An Exquisitely Dumb Move from Cengage

After Wiley lost its recent case in the US Supreme Court on the issue of 'first sale' and re-importation (I blogged about it below) it was always possible, however remotely, that a major US higher education publisher would panic and indulge in some sort of extraordinarily silly and defensive behaviour.

Cengage has done it. It has just announced a new 'global pricing' initiative:

Cengage announces global price structure for US-based higher ed print titles

Cengage Learning will adopt a new global pricing structure for US-originated higher education print titles in July, with around a third of the US-originated titles distributed by Cengage Australia to be affected.

Paul Petrulis, vice president of Higher Education and Gale for Cengage Learning Australia, told Books+Publishing that ‘with the new pricing structure, prices will increase for many of the titles, however, for a smaller cohort, prices will decrease’.

Petrulis said the new structure is a response to the recent Kirtsaeng v Wiley case in the US, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine of first sale, which allows for ‘legally acquired copyrighted works to be resold by their owners’, applies to works made overseas. Petrulis said that the ruling widened the definition of the first sale doctine, ‘allowing re-importation of US products originally created in the US from lower priced markets’. 

The new prices will apply to US-originated higher education print titles published from 2012 onwards, and will come into effect on 31 July. Petrulis said that this means the majority of Cengage Australia’s products will not be affected, including: all digital products; all locally authored, adapted and produced titles; all custom print and digital products; all Gale reference digital products; all Nelson Secondary and Primary schools products; and all English Language Teaching and National Geographic products.

While Petrulis said that Cengage is the first US education publisher to respond to the Kirtsaeng v Wiley case in this way, he said it is ‘an industry-wide issue and it is highly likely other publishers are also looking to how they respond’.

‘Publishers of higher education texts from the US have often substantially lowered and varied pricing of their print texts for international markets within Asia, Europe and Australia,’ said Petrulis. ‘Over the years, publishers’ ability to do this has eroded as the distributors in lower-priced markets have sourced texts at a lower price and re-imported them back into the US at a much higher price, and made a handy profit. The books that are re-imported from lower priced markets compete with local US distributors and ultimately lessen the value of the publishers’ product.’

‘In addition, the development of large-scale online retail across the globe, combined with favourable shipping rates and delivery times, has accelerated this process,’ said Petrulis, who added that the Kirtsaeng v Wiley case ‘has effectively eliminated one of the last legal protections US publishers had to combat re-importation, often referred to as “leakage” or “arbitrage”’.

However, Petrulis said that there is an upside for the Australian market in introducing a global pricing structure, with Cengage Australia ‘actively pursuing ... greater emphasis and opportunities for more local authors to adapt and create content’. He said there will also be ‘advantages for local booksellers as this change creates a global price floor’, which will allow ‘local Australian booksellers with online facilities [to] effectively compete on price with international retailers such as Amazon or the Book Depository’. ‘Digital versions of US print products, which will be generally priced lower, are also likely to get an additional uptake as students take advantage of the digital format,’ said Petrulis.

(Courtesy http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/DetailPage.aspx?type=item&id=27325)



The point about this is that it's not really a global pricing policy at all. It's a US first policy where the rest of the world is told to go suck.

Differentiated, territorial pricing around the globe is age old in book publishing, and makes all sorts of strategic and financial sense. This is particularly so in higher education. Less developed countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa have for decades enjoyed lower prices on US-originated textbooks to reflect market conditions, namely the students' ability to pay. Publishers, universally, have produced lower cost paperback editions or priced their hardback US editions at far lower prices than those charged US students. (Australia and the UK have benefited from this policy over the years too, though with far less justification).

A decade or so ago, because the internet made international price comparisons easy, US students became increasingly aware of these price differentials and leakage back to the US began. Mr Kirtsaeng saw a commercial opportunity, prompting Wiley's litigation.

An important point here is that the Supreme Court's decision against Wiley was hardly surprising. Nothing really new happened. The understood status quo was confirmed. No 'expansion' of the first sale doctrine took place. The copies were 'lawfully made' in an overseas country, that is, they weren't pirate copies.

