| Many serious readers have dreamed about either living in a bookstore or sleeping overnight. You can read whatever you want having access to thousands of books, magazines and newspapers. A bookstore in Japan has listened and are in the process of organizing a sleepover. According to Rocknews “a little over a year ago, someone in Japan tweeted that they would "love to live in Junkudo", one of the country's largest book store chains. Little did they know that someone at that very company would not only see the tweet but organized a sleepover called "Try Living in Junkudo." The bookstore has an online application if you are interested in checking out. There will be a grand total of 10 lucky people (five pairs) to spend the night inside the Sennichimae Junkudo store in Osaka. The event will occur on October 31st and will last the entire night. Best of all, it will cost absolutely nothing to spend the night, but you will be expected to buy at least three books or magazines. |
Monday, September 28, 2015
Do you Dream of Sleeping Overnight in a Bookstore?
Google Play Increases the Size of Apps to 100 MB
| If you have ever downloaded an app or game from Google Play before that is larger than 50 MB you often need to download an expansion file. This is all going to change with a new update to Google Play that will let developers submit apps that are 100 MB or less that don’t require an OBB file. Many people have a large disdain for apps that are not ready to play as soon as they are downloaded. The increase from 50 MB to 100 MB will be a boon for app developers who struggle to keep things under the limits and often forgo adding critical features that the community wants. The increase in size might be good for developers but it will certainly increase the amount of space apps take up in your lower end phones or tablets in the future. I know plenty of people who can only install a few apps on their phone before they have to uninstall some stuff for every new app they want to install. This change also will likely encourages bad code and overall bloat. |
Young Kids Want their Parents to Read to Them
| Young children are quite enamored with story time in the evening, but parents are finding it hard to meet their needs. When parents do read to their kids, they tend to back off when their young ones become independent readers. A recent survey, by YouGov for the children's publisher Scholastic, revealed last week that many parents stop reading to their children when they become independent readers, even if the child isn't ready to lose their bedtime story. The study found that 83% of children enjoyed being read aloud to, with 68% describing it as a special time with their parents. Life is busy and sometimes parents don’t have time to read to their children. 2,000 parents responded to a survey that was produced by Settle Stories, an arts and heritage charity. The data stated that only 4% read a bedtime story to their child every night, with 69% saying they did not have the time. In February a study by TomTom of 1,000 parents of children aged one to 10 found that 34% never read a bedtime story to their children, with 29% blaming late working and 26% the daily commute. Reading to your child establishes stronger bonds and promotes a love for reading. The last thing you want, as a parent, is the classroom to be the first place where a child has access to books. |
Ra: sound art with pyrite sun discs
| The video below introduces an unsual sound art piece based on a Raspberry Pi. Named Ra – as in the sun god of the ancient Egyptians – it’s a little like a record player, except that it doesn’t play records; instead, it “plays” pyrite discs, a rare kind of mineral deposit. Its creator is Dmitry Morozov, a “Russian media-artist, musician and engineer of strange-sounding mechanisms.” He describes Ra as a sound object/synthesizer.
