[EDITED 2/12/12]
Sometimes I get frustrated with people. Usually, it is because communication hasn't worked properly and has created a misunderstanding. Sometimes though, it is because communication has been completely disregarded and subsequent faulty reasoning has led to a poor decision. Now, whether or not that faulty reasoning has been mine or the other party's...let's just say I'm willing to discuss it. The same can't be said of the 5 publishers listed at the end of this post.
Sometimes when trying to communicate, I must assume that the other party has completely gone off the rails and is just flat wrong. Case in point: Penguin ends eBook sales to libraries. This news means that 5 out of the 6 "big" publishers have chosen to not sell eBooks to libraries. Random House is the sole remaining "big" publisher still selling eBooks to libraries (thank you Random House!)
Those other publishers, rather than work out a solution, have chosen to walk away. They want you, the reader, to only have the option to buy an ebook, never to borrow. This despite decades of hard work by librarians, promoting authors and books for these big publishers. Librarians want people to read. We relish helping to discover new, great authors and sharing them with our patrons. Librarians want more books to be published and more writers to succeed. Librarians want publishers and publishing to grow. These big publishers, apparently, want only our money. And by "our" money, I mean ours individually. They don't seem to care about choking off a source of free promotion and business that (although they dismiss it as inconsequential) has benefited them for years.
Here's the harsh truth: Just as it disadvantages individuals, a lack of access to a popular format, a format that may reign supreme in the coming years, will kill libraries. It will kill them utterly because while a new format changes habits and usage patterns, complete lack of access to that format will bring us even further along the road to a society of "haves" and "have nots". Public libraries have always acted as a great leveler - providing resources to those who cannot afford them. Public libraries work hard to create readers: Life-long readers. Voracious readers. And we don't especially care if they buy books, borrow them, or both. HPL's children's outreach brings books and story times to 600+ pre-schoolers per month with this single goal in mind. That's 600+ potential book buyers WE are creating for you, MacMillan Publishing (and you other ingrate publishers).
Lack of access will also kill one of the other main reasons libraries exist - to accumulate and make available the totality of human knowledge. Eh, so what, right?
Librarians are not unreasonable people. We will negotiate terms, conditions, restrictions, whatever. But we can't negotiate when the other party is acting in a childish fashion and simply takes their toys and goes home.
If this situation makes you mad, here's a list of contacts to which you can express your anger. I will be contacting them myself and I hope you will too.
Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
646-307-5151
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
646-307-5151
customerservice@mpsvirginia.com
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
PHONE: 212-698-7000
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
PHONE: 212-698-7000
Penguin Group
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
Phone: 212-366-2000
ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com
Hatchette Book Group
466 Lexington Avenue #131
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212-364-1100
Brilliance Audio, Inc.,
1704 Eaton Drive
Grand Haven, Michigan 49417
Phone: 616-846-5256
consumerhelp@brillianceaudio.com
[EDIT] Here is a considerably more measured blog post on the Penguin / eBook topic, but one that also points out many of the very real, but bordering on whiny, problems of librarianship these days.
Gregg, who is the fifth publishing house in this rogues gallery?
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that they chose to walk away, does that mean that there were negotiations that they decided to end? Did they do so en masse, or was there a domino effect, or what? I'd like to link to this on a couple of forums I'm active on, but I know that there will be questions, and would like to have all the info before I do.
Hi Jake!
DeletePenguin is the 5th publisher so far. The publishers have "walked away" one at a time, and by that I mean they have chosen to eliminate ebook access for libraries through whatever means they had previously been offering. For some (maybe all, I'm not sure) that means no longer allowing middle-man vendors like OverDrive or 3M Cloud Library to include their titles in what libraries can add to their services. For other publishers, it means no sales of titles direct or otherwise to libraries.
Any "negotiations" that I know of have been between larger library systems and the publishers or between library services like OverDrive or 3M and the publishers. There is otherwise very little direct contact or meaningful communication from my vantage point.
IMO, these large publishers fear going the way of the dinosaur just as much as libraries do, but rather than co-operate they've decided to simply cut us out and go it alone in the ebook market.