Cengage's panicky, over the top reaction is entirely unjustified. Asian and African markets will see huge price rises (at least double or triple), all done to protect the revenues and profits of the huge US market. Sales outside the US will collapse and piracy will get a huge boost. Cengage's name will be mud. They should also expect governmental pressure of some sort. In the end there's no way they can win. They would have been better advised to join with their industry colleagues and lobby Congress to toughen the law on re-importation.

If global pricing were to make any strategic sense at all it would be accompanied by significant price reductions in the US - in the order of 25 to 30%. But this is a far too bitter pill to swallow, so don't hold your breath.

No other major US higher ed company will follow this move. They are well on the way to the digital future where tailored, contractual pricing is the norm across the globe. 'Global pricing' of printed textbooks is the last gasp of the dying analogue age. And, ironically, perhaps the last gasp of a soon to be bankrupt Cengage.

Bollocks, basically: The Sieghart Report on UK libraries and ebook lending

Last year the UK Culture minister commissioned a panel of library and publishing industry representatives to investigate e-lending by public libraries in England and to make some recommendations.

The panel was chaired by philanthropist, entrepreneur and publisher William Sieghart, and their rather slim and insubstantial report was published this week.

The key recommendations were:

·       A number of pilots in 2013 using established literary events should be set up to test business models and user behaviours, and provide a transparent evidence base: all major publishers and aggregators should participate in these pilots.

·       Public libraries should offer both on-site and remote E-Lending service to their users, free at point of use.

·       The interests of publishers and booksellers must be protected by building in frictions that set 21st-century versions of the limits to supply which are inherent in the physical loans market (and where possible, opportunities for purchase should be encouraged).  These frictions include the lending of each digital copy to one reader at a time, that digital books could be securely removed after lending and that digital books would deteriorate after a number of loans.  The exact nature of these frictions should evolve over time to accommodate changes in technology and the market.

Frankly, this is staggeringly lame. Its main thrust is to ensure the publishing industry remains unshaken and unstirred by the emerging e-lending practices of libraries. It is profoundly protectionist and conservative. .

I can't imagine this report will garner any respect in the wider library community. It's bollocks, basically.

Firstly, it doesn't intellectually grapple with the arguments at all. It blithely assumes that 'friction' is necessary or the whole publishing industry will collapse.

It recommends pilots be set up, and, incredibly, 'all major publishers and aggregators should participate..' Why? The business is happening. Librarians know what's happening. Publishers know what's happening. And if no credible data is being collected in the UK, well, no need to panic. There's plenty of quantitative stuff (Pew, mainly) being collected in the US. There's nothing so strange about the English, surely, that they need to reinvent the wheel.

As for the recommendation to emulate analogue 'frictions' in the e-lending world, this is a highly contentious issue that should not be simply accepted as a starting point. Perhaps such contrivance is not really necessary? We'll never know from reports like this one.

A far better and more productive, but no doubt vulgar, way to proceed would be to just let market forces prevail. Why not let the publishers and librarians fight it out between them, and allow industry norms to develop as they eventually will. The more courageous and progressive publishers will blaze the trail and the dead-headed rest will eventually follow.

There's no 'role for government' here. But our UK colleagues love this sort of stuff. Remember the Net Book Agreement?

Supreme Court Decision in Wiley Importation Case

The background:  a Thai national studying in the US imported from Thailand, and subsequently sold on eBay, 600 copies of a Wiley textbook that had been reproduced by Wiley Asia in a cheaper edition and priced for the local Asian market. Such International Student Editions (ISE's) are common in the Higher Ed market. 

The price he charged his customers was obviously a lot cheaper than the US edition available from US campus bookshops.

Wiley took him to court and won. They also won on appeal. Both judgements rested on section 602 of the US Copyright Act that quite explicitly prohibits unauthorised importation of lawfully made copies of works.

However the student, Mr Kirtsaeng, was not satisfied and applied to the Supreme Court for a hearing. 

