The value of libraries

Jamie LaRue, head of our county library system, wrote an interesting post about the value of libraries. He begins and ends with Yogi Berra quotes.

To begin: "You can observe a lot just by watching." To end: . . . --well, you'll have to read on.

The problem LaRue was trying to address: How "everyone" thinks libraries are outmoded and unnecessary, especially now that we have the internet and e-readers.

"Wrong-headed thinking!" says LaRue.

At the heart of the public library is the notion of community sharing. We are a cooperative purchasing agreement. . . . [P]ublic libraries take many small contributions of money, and leverage that into the purchase of collections, or access to collections, that are far beyond what any of us could afford individually.

You've got an ebook reader? Wonderful! . . . The library can provide books for your e-reader, too.

The argument is pretty straightforward: libraries are way more cost-effective than buying everything yourself, most of which you really don't want to keep anyhow. Just because the book is electronic doesn't change the value proposition. Teaming up - buying once, using many times - is a smart investment.

A second [benefit of libraries:] we help individuals of any and all ages and backgrounds to explore and discover anything they like . . . for school . . . for their jobs . . . learning a new language, or building a porch, or growing a garden, or learning to play banjo. Or . . . just reading science fiction or murder mysteries or romances or browsing fashion magazines. Public libraries are a patriot's dream: We are all about the pursuit of happiness.

A third [benefit of libraries:] we build community. . . . Last year our 7 locations in Douglas County racked up over 2 million visits. People come to homeowner's meetings, children's story times, civic clubs, and evening programs. They meet friends and associates. They chat with each other as they wait to use public computers. They get out of their homes and get to know one another.

So it's ironic. Often the busiest place in town, a place where people can follow their interests, save heaps of money, and build enduring bonds with their neighbors, libraries still have to fight the false perception that no one needs them.

Once again, Yogi nailed it. "Nobody goes there any more," he said. "It's too crowded."

More about book publishing, libraries, and the future of books . . .

Jamie LaRue graciously replied to my post yesterday and invited me to visit his blog.

If you didn't read his comment, I want to point out what he said about how libraries operate:

[F]irst, we treat commercial eBooks exactly like a paper book. That is, if we bought one copy, only one copy can be checked out at a time. If we buy two, two at a time. Technologically, of course, a file can be shared simultaneously. But libraries follow copyright, and pay for what we use.

That encouraged me greatly. It means there really is a potential for a long-term market in and to and through libraries. As long as they stick to that kind of high integrity model.

He made another comment, too, about my lack of understanding concerning what has happened in the music industry:

[T]he past two years saw a 55% decline of music publisher profits. People go directly to music sites, or iTunes, for individual songs. Musicians make their money performing these days, not selling CDs through publishers. Obviously, that's different from authors, many of whom just want to write, not give speeches. But the lesson is plain: start making it expensive and inconvenient for people to read, and they seek alternative sources for content.

With those comments, and his implicit invitation to visit his blog, I found his latest post: Your right to read is at risk and realized he is onto something big.

In that post, if you put two and two together, you realize that HarperCollins' policy is mild compared to many of its competitors:

Many publishers in the rapidly consolidating world of commercial publishing - among them giants Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster - won't sell eBooks to libraries at all. Why? Because they believe, falsely, that there's an opportunity to greatly boost their profits while reducing the availability of the product. Sell direct to the consumer, bypass the cooperative purchasing power of the library, and eliminate this whole business of people not paying for every single access.

Under this emerging model, the right of ownership disappears. You simply won't be able to own a book anymore. You will have to have the device, the communications plan, and the money to pay per view. It's like replacing home ownership with a rental -- where the owner has the ability to raise the rent whenever he feels like it. It replaces the DVD with an on-demand subscription. It eliminates booksales and heirloom gifts with corporate lockboxes.

And then he goes on to point out the huge role libraries play (or, certainly, have played until very recently) within the total marketing matrix:

All by itself, Douglas County Libraries has 2 million visitors a year, and another 2 million to our website. Almost all of those people are looking for books. We're just about to roll out exciting new ways to display e-Content, and make it more findable. Cut us out of that eco-system, and all you really accomplish is to make it more difficult for readers to find authors, and for authors to find an audience.

