get percentage of the sale.  No one will sell us the products we want.  Ingram's just starting.  3M's fully integrated, very viable.

What do We Imagine Would Be the Perfect Model for ebooks?
Instant access to everyone.  Publishers won't sell.  The Digital Content and Libraries Working Group from ALA is hopeful.  As is Library Renewal.  Overdrive's "buy it now" links to a list.  Remove all the friction, that publishers want it to be difficult.  Freading takes .50 to $2 per title.  But no big 6.  No selection necessary.  Stocking and circulating readers.  300 nooks/kindles by genre lent out to patrons.  Very gray copyright area.  B & T has a popular lease program.  Could be like that, with some selection.  Hoopla is Midwest's AV streaming, soon to be downloading just for music, audiobooks, movies.  Or pay the database subscription rate yearly.  Universal file format vs. the Wild West, which it is now.  More ease of use.  Less phone reference on this stupid problem. 

Contract law, not copyright law, applies to ebooks, intangible items.  Why things are so crazy.  Librarians understand this better than the layman.  As a country, we may be too diverse to legislate this on a large scale initially (this is why education recently got worse), though ALA could help getting copyright reform to favor libraries.  The publishers shouldn't be sued, the multimedia CEO's need to be attacked.  The Dept of Justice lawsuit is scaring publishers.  But it may not have a lasting impact.

We can all advocate to publishers directly: "thanks for the show, I really like your books, I want to buy them for my patrons.  How."