From Library Journal: “In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.” The idea is that this matches the average number of times a print book can be checked out before it falls apart and needs to be replaced.
As you might have guessed, this has not gone over well. There’s the usual cry to boycott the publisher, lots of anger, a Twitter hashtag, and plenty of accusations that HC is stuck in the past and doesn’t understand the future of publishing.
My agent weighs in here: “I’m of mixed emotion on this. I don’t think it’s prima facie a heinous thing to do because businesses do need to adjust to changing business models … On the other hand, it pisses off customers.”
I came across one author suggesting that the idea itself wasn’t necessarily bad, but 26 copies was too few. I.e., it’s not the principle of the thing, but the numbers.
I’m still thinking about the implications. I love libraries, both as a reader and an author. Libraries buy my books, and they allow readers to discover my work. Realistically, unrestricted e-book lending could decrease the number of my books libraries buy. If those books never wear out or expire, a library could keep all of my work in circulation forever. Which would be really, really cool on the one hand … but could also cut into sales, and I like being able to pay my mortgage.
Two things I’m pretty firm on are:
- Authors deserve to be paid fairly for their work. So do publishers and agents.
- I like libraries very much, and I don’t want to lose the service they provide to the community.
I keep coming back to the Public Lending Right (PLR) system used in a number of non-U.S. countries. Basically, PLR is an author’s “legal right to payment from government each time their books are borrowed from public libraries.” Such a system would eliminate the source of contention, at least from the authors’ perspective. If I get paid for each checkout of my books, then by all means, keep all of my e-books forever!
I think it would be fair to split such payment with the publisher and agent as well. And we’re probably not talking about a huge amount of cash here, at least for nonbestselling authors like myself. But I really like the principle of the thing.
Actually implementing it could be a problem. Libraries, like many public services, continue to be targeted for massive budget cuts these days. I asked a librarian friend for her thoughts, and she suggested it would require some sort of tax to cover those PLR payments. Not likely to happen any time soon, given the current political environment in the U.S. (If things continue, I imagine a lot of libraries will have to close, which could make the whole thing moot.)
I don’t know the best way to be fair to libraries and their patrons as well as to authors and publishers. Maybe it would be better to switch to a rental model where libraries pay an annual fee for the right to lend out a certain number of e-book titles from publisher X. Older books could be removed from the list over time, replaced by newer and more popular releases.
I’m sure there are flaws with that plan, too. I don’t have the answers. But I’d love to hear what other folks think, particularly my author and librarian friends.
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
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Comments
But I also think that libraries are going to be hit very hard this next year. Excellent library systems are going to get gutted so that people don't have to pay new taxes. Which sucks big time.
But Overdrive only allows one user of a particular e-book at a time. If HC is charging more for the privilege of 26 discrete uses of an e-book than the same thing would cost in print, I wouldn't sign that license.
Now most academics of my acquaintance would be DELIGHTED if ANYONE read their work 26 times, and monetary compensation for academic publications is not the norm (you're doin' it for love and tenure, if you're one of the roughly one-quarter to one-third of academics in this country lucky enough to have the latter option, but that's another rant), so something like the HC deal isn't something I expect to have to deal with anytime soon.
I think public libraries especially (which this licensing change will disproportionately affect; I can't remember the last time I bought a HarperCollins book for my collection) see this as yet another attempt to cut them out. It's not really, unlike some publishers and vendors (coughAMAZONcough) who won't deal with libraries at all. But 26 seems low to me. A single print copy of a popular book will circulate many more times than that before being replaced, and the library might even rebind it instead, though that's becoming increasingly rare.
I also think that in this brave new world of licensing content rather than buying it outright, there's little sense in my profession of what's "fair". There's certainly no industry standard, and libraries are immediately suspicious of anything that might have the effect of curtailing use or costing us more. (I dunno about popular e-books, but I already pay more for electronic content than I would pay for the same thing in print, and that's not unusual. It makes me wonder what HarperCollins charges for a single e-book title license. I'd be willing to bet that this new 26-loans restrictions does not come with a price break. If it did, it might be easier to swallow.)
What you're saying makes a lot of sense, with regard to not knowing what's fair, and the general sense of fear from libraries, publishers, authors ... pretty much everyone involved. And yes, the pricing for the 26-loan license would make a huge difference.
Amazon won't deal with libraries? What the heck is that about?