As I alluded to last week, the move from LP album to CD was a similar savings for music publishers, and resulted in a similar grab for money. The result? Consumers rejected the whole system, and went direct, eliminating the middle man, and finding new distribution channels.

Public libraries in the 21st century are busy community hubs. Librarians are active and passionate lovers of literature, of music, of movies. We're even crazy about technology. Librarians will remain relevant and engaged in the acquisition, organization, and provision of public access to creative content. We're good at it. We will survive.

Will the big publishers? When they're reluctant to sell to some of their best customers, to the detriment of their own content creators?

As Lorin commented in reply to LaRue's post:

The giant [publisher]s will [soon, very soon!] simply become irrelevant.

They are shooting themselves in the foot by destroying their biggest (free; no; in fact, paying!) marketers.

It's as if the music publishers were to start viewing radio stations as the "enemy": after all, they are playing songs not just "once," nor, even, 26 times (HarperCollins' new limit for how often a single e-book may be checked out of a library), but they are playing songs tens and hundreds of thousands and even millions of times with every broadcast.

But it was that very radio play that made the modern commercial recording industry possible. It was through radio that most of us (of my generation, anyway!) ever learned that certain songs existed . . . so we could fall in love with them, buy them, and make them hits.

Well, finally, there is this, just posted this morning:

[A]t the Douglas County Libraries [for which LaRue is head librarian], over a third of our checkouts are children’s books. It isn’t uncommon to see mothers and a gaggle of giggling preschoolers tumble out the door with as many as 40 books at a time. Often, that's the haul from a visit that happens every week.
It’s hard not to feel good about that. Families that come to the library together not only spend quality time in each other’s company, they also establish a habit of literacy. Students in Douglas County schools tend to do very well academically. Surely part of the explanation is that many Douglas County children are ready to read long before they get to kindergarten. Libraries help make communities smarter.

What about those families who bring their children to the library? Are they really going to have an eBook reader for each child? Are they really willing to buy 40 books a week, 52 weeks a year?

If our goal is literate kids, the library – and its role as a cost-effective distributor of literature, music, and movies - will have a role for a long time.

Amen! It is many years since our kids were of that age when we would make the family trip to the library and check out dozens of books at a time. But LaRue's description is apt. And his logic impeccable. At least from all that I can see.

I think he is convincing me. And I am deeply grieved at the thoughtless path the major publishers are following.

How soon, do you think, before they will begin to see their revenues fall--and they will blame it all on "pirates" and the "digital revolution," but never realize how they have done much of the damage to themselves?

The future of publishing for libraries

Jamie LaRue, the head librarian for our county library system writes a regular column in our local paper. His latest captured Sarita's and my attention:

You own nothing

Publishing company HarperCollins announced Feb. 25 that its already restrictive "license" for library "purchases" of ebooks had become even more onerous. Henceforth, an ebook sold by them to libraries can only be checked out 26 times. Then libraries have to "buy" it again.

To be honest, I saw the newly instated policy and thought, "Makes sense to me." I mean, how often can a regular library book be checked out before it is falling apart and needs to be replaced? Print books don't last forever.

Moreover--and I don't know how this works for libraries--it strikes me that printed books can't be loaned out multiple times at once. Are libraries able to lend their "one" copy of an ebook multiple times at once? If so, that will kill book sales.

But then I read on:

It might be useful to step back and talk about how things work now. Douglas County Libraries now spends more than $3.3 million a year to buy a sample of the intellectual content of our culture. That's books, movies, and music.

For most books, we get close to a 50 percent discount. Why a discount? Because we are volume purchasers. Across the United States, libraries account for about 10 percent of all book sales. For children's books, it's more than 40 percent of sales.

Libraries also have another effect: we help authors find readers. A handful of authors will sell all their copies. But for most writers, the problem is getting passed around often enough to start to make a name for themselves.

