Call for reviewers!

LJ Fiction Editor Wilda Williams (you can find her here on Tumblr) is looking for reviewers for ebook original mysteries and sf/fantasy/horror.

If you’re interested in reviewing for LJ, please read our guidelines first. To apply, fill out a questionnaire and email it, along with the signed contract, a résumé, and two sample reviews in LJ style to Wilda at wwilliams at mediasourceinc dot com.

Hachette’s entire catalog of 5,000 ebooks will now be available through OverDrive, Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 platform, and the 3M Cloud Library, under a pricing and licensing model similar to the one employed by Random House. New titles will be made available to libraries immediately upon publication, and Hachette will charge libraries three times the retail hardcover price for new releases.

One year after publication, the purchase price will drop to one and a half times the cost of retail, according Hachette’s announcement. These ebooks are then “owned” by the purchasing library.

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Library Journal’s Matt Enis on Hachette Book Group USA’s entrance into the library ebook market. Yesterday, I posted only our press release and failed to get into the details of pricing, which are outlined above.

Cloud librarians will be able to buy HBG USA content starting May 8. I will, of course, be doing extensive marketing. Stay tuned. 

(via cloudunbound)

CLOUD UNBOUND: Hachette Book Group USA To Sell Its Entire Ebook Catalog to Libraries →

You likely read New York Public Library president Anthony W. Marx’s passionate op-edinThe New York Timesthis morning (in which he broke the news that Hachette Book Group USA will begin selling its entire ebook catalog to the library market).

Below is our official press release. We’re excited to work with Hachette, and we thank everyone for all of their hard work on making this relationship possible.

More progress TK. Not to mention marketing from yours truly.

St. Paul, Minn. – May 1, 2013 – The 3M Cloud Library eBook Lending Service will add titles from Hachette Book Group to its catalog of offerings, giving readers access to books from popular authors including James Patterson and Nicholas Sparks. Hachette Book Group’s full eBook catalog will be available to libraries with no delay on new titles.

The new agreement with Hachette Book Group means that 3M Cloud Library now offers content from all of the Big Six publishers. The service’s continuously growing list of publishers now numbers more than 300.

“3M Cloud Library aspires to achieve the breadth and depth of the best public libraries’ collections, to ensure that readers of all tastes find the perfect book,” said Tom Mercer, marketing manager, 3M Cloud Library. “We continue to build a diverse, multi-language collection with relevance, balance, and richness for all readers.”

The addition of Hachette Book Group titles follows a successful pilot program, during which 3M was able to provide compelling data to the publisher on sales and circulation for its books. Since its launch in 2011, the 3M Cloud Library has lead many such programs, helping publishers gain a greater understanding of the eBook marketplace.

For more information about the 3M Cloud Library eLending system, visit 3M.com/Cloud.

Big news from Hachette.

schoollibraryjournal:

On the way: SLJ on e-originals

You heard it here first! SLJ is going to be reviewing e-original publications. From nonfiction to novellas, if the title is available first in a digital form we want to review it. If you’re a publisher who would like more information, please email associate book review editor Chelsey Philpot at cphilpot@mediasourceinc.com.

If you work with children or teens in schools or public libraries, or if you are a library school educator, and would like to volunteer to review for SLJ (e-original publications or other materials), please contact book review editor Trev Jones at tjones@mediasourceinc.com.

Oh boy is right!

Now many public libraries want to lend e-books, not simply to patrons who come in to download, but to anybody with a reading device, a library card and an Internet connection. In this new reality, the only incentive to buy, rather than borrow, an e-book is the fact that the lent copy vanishes after a couple of weeks. As a result, many publishers currently refuse to sell e-books to public libraries.

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Authors Guild president Scott Turow in his New York Times editorial last Sunday, which many in the publishing world have criticized for its negativity and defensiveness. 

He claims to be looking out for the financial and creative interests of new and midlist authors, and yet, as I myself have pointed out, he fails to acknowledge how invested the American public library system is in launching writing careers. (First novels are always a draw for collection development librarians, and I market them aggressively.)

Turow is, how do you say, desperately out of touch with the opportunities of the digital age. Sad.

(via cloudunbound)

Wildly out of touch—and out of touch with the opportunities of the analog age? What does he think libraries have been up to all this time?

(via thelifeguardlibrarian)

Penguin Lifts Library Ebook Purchase Embargo - The Digital Shift

Penguin Group today announced that it will be changing the terms on its library ebook lending program, and on Tuesday, April 2, will begin allowing libraries to purchase and lend ebook titles the day that hardcover editions are released, according to The Associated Press. Previously, Penguin had placed a six month embargo on new ebooks, requiring libraries to wait half a year before purchasing.

(gif via)

Would your library do deeper ebook collection development if there was one universal usage-based model?

cloudunbound:

A fine point raised at my lunch today with Workman Publishing.

Good question! Any answers?

The DPLA will provide a single place to discover and explore our country’s libraries, archives, and museums, a portal, and so will bring entirely new audiences to formerly scattered collections.

Moreover, we will provide the means for others to use information about those holdings in creative and transformative ways, a platform, with an API, for others to build upon.

Third, we will endeavor to work with public and academic libraries to try to solve some of the thorny issues that plague our current research and reading environment.

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Dan Cohen, newly announced founding executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, in Library Journal’s Q&A.

I am most curious about the first aim. That’s what you call a logistical nightmare. 