Limiting ebooks to 26 check outs is just a further imposition by the publisher on the buyer of the ebook. What they are doing is not going to increase sales to readers, it's going to decrease sales to libraries. My library has downloadable ebook and audio collections, but I never use them because there is too little material on there to be worth it. It is not worth searching their ebook and audio collections for download when I can simply request the physical book or CD much more easily, and obtain it more quickly. Add to that the fact that the software for downloading and managing the rights is kludgy and doesn't really work on all of my equipment, and borrowing ebooks is a total fail. And I'm not so sure that isn't the publisher's goal to begin with--to make library ebook lending unmanageable. Which would be fine, if we could continue to count on physical books being available in the same numbers they are now. But think what that means if/when epublishing becomes the dominant model. All of a sudden, something big is out in ebook only, and the only people who can access it are those who can afford to buy the ebook or those who live in a community with a library rich enough to accommodate the publisher's "license fees" for the book.
But it also makes sense to me that the e-book model can't be based solely on what worked for print, and software sales/licensing seems like a logical place to look. (So long as people keep in mind that some software licenses and agreements are utterly asinine, and try to avoid the worst abuses...)
I actually think e-books will be a boon to writers and publishers with respect to libraries, even if they last forever and don't need to be replaced.
You see, libraries right now generally aren't as limited by their budget to buy books as they are by their space to keep those books. The e-book solves that problem. And, as long as the library is following the "one copy in circulation at a time" model, in-demand new books will probably see additional copies purchased. That means our books will not only have more copies sold, but also will be in more libraries, improving the exposure of mid-list authors.
Of course, I don't have a crystal ball, but I don't think trying to find ways to make e-books imitate the flaws of paper will help publishers and authors nearly as much as embracing what the technology is good at.
I think the reason I, personally, got so upset when I heard about the Harper Collins thing is that it feels rather like another extension of the publishing industry's tendency to treat customers as criminals - assuming that people are going to abuse the system, pirate books, not buy additional library copies, etc. It FEELS like they're saying that checking a book out of the library is a lost sale, and therefore anathema.
Which it isn't, and I think most publishers realize this; they just don't seem to realize how a lot of their actions, like restricting lending on eBooks or baking in DRM, is construed by their customer base. It's alienating.
I could be okay with restricting the number of times an eBook could be lent, but I do agree that 26 times feels awfully low. Especially since, IIRC, eBooks are not discounted for library purchase like paperbacks are.
The rental/"Netflix" model for library eBooks is the most middle-ground suggestion I've heard, and one that I think all sides could probably agree upon, assuming they worked out the logistics. Which is always the hard part.
The Netflix model is another interesting idea. Hm ... I don't know. I like the fact that libraries provide books free to patrons, and I'd hate to see people shut out of that. Or did you mean that the library would be the one paying the subscription, not patrons? That makes more sense.
"...assuming they worked out the logistics. Which is always the hard part."
Ugh. And I imagine it's going to be a slow and ugly process no matter which directly we ultimately end up going in.
The main problem I see is that all this does is privilege illegal downloading. Right now for some video games you can download a game illegally and possibly get a virus, or you can buy a game which definitely installs a virus (designed to make sure you aren't pirating), doesn't work if your internet stops working and requires you to keep the CD on hand. This idea just says "hey, either you can go out of your way to go to a library and borrow a book that will expire frequently, or you can stay home and read the book for free with no restrictions."
The marginal cost of distribution is very nearly free. Trying to make distribution not-free will never work, because it is free. Whatever payment model is adopted it has to add value rather than take it away, which has succeeded with Steam, iTunes and Netflix.
In fact, I'm still hoping for a Netflix for books; it would do the same thing you are suggesting (flat price for joining, proportional payment to authors and publishers), but without the government stepping in and setting prices (which never goes well.) Movies are now $8 for all you can watch in a month; as consumption increases, cost per unit can decline, and it offers access to back catalogs that were never previously profitable enough to keep in print. I'm loving watching old tv shows and obscure German independent films. Bit torrent is only good for popular works, so access to non-popular works is a good way to add value.
Of course, access to those works could also be accomplished by reforming intellectual property laws so that we had a public domain again. But since clearly that's never going to happen, eventually publishers will figure out how to stop trying to turn the internet into physical books and instead figure out how to make money off books on the internet.
Midlist ebooks might stay in the collection forever without ever hitting 26 circulations. Which means they stay in the collection, something a paper copy midlist book might not do.
