alanajoli | E-books: Penguin vs. Libraries and Amazon as Lion

Just a couple of links today. PW blogger Peter Brantley wrote up what I think is an excellent entry about the problem with leaving libraries out of the e-book revolution. Brantley's assessment is that by making e-books unavailable through libraries, a whole class of Americans is denied access to those resources. If the market does shift so that more and more books are published exclusively in electronic format, I agree that this is going to become the problem that Brantley anticipates. In the mean time, thank goodness for paper books, Interlibrary Loan, and the host of other resources available at the public library.

(The rotunda at James Blackstone Memorial Library, my local source for research and reading.)

Who's getting e-books right? According to Kent Anderson, Amazon is getting everything about publishing right, and everyone else in the book world needs to seriously up their game. This is, at least in part, true: writer friend of mine Audrey Auden dumped all the other e-book retailers for her self-published Realms Unreel because Amazon's customer service and platform were by far more beneficial to her in convenience and sales. On the other hand, Jim Hines recently discussed how Amazon can change your prices without your permission, as recently happened with his Goblin Tales. I maintain my wariness around Amazon, despite finally jumping on board with Amazon Prime (as it keeps us comfortably in diapers here at Casa Abbott).

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One of my concerns about access to books is wondering whether the poor have access to ebook readers. On the one hand, ebooks are (at least in principal, and sometimes in practice) much cheaper. And it matters that libraries have ebooks in their collections. But at present, most ebooks require a large upfront cost (roughly $100 minimum, sometimes substantially more). That makes me worry that the poor will have no access to ebooks, because they won't have readers, and decreased access to print books, because printed books will increasingly be the exception. Perhaps the declining cost of readers will make this concern moot, but in the meantime, I worry that technological changes will make books ever more accessible for the middle class and wealthy at the same time as they become less accessible for the poor.

I agree -- although I'm glad that Overdrive works with computers, which are available, usually at an hour or two a shot, at many public libraries. (The computers were probably the best used resource at my local while I was working there, and I bet they still are.)

My local also lends out nooks, and those are always checked out. I think patrons get two weeks with them. There are only, like, seven for a town of 30,000 -- but it's a start!

I get that survival of the fittest is a part of the picture here, but I'm feeling not too charitable towards Amazon right now. Their success owes a lot to innovation, sure, but also to bullying behavior and general codpiece swinging. They've never made it easy for small presses to deal with them, and they've just declared war on some major distributors, which is bad for everyone involved but which I guess they believe will cut out the middlemen and eventually help clear the field of competition.

But as the wise man said, “About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated.”

general codpiece swinging

Bwahaha! Yes, that's exactly it. I've said enough over here about my thoughts on Amazon and how I'd like to talk about them with a hip hip hoorah every once in awhile instead of an "oh, tell me you didn't..." I guess when the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards finalists get announced, I'll share some good cheer! :)

Also, I know I know that quote, but I can't place it...

Captain Tightpants, War Stories.

Argh, I'm probably just bitter because I've spent WAY too much of my life recently attempting to master the epub/mobi conversion, only to have Amazon summarily banish us from their website. Gnashing of teeth.

Clearly it has been too long since I've watched the whole series of Firefly. I did just finish Dollhouse, though -- I forget if you were on board with that show or not! I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I expected to, given the discussions when it was on the air. (And now I feel weird when I say things like "Goodness gracious," which, yes, I actually did say previously, usually to Helen, and now I can't; "...do my best/...be my best" or any sentence that ends that way; or just dolls and dollhouse, which come up quite a lot in conversation around here, since Bug's current play focus has been on her dollhouse...

Also, what are you doing lately that you're doing epub/mobi conversions? I clearly need to catch up on your life!

I came to like Dollhouse as a whole, though there were a lot of weak episodes and it was frustrating to see the bones of a much better show peaking through. The discussion around it was really interesting, though. Did you read the original pilot script? They shot the episode but ended up cannibalizing it for parts, but the script is still floating around the internet. Meanwhile I find it bizarre that Bug is big enough to play with dollhouses now. Goodness gracious.

I'm working as an assistant at an itty bitty indie publishing house, which distributes, you guessed it, through IPG. Gnash gnash. I'm the youngest person there by at least two decades, so anything involving html has kind of defaulted to my job.

Ah, hurrah for youth! Don't you feel special to be considered the Digital Native? You should blog more so I can hear about what you're working on. :)

I did not know the original pilot script was around and was completely different from what we saw; I'll see if it's still up on the Internet somewhere!

Our local library *does* lend e-books, just for the record. As a techie, the concept of "lending" electrons still makes me giggle, but as long as people are still reading, I'm good with it.

PS - great pic, BTW.

Edited 2012-02-24 03:31 (UTC)

Just make sure you return those electrons on time!

Libraries that lend ebooks are awesome, but until they lend e-readers it does't really change the accessibility issue.

We have a reasonably good selection of e-books through my library, and I'm quite happy with that. They also, as I say above, lend nooks. So I think the idea of lending the devices is a possibility that libraries will continue to explore, hopefully in greater volume than is available at most libraries right now.

Our library is beautiful. Aside from my awesome coworkers, the building itself was the best thing about working there.

E-books: Penguin vs. Libraries and Amazon as Lion

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