Tag: Big 6 Publishers

Bookish Rant: Apple, Amazon, Anti-Trust and the DOJ

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Bookish Rant or Raves> Originally published at Book Lovers, Inc.> The Rocket Lover

I was at Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend. For those either not in the U.S., or who aren’t familiar with Science Fiction Fandom, two explanations are in order. Labor Day weekend is the first weekend in September.

Dragon*Con is a huge regional science fiction convention in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. When I say huge, I mean attendance that numbers well over 30,000. Downtown Atlanta looks like it’s been overrun by aliens.

30,000 plus people talk about a LOT of stuff. Some of it frivolous, but a lot of it book-related. I listened to/met/shook hands with some of my favorite authors.

On Sunday morning, among about a dozen other panels, two lawyers and an author tackled the seriously bookish topic of the “Apple eBooks Lawsuit”. The room was packed to the rafters.

If you are looking for a basic but excellent primer on the entire price fixing lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Justice filed against Apple and five of the big six publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Penguin), you can’t do better than this excellent summary at Dear Author. Jane Little is a lawyer and she has not only summarized the original case beautifully, but she’s continued to cover the whole farrago as it’s kept on morphing.

Back to the panel at Dragon*Con. The lawyer who discussed the case was an anti-trust specialist, and she went into the case by talking about U.S. anti-trust law. Her take on the whole thing was pretty clear. The law is that competitors in a particular market, in this case Hachette, HarperCollins, etc., and Apple, cannot legally get together and talk about prices, whether they actually set prices or not. But in this case they did set prices, making the whole thing worse for them from a legal standpoint.

There is no provision in the law for a “greater good” being served. Also, as romance author Courtney Milan so eloquently wrote in her blog recently, there is no exemption from anti-trust law for being a special snowflake. Just read her post titled Your Unspecial Anti-Trust Snowflake. It’s a nutshell takedown of all the objections by all the defendants in one easy-to-read gulp.

But what fascinated me was the perspective of the author on the panel, who shall remain nameless (yes, I do remember who it was). Her contention was that Amazon needs to be stopped, now, for the things they will do, later, when they achieve even greater power in the market.

Amazon has a tremendous amount of power in the ebook and also the book marketplace. Because they are successful. Jeff Bezos didn’t listen when everyone laughed at him a number of years ago. When everyone said that people wouldn’t buy books (and other stuff) online. When everyone said that people wouldn’t read ebooks. We all know now how both those predictions turned out. But Amazon could have failed. Amazon has reaped the rewards of betting on what was absolutely not a sure thing.

Now Amazon has a giant share of print book distribution, and a dominant share of ebook distribution. Recent statistics show that we’ve reached the tipping point on ebooks. Ebooks are now THE dominant sales format for adult fiction; bigger than hardcover, bigger than paperback. Amazon is also a publisher.

The argument was that the publishers all behaved so badly, even illegally, in order to prevent Amazon from doing something even more terrible with all that power.

Of course, what the publishers did with that power in the short run was break Amazon’s stranglehold on ebook prices, and the immediate effect was that ebook prices rose.  Consumers did not benefit from those higher prices.

What stuck with me was that the arguments to do something about Amazon now were based on something they might do in the future.

We don’t know what they might do in the future. Amazon is a very powerful company right now. (So, for that matter, is Apple!) But asking the government, any government, to punish a company, or an individual, for what they might do is always a bad precedent.

Amazon might do good things. They might do bad things. They might get fat, dumb and happy. Microsoft used to be feared for how big and near-monopolistic they were, and look where they are now. New disruptive technologies will come along, and Amazon might be too happy with their status quo to jump on the new bandwagon (which is a lot of what is going on with the big six publishers right now).

But laws punish acts, not thoughts. What we do, not what others believe we might do. Let’s not even think of going there. Oh wait, somebody already did. His name was George Orwell, and his book about the Thought Police is so famous that Apple used it in one of their most famous commercials. That’s right. 1984.

Ironic that, wouldn’t you say?

9 Rings, 8 Planets, 7 Dwarfs, 6 Publishers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Big 6 publishers

List the names of the Seven Dwarfs. Go ahead, do it.

If you’re like most people, you have to tick the names off on your fingers, and you’ll forget one or two, usually either Bashful or Doc, because they don’t fit the “-py” naming convention the rest of them do.

What about those “Big 6” publishers everyone is talking about? Can you name them?