The fact is, library budgets are either flat or falling, so if a library replaces a digital copy, that will prevent them buying another book. This won't increase sales for publishers, in other words. It just makes libraries unable to do with digital books what they have always done with print books, which is why it feels like an attach on the very idea of libraries.
They are lowballing in the extreme. My Mom ran an elementary school library - adverse circumstances - and books got checked out more than that before needing repairs.
Either that or they are admitting a sharp decline in product quality. I know they abandoned "library bound" copies long ago, but there are books on the shelves in Chicago which date back decades.
26 checkouts will get the book only lasting a year or two if it's in continual circulation.
I currently have a book on my shelf that's been checked out from a library that was printed in 1914.
The other thing is, this isn't going to necessarily cause libraries to buy more books.
Say you have a middlingly popular book, so it takes it 5 years to get to 26 checkouts (which I think is highly unlikely, particularly as it's been pointed out that you can't flip through an ebook the way you can a print, so some people check them out so they can figure out whether or not they want to read the book). At the end of the 5 years, I think it highly unlikely that the library will purchase another copy of the book, as demand has very likely decreased for it, so it's not worth the expense to them to get a book that will now take ten years of quite low demand and then still expire. Sure, it doesn't take up shelf space, at least, but that's not enough to justify the expense.
With a print book, once a library buys it they own it. They can weed it out and toss it or keep lending it, and it's not really going to affect the publisher, who's already gotten the money from that book purchase.
Yes, eventually the book will probably fall apart...but unless the demand is really high I don't know in how many of those circumstances the library will buy a new copy of that same book. Therefore all that being able to keep the book 'forever' (until ebook formats change dramatically or something like that) means is that it can still see circulation without having to be discarded. And honestly, I think that still helps the publisher, for all the reasons that I don't think publishers should generally be anti-library (even if it leads people to check out the book at no further benefit to the publisher rather than purchasing a new copy).
In addition, our publishing partners have expressed concerns regarding the card issuance policies and qualification of patrons who have access to OverDrive supplied digital content. Addressing these concerns will require OverDrive and our library partners to cooperate to honor geographic and territorial rights for digital book lending, as well as to review and audit policies regarding an eBook borrower’s relationship to the library (i.e. customer lives, works, attends school in service area, etc.).
There are all sorts of legitimate concerns that come up as a result of that particular paragraph.
I've found this post: http://librarianinblack.net/librarianin
The lowest amount that is paid at one time is 20 euros.
For example, when the next Stephen King novel comes out, a library system would pay $X for the license, and could choose the bundle of usage instances they wanted. If they estimated that they'd probably get 500 check-outs, they'd buy 500 usage instances. If 100 people wanted it on the first day, all 100 could get it.
When the number of usage instaces got low, they could buy another bundle or just let it expire.
These would be pre-paid, non-returnable, so the publisher and author get paid, no returns, always a copy of the book available.
If I do say so myself, I think this idea has 'win' written all over it. :-D
Ebooks provide a means for having books in collection perpetuity, but ONLY if they don't explode after a certain predetermined number of uses (or passage of time). As with the limitation on shelf space, libraries will be unlikely to renew "licenses" on books that have expired. What if the book expires and the publisher has gone out of business and is not there to re-license the book. I think the archiving function of a library should be placed in priority over the profits of a publisher (or even the author).
I work for a publisher (non-profit, academic), so I am sympathetic to publishers' desire to cover first-copy costs and, like, not go out of business. But somebody needs to keep this material in, if not circulation, at least existence, and traditionally that's been the province of libraries. (Publishers keep archival copies, too, but not in places where the public can get at them.) Giving e-books away for chump change is not the way to go, IMO, but nor is restricting use of them unreasonably, and 26 uses seems to me unreasonable.
You can't do that with ebooks. At least with the current business models.
And I bet many books pulled out of circulation go to book sales; I know I clean up at them. All the articles I could find on actual replacement rates were ironically locked behind paywalls, however.
Are they factoring in books that are removed from the collection for being outdated? (Health, law, and computer books are frequently weeded after a few years, regardless of condition or use.)
Are they factoring in books that are removed for not being checked out?
Are they using numbers from computerized library catalogs? Presumably.. in which case, did they limit it to books that were added to the collection since that catalog came online? (Otherwise a book might have 20 circs in the system, but have gone out 100 times before that.)