(via cloudunbound)

Alene Moroni, Ebook Whisperer | Library Journal Movers & Shakers

Moroni endorses a nuanced approach. “She is an advocate for reading in any manner—print, audio, electronic—and never tells a person about a book without mentioning all the formats in which it is available…and how she will make it accessible to them wherever they are,” says Stover. While KCLS integrates ebooks, it continues to maintain a robust print collection based on in-depth research. She has an “unwavering belief,” says Stover, “that libraries are part of the ecosystem [that] needed to connect library users with reading materials.”

The King County Library System led the nation in ebook checkouts, with 1.3 million checkouts from Overdrive-powered catalogs in 2012. That made KCLS number one in the country. Close on King County’s heels was the Seattle Public Library system, which came in at number four with 850,000 checkouts.

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The good ole Seattle Times, via my friend Stephanie Chase (of the Seattle Public Library). 1.3 million checkouts is a lot of eyeballs on a lot of ebooks. Nice work, KCLS, Library Journal’s 2011 Library of the Year for good reason.

More:

Rounding out the top five were The New York Public Library System, which ranked number two  (1.1 million checkouts), the Toronto Public Library, number three (900,000 checkouts), and the Hennepin County Library in Minnesota. (750,000 checkouts) at number five.

(via cloudunbound)

Under the agency model, and working with multiple distributors, Macmillan will offer over 1,200 backlist eBooks from its Minotaur Books mystery and crime fiction imprint, a part of the St. Martins Publishing Group. The titles cover all sub-categories of crime fiction from thrillers to cozies, hard-boiled crime to psychological suspense and include many award winners.

— Macmillan’s press release about its nonexclusive library ebook pilot. I thought it made sense to remind Cloud librarians about the content since the model (“2 years or 52 lends, whichever comes first”) got more play in the media. As much as I want to create a monster book jacket showcase of what’s available, you’ll have to wait until Friday, March 1, at the earliest. I will offer this hint: M.C. Beaton. (via cloudunbound)

Duke University Libraries Introduce “Digitize This Book” →

nerdylikearockstar:

Awesome strategy to keep digitization from becoming an overwhelming prospect—give priority to the books that are being requested in e-format. 

Duke University Libraries say: “Starting this semester, Duke University faculty, students, and staff can request to have certain public domain books scanned on demand. If a book is published before 1923* and located in the Perkins, Bostock, Lilly, or Music Library or in the Library Service Center (LSC), a green “Digitize This Book” button will appear in its online catalog record. Clicking on this button starts the request. Within two weeks (although likely sooner), you will get an email with a link to the digitized book in the Duke University Libraries collections on the Internet Archive. You—and the rest of the world—can now read this book online, download it to your Kindle, export it as a PDF, or get it as a fully searchable text-only file. And you never have to worry about late fees or recalls!”

My first impressions: a) I’m awfully suspicious that it means nothing good for writers who want to get paid for their work using the current compensation model, b) If Amazon actually wants this to work they are going to have to become strikingly transparent in their processes… c) if I were a lawyer I would already be salivating at the class-actions suits to be filed the very first time it becomes clear that Amazon is reselling eBooks that are not, in fact, the sole versions of that specific, originally sold copy…

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Writer John Scalzi in response to last week’s news that, per GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, “Amazon has been awarded what appears to be a broad patent on a ‘secondary market for digital objects’—a system for users to sell, trade and loan digital objects including audio files, eBooks, movies, apps, and pretty much anything else.”

This is a hugely important development for librarians to track. I confess I’m confused how ownership versus licensing comes into play in a patent. Can Amazon resell ebooks if they don’t actually own them? Would the publisher have to grant that right in cases where Amazon is not the publisher?

Russell Blake’s comment from Scalzi’s post:

Amazon sells a license, not an actual ebook, so there can’t be a used ebook. If and when they change their Ts and Cs to reflect that self-publishers are agreeing to allow them to sell the actual ebook versus the license, then we’d all have to worry. But my hunch is that isn’t going to happen – self-pubbing at Amazon would basically dry up, and the trad pubs would never go along with it, so they’d be putting a bullet in their own, well-developed market. I personally don’t see that happening.

*Cut to Heather’s brain exploding*

(via cloudunbound)

What if you never had to endure the buyer’s remorse of abandoning a book and wishing you could get back the dollars you spent on a disappointing read? What if, instead, you only had to pay for the pages you actually read?

Total BooX, a publishing startup out of Tel Aviv, is attempting to give you the option. The company, set to launch later this month, offers users free access to all the ebooks in their digital warehouse (the collection currently exceeds 10,000) and charges proportionally. If you only read 10% of the book, you pay 10% of the list price.

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Should EBooks Be Pay-As-You-Go? (via bookriot)

Not sure how this will work with libraries, although the company is working with several systems in the U.S. But the Personal Shelves that readers can create might be a useful RA tool for librarians and ease “discoverability” of new titles.

(via willywaldo)

The pilot program is set to launch before the end of first quarter in 2013. Under the agency model, and working with multiple distributors, Macmillan will offer over 1,200 backlist eBooks from its Minotaur Books mystery and crime fiction imprint, a part of the St. Martins Publishing Group. The titles cover all sub-categories of crime fiction from thrillers to cozies, hard-boiled crime to psychological suspense and include many award winners. Once purchased by a library, the titles will be available to them to lend for 2 years or 52 lends, whichever comes first. All of the books in the program will have the same digital list price.
The titles will be available through a number of distributors, and at the launch through Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 Digital Media Library, OverDrive and the 3M Cloud Library.

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Details from Macmillan following their announcement of a foray into licensing trade ebooks to libraries.

Macmillan Announces Details of Library Lending Pilot | LJ INFOdocket