Transcript The E-Book Conundrum - City University of Hong Kong

The E-Book Conundrum: They Don't
Know How to Sell the Stuff, and We Don't
Know How to Buy it!
Anne Douglas
Colin Storey
Emerging Paradigms for Academic Library E-Book
Acquisition and Use: Trends, Challenges and
Opportunities Conference.
3 June 2008
Cho Yiu Conference Hall, The Chinese University of
Hong Kong
The ERALL Project
• Funded by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee
(UGC)
• A consortial purchase for all 8 member libraries under
UGC ‘deep collaboration’ initiative.
• Aims of the project are to:
– Go to vendors now while the market is embryonic
– Have full ownership of e-titles
– Secure perpetual access
– Buy English language ebooks
– Secure multiple user access for all 8 libraries
– Gain access to single copies for all libraries
– Buy the maximum number of relevant books for the
lowest cost
• All 8 libraries participated in the selection of products
and vendors
Four Key Factors in Purchasing ebooks
1. HOW MUCH?
2. WHAT? (to Purchase)
3. FROM WHOM?
4. HOW?
1. HOW MUCH?
• Best price
• Variety of sellers - the vendor’s own branch offices, the
publisher, the publisher’s own branch offices - all with
offers to sell the same ebook at a different price
• If an aggregator’s price for its product is the same no
matter which of its divisions or vendors offers the
product, what’s in it for the middlemen? How do they
make a profit? Do we librarians care? Yes, we do, if that
margin is included in the price of the product!
2. WHAT (to Purchase)?
• Some publishers have embargo periods (eg World
Scientific ebooks – 6 month embargo)
• For some publishers publication of their ebooks is often
well behind their print equivalents
• Difficult to get some publishers to release their front lists
• Publishers misquote on the number of ebooks they will
publish
– say they will be able to offer a certain number of titles
and then can’t
– say which imprints they expect to publish ebooks
under, but then can’t deliver
3. FROM WHOM?
• How do libraries establish who is selling what?
– who is selling a publisher’s ebooks
– the publisher?
– the publisher’s regional offices?
– vendors?
– aggregators?
– who is selling the aggregator’s products
– different vendors? eg. MyiLibrary, Swets,
Kompass
– different divisions within the aggregator’s
company? eg. MyiLibrary, Coutts
3. FROM WHOM?
• Rumours swirl around the marketplace
– Vendors think they hear or misinterpret that a
competitor is offering a deal - for example one single
copy for multiple access from publisher x. They think
the competitor must have checked with the publisher,
so they offer the same deal without checking with the
publisher.
• Is a pattern emerging?
– Publishers first release their products through
vendors or aggregators. When they establish there is
a market they then undercut these same vendors and
aggregators, and offer a better price and an exclusive
title list.
4 (a) HOW?
Purchasing Model Required by JULAC
•
•
•
•
Consortial acquisition
Perpetual access
Single copy for multiple user access
Multiple copy
– consortium required to buy multiple copies based on
number of FTE by the publisher
– consortium purchased multiple copies based on need
or demand
• Reference material
– purchased with perpetual access with the option of
purchasing annual updates based on FTE’s
• Titles either bundled or selected
4 (b) HOW?
Purchasing Models Offered by Vendors
• JULAC offered many different purchasing models
– little standardization of models across the industry
– very time consuming aggregating all the data in each offer so as
to compare offers.
• Different prices for different size libraries within the consortium
– libraries classified by size, different discount offered to each size
of library.
• Different prices for libraries within the consortium who subscribe to
other products offered by the same vendor/publisher
– reduced platform fees if a library subscribes to other products
offered by the same vendor/publisher
4 (b) HOW?
Purchasing Models Offered by Vendors
• Multi user access
– Some publishers require a consortium to purchase a defined
number of multiple copies with multi user access
– For those publishers who do not allow single copy access for
multiple users, there can be complicated formulas to determine
how many copies a consortium must purchase.