His argument was that another, more fundamental, section of the Act (109) had priority and should have determined the outcome of the case. This section deals with the 'first sale doctrine', commonly known as the 'exhaustion' of rights when the work is sold. When the customer buys the book all ownership rights are transferred. The publisher relinquishes any further control over subsequent selling, lending or hiring activities (but not copying). Thus libraries, second hand bookshops, museums and other entities can legitimately trade in the property without seeking the publisher's permission. Kirtsaeng also contended such exhaustion was global, thus enabling international trading.

The Supreme Court's judgement, in its majority and dissenting opinions, is a fascinating exploration of all these conflicting issues. Of course it benefited Kirtsaeng to focus on exhaustion, and it benefited Wiley to focus on importation.

The majority decision privileged the notion of exhaustion, thus allowing free and open importation.

The minority view distinguished the two principles and opted to privilege the prohibition of importation thus sidestepping the exhaustion issue.

In the end the argument seems to have rested on differing interpretations of Congress's intentions when framing both sections.

Congress will no doubt now be lobbied by publishers and other parties to clarify its intentions into law by strengthening the importation prohibitions.

Australia has clear importation provisions - the infamous Parallel Importation Provisions (PIRs).

So as in Australia, the debate in the US should be about whether such prohibitions are worthwhile or not, i.e. whether they do more harm than good. It should never be about rights exhaustion.

It's always been my view that Australia's PIRs are harmful to the economy and consumers and should be repealed. They operate to protect over-pricing and under-servicing by uncompetitive publishers.

However it also seems pretty clear to me that the commercial imperatives in the US are fundamentally different, and justify restrictive importation provisions. Prices in the US, particularly for trade books, are low by international standards, so the importation restrictions are not working to prop up prices to uncompetitive levels. 

For educational materials the ability of publishers to price low in developing countries is an imperative that should not be undermined by unrestricted importation back to the the US. The world needs these materials to be available at differentiated prices to ensure affordability by local students. Publishers should be able to stop these low cost versions from being able to be re-imported. 

Publishing 101: Questions from a student

A student of publishing in the UK asked me for answers to the following questions. Other students of Publishing 101 courses may find them useful, so I've posted them here:

Do you think the use of digital media will have a positive effect on the publishing industry? Please give your reasons?

Yes, it certainly will, mainly because it will ensure its survival. Publishing as a business will dwindle and possibly die unless it embraces all the opportunities that the new digital age creates.

Ebooks are now a fact of everyday life in the industry, particularly for fiction. Most experts are forecasting that they’ll account for at least 50% of total fiction and narrative (non-illustrated) non-fiction revenues within the next few years. They are close to 30%, at least in the US, today.

The shift to ebooks of illustrated titles (cookery, travel, children’s, etc) is still at an early stage of development but a number of new software systems and packages are coming onto the market that are helping overcome the burdensome and expensive production process. Many publishers believe that the real digital revolution will not come to maturity until these sorts of titles are commonplace. That could take another five to ten years.

How do you think digital books and journals will affect education?

They are currently revolutionising the industry, and will continue to. Traditional textbook publishers have begun releasing fully digital versions of their content that incorporate elements that only digital can provide – for example, online assessment, online tutorial, customisation, classroom management tools and communication. School and university administrations are welcoming these innovations as they add real value to their offerings and save teacher and administration time. To compete with free online resources (MOOCs), for one thing, publishers will need to offer extensive administrative services as well as content.

The large educational publishers have begun negotiating with university administrations to allow their content to be accessed by students via the universities’ own Learning Management Systems (LMS), and for an annual license fee payable directly by each university. This is a very different business model than the current, print-based, student purchase one. But it is not one that is foreign to publishers. Scholarly (journal) publishers in particular have been doing business this way for years. So it will be simply a matter of moving it from the library’s interface to the LMS. (‘Simply’ being too simple a word! The transition will be lumpy and difficult).

This model has decided advantages for publishers however. It’s calculated on the basis of 100% of enrolled student participation, eliminates returns, cuts out the second hand market, and cuts out any involvement by booksellers in the supply chain, thus saving considerable cost. The ultimate price to the student can thus be reduced. Any fee charged the student by the university to recover the cost of their license would be much lower than the average student’s current annual printed textbook cost. (Equity issues arise here however. Some jurisdictions, Australia for example, do not allow the purchase by students of commercial learning resources to be mandated).