Even in the library world, in spite of all the recent discussion about how the Big 6 are deciding whether and how to lend ebooks to libraries, most people can’t. Not because they’re not important, but because the names aren’t the way we know them. We don’t think of the publisher all that much until one of them withdraws their ebooks from the library market, as Penguin did late last week.

What we know are their books. When there is a title that patrons want, and we can’t buy it, that’s when we are reminded who the “Big 6” are.

This is one librarian’s guide to the “Big 6” publishers, based on the titles they publish.

1. Hachette Book Group

We never see the name Hachette. The names we see are the names of their imprints, particularly Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown and Company.

Hachette dropped out of the library market in 2009, so their backlist is still in library ebook catalogs, but not their new books.

Current titles on the New York Times bestseller list from Hachette that are not available:

 

 

 

 

 

2. HarperCollins

HarperCollins is the publisher with the famous, or infamous “Rule of 26”. Every copy purchased after they changed their licensing terms to libraries last year is only available for 26 checkouts, then the library needs to purchase another copy. But some availability is perhaps better than no availability.

In addition to the publishing imprints with the name “Harper” in the title, HarperCollins also includes the publisers William Morrow and Avon.

Here are a few examples of current NYT bestsellers that are affected by the 26-checkout limit:

 

 

 

 

 

3. Macmillan

Macmillan has always just said “no” to libraries.

But it isn’t just the name Macmillan, because the name Macmillan covers St. Martin’s Press. And Henry Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux and Minotaur. Also Tor, a highly respected science fiction and fantasy publisher, as well as Feiwel & Friends, a children’s publisher.

There have been many, many Macmillan titles that libraries have never been able to purchase, including these current titles:

 

 

 

 

 

4. Penguin Group

Penguin has just exited the library ebook marketplace. As of this writing, any titles licensed by libraries before Penguin’s departure on February 10, 2012 will remain available, but no new content will be added.

Penguin Group includes Penguin, Putnam, Prentice-Hall and Puffin, a childrens’ publisher. But also Viking Press and Dutton, as well as Ace and Berkley, two well-known mass-market paperback publishers.

Because Penguin stopped licensing new content to libraries in November 2011, the impact of their departure has already been felt with the unavailability of these titles:

 

 

 

 

 

5. Random House

Random House represents the “good guys” in the library ebook market. They have recently reconfirmed their commitment to license ebooks to libraries, although they have stated that there will be a rise in the price. This is possibly the first time that a price increase has been treated as good news, but we live in interesting times.

Update 3/3/12: That price rise turned out to be 300%. Not so good. In fact, very bad. Very, very bad. See Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud for more details)

Random House is a not just Random House, but also Knopf Doubleday, Delacorte, Bantam, and Crown.

Because Random House has stuck with libraries, these are titles that we have been able to offer:

 

 

 

 

 

6. Simon and Schuster is the last of the “Big 6”. They have remained a steadfast naysayer when it comes to libraries.

This is unfortunate. Not only is the Simon and Schuster imprint big, but Scribner is one of their major imprints. Atheneum and Aladdin are among their Childrens’ houses, and Pocket is one of the big paperback presses.

These represent some of the current S&S titles that libraries would love to offer, but cannot:

 

 

 

 

 

The notion of the “Big 6” publishers is a somewhat abstract concept, but the books they publish are not. However, these types of designations are subject to change.

Once upon a time business used to refer to the “Big 8” accounting firms. Now it’s the “Big 4”.

There used to be nine planets, then Pluto got demoted. Now there are eight.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the One Ring ruled them all, but nine rings were given to mortal men. Those men were once proud kings, but they tried to seize more power than they were capable of holding.

Those kings ignored the warnings they were given about the danger represented by the rings.

Just like the publishers are ignoring the statistics that “50% of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library”.  Those publishers also cast aside warnings that compare the current state of the publishing industry to the state of Kodak during the rise of digital photography, as well as those that compare how much better new authors can do for themselves than with a “traditional publisher”. Traditional, read “big 6” publishers, are increasingly being cut out of the equation and their purpose in the supply chain is being questioned.

Those kings who picked up the nine rings–no one remembers their names.

 

The Fiction about Friction

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks> libraries

Let’s talk about a concept that keeps coming up in the conversation about ebook lending in libraries. The publishers who are currently not participating in the library ebook market all seem to be worrying about the lack of “friction” in the library ebook lending transaction as far as the patrons are concerned.

What do they mean by “friction”?