• Single copy
– Some publishers allow single copy purchase with multi user
access by consortia.
– Some publishers do not allow a consortium to purchase a single
copy.
– Some publishers limit concurrent user access (Eg. 1 title, 1 user)
• Content to be purchased as a collection or 'bundle' or on a title by
title basis?
– Depends on the publisher or aggregator.
CHALLENGES TO JULAC’S MODEL 1:
Perpetual Access
• JULAC libraries want perpetual access and ownership of their
ebooks
• no standardization in the market on perpetual access
– Some key publishers and aggregators do not offer their ebooks
with perpetual access eg. Cambridge University Press, ‘Books
24x7’ (clearly not, ‘Books 24/7/to infinity and beyond’!)
• Escrow arrangements vary across vendors/publishers
– Content downloaded to a third party
– If publisher ceased content could be downloaded to libraries own
server
– What guarantees do libraries have with escrow arrangements?
With a print book you have it in your hand; with an electronic
book you are relying on third parties to maintain access to the
book.
CHALLENGES TO JULAC’S MODEL 2:
Platforms
• Platform maturity
– Some publishers own platforms have not yet reached a level of
maturity for a consortium’s needs.
• Users
– User familiarity
– We don’t want our users to have to learn how to use multiple
platforms. For ebooks, the fewer the platforms, the better for the
user
• Separate platforms
– Some publishers/ vendors do not allow integration of individual
libraries ebooks collections and the collections purchased by the
consortium from that publisher (Eg ECHO)
• Pricing
– Some publishers allow access to their e-books only on one
platform, while others allow access to a number of different
platforms with different pricing models.
Five Major Strategies for Future JULAC
Acquisition
1.Escrow
• JULAC libraries still want perpetual access and total
ownership of their ebooks
• Mirror site on the JULAC’s own server, not reliant on
the publisher or vendor or a third party
• We need to press for an industry standard for escrow
arrangements for ebooks,
Five Major Strategies for Future JULAC
Acquisition
2. Purchasing Models
•
•
•
•
•
•
As a consortium, leverage significant dollar amounts to
procure deals to enable us to achieve the best price for each
ebook
Decide how as a consortium we can purchase ebooks to meet
the needs of all our libraries, while still enabling libraries to
collect within their collection strengths
Purchase one copy of each ebook for multi-user access as the
archival copy of text for JULAC- EJURA
Purchase from aggregators and publishers as publishers will
continue to offer unique titles available only through them
Purchase from world-class academic booksellers, and use
some of the old standards of purchasing, including approval
plans etc.
Secure the option to buy titles as bundles and as selected
titles
Five Major Strategies for Future JULAC
Acquisition
3.Price
•
Price is a key factor in selection of titles and
products
•
We do not want to have to pay inflated prices for
ebooks, we want to pay a reasonable price for each
book comparatively based on the print price
•
We do not want to have pay for multiple access to
titles, we want single copy access for multi user
access.
Five Major Strategies for Future JULAC
Acquisition
4. Content
•
We want to be able to purchase front list and back
list titles
•
We want publishers to review their policies on
ebooks, drop embargoes, publish ebooks from all
their imprints and publish all books as ebooks
•
We do not want restrictions such as the “single user
model”. They are counterintuitive to the librarians'
desire to increase access.
Five Major Strategies for Future JULAC
Acquisition
5. Online Selection of ebooks by Library
Readers (‘Purchase on Demand’ – PoD)
•
•
•
Different publishers/vendors/ aggregators have
different definitions of PoD, there either needs to be
an industry standard or libraries need to clearly
state their understanding of PoD to vendors.
PoD would need to be used in conjunction with a
library’s selection model - ie users, faculty and
librarians select titles
At any rate, engage faculty and students in ebook
selection
Conclusion
The Publishers, Vendors and Aggregators may still
not know how to sell ebooks, but we in JULAC now
surely know how to buy them!
To paraphrase Macbeth: “Confusion now will make
his masterpiece!”