It is early days yet for these sorts of licenses, but most publishers can see that the license model is the future.

Journal publishers are of course well and truly ahead of all other industry sectors in their transition to the digital environment. They have virtually completed it, and are now in the throes of finessing their digital platforms, for example by developing comprehensive usage data that can allow university libraries to refine their subscriptions. They are also developing data mining functionality, allowing academics to drill down into the huge volumes of research data and discover connections, etc. This is a rapidly growing field.

Do you think it will have different effects in secondary school and primary school education?

Most school publishers, particularly secondary, are publishing digital offerings now. The larger publishers, who have more financial and technical resources, are paving the way. The nature of their offerings however is paralleling what’s being done in the tertiary textbook sector. Online assessment and tutorial are critically important dimensions.

The need to include interactivity, illustrated and full colour material (photos, line drawings, tables, charts, graphs, etc) and video material, is slowing down the roll-out of digital resources that are the core component of the package and not just an optional and limited added extra to a printed text. The production of these resources is very expensive, and skilled, technical staff need to be hired.

As in the university sector new business models based on licensing, whether school by school or regionally, need to be negotiated. This is all pretty unfamiliar territory for publishers and educational authorities, but it seems inevitable that it’s the way of the future.

 What do you think are the positives and negatives of ebooks against printed ones?

Much of my answer to this question is contained in my comments above. However as a general statement I would say that moving online brings all the advantages that the internet brings to modern life. We simply can’t imagine life without search engines, web sites, online commerce, social media, etc. Likewise students in ten years time would not possibly be able to imagine engaging with published educational content at recognised educational institutions without the rich interactivity that learning involves.

Similarly, general consumers in the trade market are very quickly embracing e-readers, whether dedicated e-ink devices or all-purpose tablets. The widespread acceptance of these devices guarantees a substantial market for ebooks in the future.

Negatives? Digital Rights Management (DRM) for a start! The restrictions placed on lending to family and friends, and borrowing from libraries; the non-interoperability of ebooks across the various e-readers, which restricts a purchaser to one particular eco-system, e.g. Amazon’s Kindle; the fact that purchasers don’t really own their ebooks as they do physical books, but ‘license’ them; the territorial rights deals that prohibit a purchaser from buying outside the designated territory, unlike for physical books.

Many publishers lament the low prices for ebooks, and the fact that the ‘Agency’ model of supply has been outlawed, at least for two years, by the US Department of Justice, thus removing pricing control from publishers. I don’t share this view. The agency model is anti-consumer and was only ever about inhibiting Amazon. Because of the DRM restrictions ebooks are not worth anywhere near the price of the original printed edition, and publishers ought to allow actual consumer behaviour, mediated by independent retailers, to establish acceptable pricing benchmarks.

Do you think the print publishing industry will eventually be gone or will it always exist alongside digital publishing?

Printed books will survive but certainly not be published for every title as a matter of course. And those that are printed, apart from bestsellers, will only be on the market for a short period of time – maybe a year or two. The ebook version will continue and be the only one available for years afterwards. Simple economics will govern this.

The aesthetically beautiful books will always be published in print editions, but fiction and narrative non-fiction titles, particularly those with niche, specialist markets, will increasingly be available only in ebook format.

One major issue governing the publishing and availability of print books will be the demise of the bricks and mortar bookseller, an entity that plays a critically important role in book marketing and merchandising. As booksellers become more rare, so do shelf space, display and the possibility for browsing and impulse buying.

How do you think the digital publishing age will affect libraries? Will libraries still exist?

Libraries will continue long into the future to play a vital social role in the community. Publishers who are at present refusing to supply ebooks to libraries, or who are supplying in very restrictive ways – higher prices, limited lending periods and volumes, limited catalogues (for example, backlist only) – are making a major mistake.

