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You can request a title and more and more libraries are leaning on patron driven acquisition (PDA) for collection development. The library I am employed at buys

You can request a title and more and more libraries are leaning on patron driven acquisition (PDA) for collection development. The library I am employed at buys almost everything that comes in via recommendation. That said, limited availability is a much more complicated problem than budgeting or selection. With print books there's a very well established workflow and discount model. Wholesalers who sell to libraries provide steep (up to 40%) discounts and a very polished workflow for selecting titles (we have standing orders for best-sellers, top authors, big series, etc, that save us hours of work). Ebook vendors don't offer discounts because publishers control prices and the selection model is not nearly as polished. Additionally, all major publishers have some limitation on their ebooks. For some vendors we pay up to 3x the cost of a retail hardcover and for others we are limited on the number of times the title can check out (26 or 52 times, depending on the vendor). Still others simply sell on a 1 or 5 year lease model. Libraries are still trying to adjust their budget models and workflows to fir these new limitations we've never had to deal with before. So yes, I love libraries, but it's not nearly as simple as "your library has ebooks" and that's a sad state.

tomjen3 12y ago
Why would publishers offer libraries discounts? If anything one would assume they either wouldn't sell you their new books at all or would at a minimum charge you through the nose. After all your are a competitor. I get it for older books, that makes sense, since at that point most of the books would stop selling and be worth more as a means to get readers to buy the next in the series.
- stinkytaco 12y ago
  >Why would publishers offer libraries discounts? That's the point I'm trying to make. Physical materials, the materials libraries have built their workflows and budgets around, operate using different rules. Wholesalers will provide discounts because libraries buy lots of stuff and so better discounts mean moving more materials and, more importantly, stopping customers from going to another wholesaler. E-books have no wholesaler. They are controlled by the publisher so there is no going to a competitor for better pricing. Thus higher prices (in the realm of 3x the retail hardcover). That said, publishers have been lowering prices and increasing access slowly. Along with being competitors, libraries are customers, and big ones. Public libraries buy more that 1 billion in materials a year. That's a lot to walk away from because they are "competitors". My point was just to communicate that though libraries offer value, It's difficult to compete with something like Oyster at the moment.

tomjen3 12y ago

Why would publishers offer libraries discounts? If anything one would assume they either wouldn't sell you their new books at all or would at a minimum charge you through the nose. After all your are a competitor. I get it for older books, that makes sense, since at that point most of the books would stop selling and be worth more as a means to get readers to buy the next in the series.

stinkytaco 12y ago
>Why would publishers offer libraries discounts? That's the point I'm trying to make. Physical materials, the materials libraries have built their workflows and budgets around, operate using different rules. Wholesalers will provide discounts because libraries buy lots of stuff and so better discounts mean moving more materials and, more importantly, stopping customers from going to another wholesaler. E-books have no wholesaler. They are controlled by the publisher so there is no going to a competitor for better pricing. Thus higher prices (in the realm of 3x the retail hardcover). That said, publishers have been lowering prices and increasing access slowly. Along with being competitors, libraries are customers, and big ones. Public libraries buy more that 1 billion in materials a year. That's a lot to walk away from because they are "competitors". My point was just to communicate that though libraries offer value, It's difficult to compete with something like Oyster at the moment.