Skip to main content

Suppose we win?

So here's a thought experiment. Suppose today the Executive Director of the American Library Association gets a series of calls from the CEOs of all the Big Six. "Wow, what were we thinking?" they say. "We've been looking over the research, and it's clear that libraries HELP publishers sell ebooks in all kinds of ways. Instead of trying to lock you out of the market or heaping new restrictions on you, from now on, you get things a week BEFORE street date. We have no better friend and ally than the public library when it comes to the promotion of reading!"

Oh, and another thing. "We realized we were wrong about both pricing and ownership, too. We'll give you a solid 45% discount, and you get to keep and hold your copies. What a pleasure doing business with you!"

In this scenario of total victory, what do we get? Here's my take: not enough.

Do our patrons mostly want Big Six offerings? Look at the bestseller list for the answer. But then look a little deeper. We are in a period when alternatives to those publishers are beginning to flourish. Making their harbinger appearances are the works of self-published and independently published authors.

The best outcome is NOT that the Big Six, a tiny segment of today's publishing activity, get a further lock on library resources. Simply selling us yet another format of titles we already have further erodes our purchasing power.

At this moment, amidst the greatest explosion of writing in the history of mankind, we need solutions that look considerably better than the status quo.

Here's what I want to know: What else is out there?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians. Uncle Bobby's wedding June 27, 2008 Dear Ms. Patron: Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy. The intent of providing all tha...

Installing Linux on a 2011 Macbook Pro

I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac , which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five. The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try. Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to...

What Is Leadership?

My partner and I just finished co-teaching a leadership institute for librarians in the Western States. But I keep thinking about it. Some people, I know, think leadership is all about power. But I always wonder: power to do what? To make or to break? Over my 40-odd years of administrative experience — and some of them have been very odd indeed — I’ve boiled my idea of leadership down to three things. Know thyself . That is, have a relatively clear-eyed assessment of your strengths. Build on those strengths. But also learn how to recognize in other people the strengths that you do not have. Play well with others . Leadership begins with listening and paying attention. Then it moves into emotional intelligence — the ability to read and respond appropriately to human communication. The good news is that emotional intelligence is a skill set. It can be learned. The bad news is that a lot of people don’t bother. Make it better . There’s no point in leadership that makes things worse. Good ...