With physical media, in other words, books and CDs and DVDs, patrons have to come to the library to borrow them and come back to the library to return them. According to the February 10 post in Publisher’s Lunch, forcing patrons to come into the library to borrow ebooks is also the appropriate model for ebook lending. The publishers say they are doing this for the libraries’ own good, to reinforce the concept of the library as destination. Research indicates that ebook users are already “power users” of library resources, regularly visiting their local libraries for programming and to borrow materials, as well as borrowing ebooks online, and doing all those activities in great gulps.

Back to that “friction” thing again. The publishers seem to be laboring under a set of misapprehensions about how “easy” it is to borrow an ebook from a library. Let’s look at that for a moment.

According to the recent report in American Libraries, when ALA President Molly Raphael met with the Big 6 publishers in New York recently, many of the executives from those publishers were laboring under the mistaken belief libraries loaned ebooks to anyone who happened to click through their websites. We all know that’s not the case.

Libraries are responsible to their communities, and their resources are paid for by the taxes raised in those communities. We make our resources available to those who live or own property in the community. Many libraries make arrangements with their neighboring communities to reciprocally serve their patrons.

So it’s not quite as easy as the publishers think. But is it easy?

The so-called “friction” in borrowing an ebook from the library is different than the model the publishers are used to, but it is definitely there.

The hold queues for ebooks are very, very long. A recent article in the Washington Post showed hundreds of people waiting in line for some of the titles. The libraries in the D.C. metro area also have attempted to purchase copies to meet the demand, but the numbers are staggering. Placing a hold for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and seeing yourself listed as number 508 in the queue has to be a shock to anyone.

The second piece of grit that causes no end of friction is the general supply of ebooks. Period. When a person logs into their local library’s ebooks collection and wants to read something, anything, but just get a book, right now, can they? The answer generally is only if they understand the system and are willing to take something they may not be familiar with.

Patrons complain, with justification, that everything is out.  My LPOW has about 10,000 ebooks on OverDrive. However, if I check to see what a patron might check out, the first several screens all tell me to put myself on the waiting list. It is possible to search for only the titles currently available, but you have to know how to do that. And if you do know, you must search for EPUB, PDF, Open EPUB and Open PDF separately. There’s no option for just ebook. Out of those 10,000 ebooks, there are only 50 science fiction and fantasy titles in today. I did a quick scroll through, and a significant chunk of those are unfortunately mis-categorized. They’re really paranormal romance, which wouldn’t bother me, but would disappoint a lot of readers.

That’s not all the friction in this potential transaction.

Those of us who have been on the receiving end, know that dealing with end-users brings its own variety of friction. Whatever the client program is, whether it is OverDrive’s Media Console or the search program or the patron’s device or any other piece of the puzzle, there is a chain. Server to website to search to download to device to human. Any one of those parts can suffer a classic case of “failure to communicate” and when the chain breaks, the patron calls the library.

OverDrive’s Media Console isn’t quite as intuitive to use as the Kindle app, or the Nook app, or Bluefire. It’s pretty decent, and I frequently use it for EPUB format books, but there are a couple of things that get to me. For example, I can rename books in Bluefire and I can’t in OverDrive.

But the transaction to borrow an ebook in OverDrive far from frictionless. There’s no ability to search all of one type of format. So a patron can’t just search for “ebooks” or just search for “audiobooks”. The format limits are EPUB or PDF, and MP3 Audiobook or WMA Audiobook.

Once you find something you want to borrow, there’s the need for a library card number and a PIN, or personal identification number. Some libraries have made this easy by tying it to something the patron can’t forget, some don’t. But once past that hurdle, there’s the whole download business. If you’re reasonably savvy about your device, it is a piece of cake. With an iPhone or an iPad, there is, of course, an app for that.

Dealing with a side load through Adobe Digital Editions into a Classic Nook the first time is not for the faint of of heart, and not the night before you leave on vacation. Especially not if your flight is at “oh dark thirty”. Of those “power users” that LJ surveyed; 23% have given up on borrowing an ebook from the library because the process was “too complicated”.

If our sophisticated users have difficulty with the process, what about the new ereader users? A lot of people who are not tech-savvy got ereaders  because of the convenience factor and the content, but not the “gee-whiz” factor. How “frictionless” will they think the current ebook lending process is?

There is plenty of friction in the ebook borrowing transaction. The libraries are having enough issues ensuring that their interface with living, breathing patrons who use the library is as frictionless as possible.

What we don’t need is publishers telling us that library ebook lending needs more of this so-called “friction” than it already has. What we need is more ebooks in the library market.