Usually, pyrite, or fool’s gold, forms cuboid crystals. But in coal mines near Sparta, Illinois (and nowhere else on Earth, so far as anyone knows), it forms discs with grooves radiating out from the centre, and these are known as pyrite dollars or pyrite suns. Ra uses a laser to scan the surface of a pyrite disc as it is turned, and represents the mineral’s superficial irregularities as sound. Cuboid and discoid crystals of pyrite Dmitry was inspired to create this piece of sound art by his reading about the preservation of the earliest sounds recorded in fragile media such as wax. The projects he was learning about all used lasers, and he set out to make his own laser sound reader that would be able to produce sound from unorthodox irregular surfaces. A DIY laser pickup “reads” the surface of the pyrite as it is turned by a stepper motor. Its output is passed to a Raspberry Pi which synthesizes it and applies various filters and effects, and plays the resulting sound through a single speaker. Ten control knobs and nine switches allow a user to alter the speed and direction of the disc’s motion and the parameters of the sound synthesis and processing carried out by the Raspberry Pi. There’s a little more information on Dmitry’s website, and the object itself is in the Sound Museum in St Petersburg. Ra, a sound art piece that synthesizes sound from the surface irregularities of pyrite disks As you’ll have heard if you played the video above with sound, the audio representation that Ra makes of the patterns in the material is an eerie cinematic sci fi-like soundtrack with with long, sustained tones interspersed with short and distinctive motifs of rhythm and melody that alter as they repeat. It’s unexpectedly appealing, to me at least, and leaves me wondering what the synthesizer would make of other substrates. The post Ra: sound art with pyrite sun discs appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Amazon Disables Send to Kindle on Rival Bookstores
| Amazon is in the process of disabling their Send to Kindle functionality on competing bookstores. The Seattle company recently changed their terms of service that is having a reverberating effect on the e-book industry. Last March Amazon augmented their cloud system that requires users to subscribe to Prime in order to store photos and video. If you are not a Prime member, it costs $11.99 per year. When this new system went live Amazon changed their their terms of service for a number of things, which included a new clause that bars 3rd party companies from using "Send to Kindle" or “Send to Email". The terms now state "You may not charge directly or indirectly to distribute content via the Service. You may not use the Service to send infringing, unauthorized, or otherwise illegal content." Amazon is using the augmentation to the TOS to suspend the ability or to impose arbitrary limits on how much content can be delivered to your Kindle e-Reader, Fire tablet or any of their apps. The entire 3rd party book selling industry has been feeling the effects of Amazon. A couple of months ago Baen Books announced that they no longer could send e-books to the Kindle and a small time later The Pragmatic Bookshelf said the same thing. Today, O’Reily is the latest company to proclaim that Amazon has disabled them. O’Reily has stated on their website that this is the last day they have the ability to deliver paid content to the Kindle. In order to cushion the blow they are having a 50% sale on everything in their store. I don’t have any confirmation, but considering some ecosystems such as Netgalley or Smashwords can deliver e-books to the Kindle, but some companies can’t, leads me to believe that Amazon is adopting a favored nation policy or are licensing access to Send to Kindle in return for money. |
Library Wars Short Film Shows the Future of Libaries
| Library Wars demonstrates the future of the libraries role in Japan in the year 2020. This new short film is a precursor to much larger cinematic experience that is entitled Library Wars: The Last Mission and will open in Japan on October 10. This short film does not require you to watch anything in advance. The premise is actually fairly interesting. A new law threatens to clamp down on freedom of expression. Iku Kasahara joins the Library Defense Force, a military unit dedicated to protecting books from being confiscated. You can think of it as a romantic comedy that is cenetred around the lives of people working in a library. I would recommend checking out this nine minute short film, it was composed with no dialog and just has music and subtitles.
|
Fire HD 10 Comparison Review vs Lenovo Tab 2 A10 Tablet
| Ever since Amazon released their new 10-inch Android tablet, the Fire HD 10, I’ve been saying that it isn’t a good buy. There are better tablets on the market for the money, namely the Lenovo Tab 2 A10 tablet. I just posted a Lenovo Tab 2 10 review a couple days ago, and there’s no […] |
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Self-Published Authors Have Less e-Book Distribution Options