Then people are more likely to buy one book, and watch for the next one.

What do we do with the books we buy? We talk them up, for one thing. Then we make them available to the public, regardless of age, income, or education.

Libraries make it possible for everyone, for anyone, to find out what's going on the world.

As I discussed in a previous column, physical books take up space, and library space is limited, so we also have to get rid of a lot of books. That process, called weeding, shoves even more books into people's homes. Books often have a second, third, and fourth life, moving through church and thrift stores at heavily discounted prices.

So is this system of library purchase and resale good for authors? Yes. It increases the likelihood that someone will discover them.

Is that good for society? Absolutely. Literacy is better than illiteracy.

Is it good for libraries? You bet. Literacy is our primary product.

Is it good for publishers? Guaranteed multi-million dollar purchases, year after year, coupled with a free marketing force to grow audiences for their books?

HarperCollins doesn't think so.

Here's how the ebook market is shaping up for libraries.

1. We can't buy an ebook at all. We rent it, and the file doesn't even live on our own servers. It remains in the cloud, usually very poorly integrated into our catalogs. That means that people have to look in multiple places for content, which is less convenient.

2. The library price for ebooks, rather than being half retail cost because we are volume purchasers, is often twice the retail cost. Publishers say, but libraries let lots of people read them! We let lots of people read paper books, too, and you can't tell me that hosting a file is anywhere near as expensive as printing and distributing a physical item. Publishers want a much higher price (a 100 percent increase) for a product that is much cheaper to produce.

3. When a book is no longer popular, libraries can't resell or give away things they don't own. That means no more booksale income for the library, and no more cheap copies of reasonably current ideas for the public.

4. Under the HarperCollins scheme some books may disappear altogether. Each title will have a metered use. Want it again? Well, publishers often take books off the market for a while. And publishers may not survive.

5. Some ebooks, such as those from Amazon, are device-dependent. If you, as a consumer, buy one from Amazon, the license says you can only read it on a Kindle. What happens when your Kindle dies? Well, you either buy another Kindle, if there is one, or start building your library all over again. It's like having to buy another copy of a CD for every player you own. . . .

Hmmm!

We need both sides of the story. I can see LaRue's points. But I think there are some things to be said on the publishers' side, too.

Again, I need to know a bit more about the way the licenses work, BUT, it strikes me that, right now, with printed books . . .

• Books with library bindings don't cost 100% more, but they do regularly cost at least 25% more than "regular" books. (Now, most books that libraries purchase are "regularly" bound. Paperbacks, for instance. But, still.)
   
• Most books libraries purchase are checked out only very infrequently. (Therefore, to charge libraries extra, because they are libraries, means they will pay a premium for a whole lot of books that will be used only slightly (if at all) more frequently than their privately-owned peers.) However,
   
• Bestsellers may be checked out hundreds of times.
   
• To meet the demand of patrons for bestsellers, libraries will purchase multiple copies, sometimes many dozens of copies (depending on the books' popularity). However,
   
• Even with multiple copies in a library system, patrons may have to wait weeks or months before a copy is available for their use. --Is there any such limitation on how many "copies" of a single "rented" version of an ebook may be checked out at one time? --Obviously from a technological perspective, there is no reason for a limit. But if a publisher is not permitted to put some kinds of limits in place, they and their authors will destroy a major source of purchase pressure. . . .

I must say that I am deeply disturbed by the concept of rented-only copies of intellectual property being stored solely on servers owned by the publishers. The concerns LaRue raises in his first point are rather scary, to say the least! It is nice to have libraries where long out-of-print books are held deep within their bowels. I have done a fair bit of inter-library borrowing in order to find such ancient volumes.

In a digital-only, publisher-sponsored-only environment, that kind of research may definitely disappear!

Hmmmm.

LaRue concludes:

The way things are shaping up, publishers will try to make it impossible to own a book. They want to monetize the transmission of ideas, to the detriment of author and reader alike.

It's the same strategy championed by music publishers. And we know how well that worked out.

Actually, no, I don't know how well that turned out.

Your thoughts?