Are these numbers from all libraries? All US libraries? Only public libraries? Only school libraries? Only one library?!
As someone else mentioned, are these numbers from libraries who routinely repair their books or send them out for repair? Or from ones who don't have the budget to do that?
Does a renewal count as another circ? Should it? (You can't renew Overdrive ebooks.)
I am just highly skeptical of their choice of number.
As an aside, I had no idea that the US doesn't have PLR. (Recent numbers for Canada's PLR program here -- unfortunately whoever wrote it seems to have got a bit confused between the English word for "library" and the French word for "bookstore" :P) Good to know.
I guess maybe something like an annual fee of $5 for 10 books at a time, $10 for 25 books, $20 for 60 books at a time... Something like that might work. If people wanted to sit down, figure out the costs involved, and design all the necessary software and code. Not impossible, though.
I love libraries. I use my local library system quite thoroughly. I don't use the e-book portion of it, if only because the selection of e-books they have is paltry and heavily duplicated by their existing stock of paper books. (They also don't support the Kindle.)
I would like to see a more nuanced version of this system, where there's either a much larger expiry window or better pricing for the library. Maybe package deals would be in order, where the publisher sells a slew of books in e-editions at a discount -- or, as Jim pointed out, a rental model.
I just really don't like the idea of putting more of a burden on the library, since many of them barely have the money to keep their doors open in these times.
I did want to comment on your line about libraries closing and making this whole thing, moot, however. It seems to me that with physical libraries having to close, or cut back further on hours, their online presences, including e-books, will grow in importance.
And the long tail continues to be hacked, in that plan. At least some older books remain in circulation in library form, currently - but even the libraries get on board the popularity and "newer is better" bandwaggon, the mid-listers might as well pack up their bags and go home right now.
It CAN'T always be about what's new and hot. SOmewhere there's got to be a bit of room where readers who don't like what's "new and hot" can go and browse works from other times and places and writers which are no longer available from bookstores which only stock "new and hot".
I just don't like the idea of the pub world going COMPLETELY Hollywood, with only the bestsellers being given the light of day and everyone else can go jump in the lake; I've already had one rejection from a reputable publisher in the UK because they didn't think my book (which they LIKED!) would qualify for "supermarket sales" (i.e. Tesco, for instance, in the UK) and without that their bottom line of ONLY buying things that are guaranteed to sell more than 25 000 copies in paperback cannot possibly be met. So already we have a situation where a decent book might never see publication because it isn't "hot" in the sense that it's written by a Name Author, or isn't a given genre that lends itself to being shelved in supermarkets.
I swear, if libraries go the way of supermarket bookshelves - if all you can find in a LIBRARY, just like at a supermarket checkout, are incarnations of Grisham, King, Roberts and Patterson, I think it's time to just go and quietly shoot myself now.
Because that's decades. And you can't put a book into Project Gutenberg if it no longer exists.
Plus nobody's even thinking about interlibrary loan, which is the last bastion for people who do research.
It's not all about new and shiny. Some of those books HC wants to keep people from reading from libraries after a year or so could conceivably become classics.
But not if people can't keep reading them.
I assume the context of that is due to wear & tear of the book.
Practically speaking, I don't think that's going to be an issue, unless you're a best-seller or extremely popular. Between proper treatment of books and book restoration, the longevity of a print book could last long. But to me that's not the only factor.
The other element is the fact that libraries, at least for print books, can't sustain their current selection forever. Since libraries don't usually expand (in terms of real estate), some books go out in order to make room for new ones. By the time the book finally breaks down, the library can choose either to replace it with an identical copy or use this slot for a different book. I honestly don't think most writers (unless they're extremely popular and last the test of time) will get a lot of mileage with libraries buying their books multiple times due to wear & tear (but I'm not a librarian so I can be wrong).
This sort of discussion is one of the reasons I love blogging. I get to talk about something I'm uncertain about, and lots of smart people jump in and help me sort things out :-)
On the other hand, hardcover books have a limited life span. I suspect that 26 is a number they pulled out of existing models of how many readers you can expect to use a library book before it begins to fall apart. (Average? Low ball? I don't know. I do remember hearing a number like this while working at my local at some point, and I remember being surprised at how low it was.) So I don't think it's a bad idea for them to do it -- but I do think it's a bad idea to give/sell someone something and then proceed to make what you give/sell them less good.