Libraries serve the information, study and entertainment needs of large segments of society that cannot afford to purchase all that they may like to, or, like students, need access to voluminous amounts of information. It does no good to deny people access to published content just because of their financial or occupational circumstances. ‘Cannibalisation’ is not a concept that makes any sense here.

As well, patrons who discover authors through their library will often purchase further works from that author through normal commercial channels. The library therefore is a prime marketing vehicle for publishers, and will become even more important the more bookseller shelf space dwindles in the future.

Copyright Wars - the Submissions

Here's a great critique of the submissions received by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) in response to its Copyright and the Digital Economy issues paper released last year.

I've now had the opportunity to read most of the submissions myself, especially the major ones from the peak owner and user bodies. There is still - after all the water that's gone under the bridge over the last 15 or so years, and after all we've learned about how things are actually travelling in the internet age compared to early theories and prognostications - complete polarisation of views between copyright owners and users.

This is not just remarkable, it's shameful, and in no way whatsoever is it the fault of the user community. Unhappily, the copyright owners are still in complete denial.

Let's take a cold, hard look at the owners' submissions:

The Australian Publishers Association (APA): 

About 15 to 20 years ago it was de rigueur for publishing submissions on copyright matters to forcefully resist any proposed legal expansion of library, educational and consumer rights over published content just because technology made it possible. Everything was new and foreboding. Giving ground an inch meant possibly losing the whole commercial territory. Everything was rhetoric and emotion. The battles were fierce, he language fiercer.

We've come a long way since then, but the APA obviously hasn't. Here is a submission that's been dusted off from the 1996 pile. It's an exquisite example of early internet thinking. It toes a hard conservative line. The only thing good about it is its consistency. It bangs an old drum and keeps banging it remorselessly.

For example, it's anti-library: 'In particular, the broad library and archive exceptions available under the Australian Act are having a detrimental effect on the ability of publishers to participate in the digital economy to the same extent as many of their overseas counterparts.' (p.6). 'Free exceptions in the Act already eat into the legitimate business of Australian publishers'. (p.1) I'm certain this would be news to most of them.

The APA considers these exceptions a legacy from the analogue era which should be repealed. Such allowed usages can now be licensed. To me this is akin to arguing that no city street or alley should be exempt from eTolls. There's no appreciation of the rights of users to a minimal level of free access for the public good; a public space that has not been privatised. Unsurprisingly, it recommends contracts be allowed to override the fair dealing exceptions. Copyrighted material is, after all, just like 'cement, biros and bread'. (p.32).

The APA has scoured the earth for the meanest, most user-unfriendly exceptions, and most of the time locates them in the UK.

It surprises me that publishers could possibly think that these dated ideas could still resonate in the wider community. Where is the broader, more liberal, way more sophisticated appreciation of the realities of how things are playing out now in the digital economy? Where's the sympathy, the evidence that the consumer has been listened to and the intellectual effort put into appreciating the contemporary zeitgeist and responding accordingly? That is, intelligently.

This submission is a museum piece. It deserves to be, and will be, completely ignored by the commission.

Copyright Agency/Viscopy:

Formerly known as CAL this organisation's raison d'etre is licensing, particularly the Statutory Licenses governing educational and government copying.  It plays a dead bat on all other issues raised by the Commission, exhibiting a frequent 'we are not aware of any problems' haughtiness. It also seems surprisingly unaware that schools and universities might have quite a few issues with aspects of the licences that govern their copying - which they definitely do. (In fact the universities want them abolished altogether!)

Once again the customer is being thoroughly ignored.

Copyright Agency ought to get out more!

The Australian Society of Authors:

This submission is an extremely poor effort. In fact it's simply terrible. It's got more 'No's' in it than a Tony Abbott speech. Plus it gets so many facts and fundamentals wrong. It's as hardline and miserable as the APA submission, but exhibits a whiny 'do we have to put up with this' weariness that kills it stone dead as a credible piece of work.

