The New High Ground
McPherson Sentinel, December 14, 2011
If you want to understand the difficulties encountered by libraries as we attempt to provide eBooks for our patrons, you first must imagine this scene: Somewhere in Europe, probably after 1500, when book publishing was flourishing and with it, academic libraries, a librarian purchases a book from a bookseller. And the bookseller, as he is conducting the transaction, thinks, “This librarian will allow many people to read this book, yet I will profit from selling it only once. I am being cheated.”
This has ever since defined the relationship between publishers and libraries. While publishers realize that libraries account for some 10% of their sales, and though they know we are institutions which further the public good, the idea that we are depriving them of income has caused them to fret for a very long time.
But now, with the advent of eBooks, it’s a new world. MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin – all major publishers -- refuse to sell eBooks to libraries. HarperCollins will do so, but their titles vanish after 26 checkouts.
With printed books, publishers had to decide on one retail price for each title, but now they can manipulate the price of their eBooks with a few keystrokes. Anyone purchasing an eBook bestseller from Amazon.com for their Kindle, for example, can expect to pay around $15. Publishers charge libraries approximately $37 for the same title.
It’s all very reminiscent of Michael Corleone settling old scores with the rival families in the last scenes of The Godfather. As almost all of the big publishing houses now are owned by a handful of massive media corporations, their focus is solely on maximizing profits. EBooks are in demand and there is a great deal of money to be made. Machine gunning libraries is great for business, and the public good has no effect on the bottom line.
Libraries venturing into the eBook market feel the effects immediately. With municipal governments watching spending and taxes very closely, resources are limited, and funds to purchase eBooks typically are taken from existing materials budgets. With many libraries collecting particular titles in regular print, large print, audiobook, and now eBook formats, their collections become wide rather than deep.
People frequently ask me, as they know that most librarians are partial to the printed word, if I am concerned that eBooks will replace printed books. I am not. I am concerned, however, that the public will believe everything they see about eBooks in the media.
Many questions about eBooks remain unresolved. If they are the wave of the future, why do the demographics indicate that most eReaders are purchased by middle-aged people and that youth remain ambivalent about them? Will steps ever be taken to insure the privacy of what eBooks people read? Will more publishers halt or restrict eBooks sales to libraries?
And what about children and eBooks? Some professionals are already concerned about the adverse effects that eBooks might have on children’s brains and their learning and developmental patterns.
EBooks are here to stay, but library patrons should not assume that the print model – where they could borrow just about any book they wanted from libraries anywhere – applies to this medium as well. After 500 years, the new high ground is occupied not by libraries but by the big corporations. And that won’t change anytime soon.