Let me quote:

'A first principle for literary creators is that copyright law is fundamentally a private right. It is for the author first and the national interest...second'. (p4)

'..copyright law is also a property right....This property may be dealt with, exploited only according to the wishes of the owner.' (p4)

'We take the view that all forms of Copyright Act exceptions have the capacity to impact negatively on the rights and interests of the creator.' (p1)

All these proclamations are simplistic and wrong. Good copyright regimes respect the necessary balance that must exist between creators' rights and the public good. The rights need to be limited and time-constrained, not excessive and perpetual.

You would think that, of all copyright beneficiaries, our nation's authors would be able to muster and articulate a far larger, generous and encouraging vision of the place of creativity in the nation's journey, and the necessary legal, social, educational and economic instruments to ensure its influence. What a missed opportunity.

Libraries are not the enemy. Readers are not all pirates and thieves.

(There's one good point in the submission however, which it shares with the one from the literary agents, and that is its call for some legal guarantee that a fair or stipulated portion of remuneration from that Statutory License should go to authors, and not be able to be overridden by publisher contract. The agents want 70%, which has no commercial basis, but a minimum of 25% to royalty-contracted authors where the publisher is paying substantial sums for artwork, would be absolutely justified).

Now let's take a look at the users' submissions: 

By far the best and most persuasive are the long and detailed submissions from Universities Australia and the Australian Digital Alliance/Australian Libraries Copyright Committee. Both submissions are around 80 pages each, but are are packed with fascinating detail about how the current, inflexible exceptions in the Act are simply not working in the best interests of the economy generally and education in particular.

They are both thoroughly sound and thoughtful documents, obviously written by people at the coalface with decades of painful and frustrating experience. 

If you've not the time to wade through these then the 5 page submission from the Society of University Lawyers (SOUL) nicely summarises the same message.

And the message is this:

'...copyright is operating as a roadblock. Australian researchers and innovators are prevented from making full use of technology that their colleagues in regimes with more flexible copyright exceptions take for granted'. (Universities Australia, p2)

'The educational statutory licenses...should be repealed. Fundamental changes in the way that content is used in universities have rendered [them] increasingly irrelevant....The vast majority of content used in Australian universities is purchased via direct licences with publishers. There is also a global move towards publishing academic content in open access repositories with the objective of enabling the content to be accessed without payment and without the need for a statutory license.' (UA, p3)

Given these sentiments it will be fascinating to watch what happens when the current three year stat license period is up for re-negotiation at the end of this year. For decades the universities have fronted up and signed new multi-year agreements. Will they do so again? Frankly, I doubt it. Journal publishers don't need the license, and textbook publishers' are rapidly moving to a direct licensing model of supply. Here's where the big publishers will win out. Copyright Agency will become simply a default aggregator for smaller publishers and colleges. Revenues from the stat license will no doubt plummet over the next five to ten years. There seems little need to abolish it. It will just fade way. 

Users want 'users rights', based on principles of balance and fairness, to be restored to a central place in our copyright regime, and most are in support of a radical overhaul of our current limited, narrowly defined and restrictive fair dealing provisions. There is widespread support for adopting a general purpose 'fair use' provision as exists in the US Act. 

The submission by reformist lawyers Kimberlee Weatherall and colleagues provides an excellent critique of the current shortcomings in our Act, and an excellent case for the US Fair Use provision being adopted into Australian law. Well worth reading. 

So, in summary, the ALRC is required to report to the government by November this year. If the quality and persuasiveness of the submissions is anything to go by, there seems little doubt that major reforms in favour of restoring a long overdue balance back into our copyright regime will be recommended.

Should authors and publishers be concerned? Absolutely not, but this won't stop them from mounting a ferocious political campaign when the time comes. What a waste.

Publishers, eBooks and Libraries: What a Mess!

For months now I've been following the various moves, manoeuvres and initiatives of the big trade publishers as they respond to the demand from public libraries to allow their patrons to borrow ebooks.

I've read just about everything serious that's been written - in journals, reports, surveys and blogs - and from the differing perspectives of the various players: publishers, librarians, suppliers, patrons, commentators.

I've spent a lot of time mulling over the differing points of view and examining whatever data I could get my hands on. I've talked to key people. I've tried to be independent and open-minded. I've tried very hard to unravel the complexities and identify the real nub of the issue.

But I've failed comprehensively! There is no complexity here; there is no depth or significance beyond the shimmering surface. What we have, once again, is another dramatic instance of the same old paralysing fear of the digital that is gripping the publishing community across so many dimensions of the business.

The fear can be simply stated: if library patrons can very easily borrow any ebook, without even physically visiting the library, why on earth would they bother to buy one? Ever! The whole emerging ebook business, the very future of the industry, would collapse overnight.

Thus the large publishers have responded with a great deal of caution and wariness:

HarperCollins introduced a 26-loan limit. Upon expiration, the library must chose to re-purchase the ebook or it disappears from their catalogue.

Random House and Hachette opted for institutional pricing - prices two to three times retail prices.

Penguin is trialling with some major US libraries a 'window' strategy - no sales to libraries in the first six months of publication, and a 12 month limit after that, unless re-purchased.

Macmillan and Simon and Schuster have so far chosen to not make their ebooks available to libraries at all.

Now, the library community, it would not surprise you, is furious! Read this wonderful and funny piece from US librarian and blogger Sarah Houghton.

The American Library Association has condemned the publishers' policies in no uncertain terms. "We are weary of faltering half steps and even more so of publishers that refuse to sell ebook titles to libraries at all....We can no longer stand by and do nothing while some publishers deepen the digital divide.' (Sept 14, 2012). Last week it issued a media kit to help librarians take their case to the public at large.

But you may wonder where is the understanding by librarians of the publishers' concerns? Where is their willingness to entertain the notion that the whole ebook ecology may well be under substantial threat if free ebooks are universally available on a patron's device of choice at the touch of a few key stokes?

But this vision of apocalypse is a fantasy.

The key issue in this debate is that the major ebook suppliers to libraries - OverDrive, 3M, Ingram, Baker and Taylor - all use the same 'one borrower at a time' policy enforced by a DRM-enabled Adobe Content Server. If a library buys only one copy of an ebook (which is nearly always the case) then this operates as a severe constriction on lending behaviour. There is always a queue - frequently weeks or months long if the title is popular. This is a major incentive for a frustrated borrower to purchase the title instead. (Recent research by the Pew Research Centre found that 52% of ebook borrowers at one point or another discovered that there was a waiting list).

Public libraries accept the 'one copy/one loan at a time' policy. There is no push to change it. (In academic and research libraries the situation is vastly different, as such institutions are virtually the entire market for the digital content. Annual subscription deals are done and there is mostly no limit to the number of concurrent users allowed access at any one time).

So why the publisher temerity? What on earth could Penguin be afraid of during the first six months of a title's life? And why the one year license? The demand profile of your standard trade title is well and truly waning by then. Most titles will not be re-purchased - the library budget is hardly generous - so why penalise the potential borrowers who've patiently waited?

And why HarperCollins' 26-loan limit? What real commercial significance does such a miserable constriction have?

And why the massive over-pricing by Hachette and Random? They are offering absolutely no additional features or functionality to the libraries or their patrons for this impost. No additional usage/loan allowances for example. 'Unrestricted perpetuity' and 'simultaneous release' should be part of the standard offer, not charged extra for.

I think a major part of the problem here is that many publishing executives have never really been sympathetic to the library mission in an emotional sense. Individual libraries have never been favoured 'customers' in the same way independent bookstores have been. They've belonged to huge and specialised library suppliers who demand generous trading terms and indulge in peculiar cataloguing and marketing practices few publishers understand. The vital social and cultural role of libraries goes unheralded. Even their role as preservers and enhancers of a healthy reading ecosystem: the critical role they play in bringing new authors to readers, who more often than not subsequently purchase those authors' works. And the very important part they play in fostering literacy, enlightenment and education to the whole of society, particularly the underprivileged and disadvantaged.

In a real sense the library network should be seen by publishers as a major marketing arm for their endeavours. (Here's an interesting tidbit: A recent survey by OverDrive found that 35% of respondents have purchased a book after borrowing it). 

They are partners, not a threat, and their ebook lending programs should be welcomed not feared.