| Self-published authors are facing major difficulties in selling their e-books online. Many bookstores are closing or scaling back and Amazon changed the rules for their Kindle Unlimited program, paying authors by pages read instead of when a book is opened. What is an author to do? Oyster announced last week that they were closing their company in early 2016 and most of the company founders were hired to work at Google Play Books. Oyster had raised over $17 million in two years and was unable to make the Netflix for e-books concept work. Their investors were unwilling to give them more time to pivot the company in a different direction so they sold everything to Google. Oyster, as many of you know was one of Smashwords clients. Last month Scribd proclaimed that they were losing money on the Romance and other categories and responded by banishing over 200,000 self-published books. They plan on still maintaining a robust catalog of romance books and will manually add and remove books to keep that section fresh. Almost every other genre though will be a victim of the "great self-publishing purge of 2015." Google Play Books used to be a viable option for self-published authors, but due to rampant abuse of their Partner Program the company decided to halt all new registrations until they could put mechanisms in place to prevent piracy. If you haven’t heard about piracy problems facing Play Books, you can read all about it HERE. Suffice to say fake authors such as Flamanca Hollanda have posted a ton of books and generated thousands of dollars in sales, which Google gets a cut. Upon closer inspection these books were really written by legitimate authors such as Sylvia Day, Orson Scott Card or Tom Clancy. Earlier in the year Amazon changed the way authors were paid out who participated in Kindle Unlimited, which is their Netflix for e-books subscription program. Users pay a small monthly fee and have access to over a hundred thousand e-books, primarily from independent authors. In order for an author to enroll themselves in KU, they need to participate in Kindle Direct Publishing Select, which grants Amazon exclusivity on a participating e-book. Basically, it means that you can’t sell an enrolled title on Smashwords, Kobo Writing Life or Nook Press. Amazon now will pay authors based on pages read, which is not resonating well with most authors. This is because the payment per page read could be as low as $0.006, meaning that an author will have to write a 220-page book – and have every page read by every person downloading it – to make $1.30. Casey Lucas, a literary editor who works with self-publishing authors, says she has lost six clients already. They have decided to stop writing after "estimating a 60–80% reduction in royalties". One of the drawbacks of Amazons new program is that by placing the emphasis on length of book rather than quality of book, Amazon is shutting out more than just erotica and serialized short fiction authors. Nonfiction authors and especially children's book authors – whose works tend toward the shorter side – are also going to be hard hit by this change. You can look at it this way, Amazon wants to low-ball authors with decreased payouts and how can Oyster, Scribd or any bookseller compete when Amazon can fleece authors and give the savings to readers? Indie authors continue to have a large pool of companies to distribute their e-books into, but this pool is turning into a pond. Most of the Amazon alternatives do not have the readership base or the sales to make registering an account and submitting your content worth it. Plenty of authors have told me that their Kobo Writing Life, Nook Press and iBooks sales are virtually non-existent. This is primarily due to Amazon controlling 75% of the book market in the US and 95% in the United Kingdom. If you are an author who has written less than 3 books, I recommend going exclusive with KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited. You may not make a ton of money but Amazon knows that there’s a large number of authors who’d be willing to receive less pay in exchange for broader readership. |
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Lenovo Tab 2 A10 Android Tablet Review (+Video)
| Review Date: September 2015 – Review unit purchased from Amazon Overview The Lenovo Tab 2 10 was released in May 2015. It’s a 10-inch Android tablet that runs Android 5.0 Lollipop. It’s among Lenovo’s A series tablets that also includes 7 and 8-inch models. The Tab 2 10 is the best of the bunch. It […] |
Publishers Initiate Predatory Pricing on e-Books to Destroy the Market
| Major publishers have gained the ability to dictate their own prices on e-books and this has dramatically increased the cost to the customer. In many cases the hardcover is actually cheaper now than the digital version and this is because of predatory pricing. Publishers have been making moves to capitalize on the convenience and instant delivery of e-Books by making them more expensive than their printed counterparts. I have talked to many high ranking executives off the record and they have told me that they foresee the destruction of the e-book market and are anticipating higher profits on print down the road. There are many companies that are heavily involved in the e-book sector that have went out of business over the course of the last year. Sony killed off their consumer e-reader division and abandoned the Reader Store in every country, but Japan. Diesel eBooks, Oyster, Entitle, Txtr, Blinkbox Books and others have all closed up shop because e-books are no longer profitable. The reason why these companies went out of business is because of predatory pricing from the publishers. If you have never heard of this term, its basically a pricing strategy that is intended to drive competitors out of the market, or create barriers to entry for potential new competitors. The fewer e-book stores that exist, the less sales the format generates, which is resulting in a resurgence of trade paperback and hardcover sales at the expense of e-books. The Association of American Publishers, using collected data from around 1,200 publishers, found that e-book sales dropped 10% during the first five months of 2015. They also found that e-books generated 24.9% of publisher revenues between January and May, down from a peak of 26.5% in the same period last year. The Kindle "has disappeared to all intents and purposes", said James Daunt the head of Britain's biggest book chain Waterstones. He also reported that print book sales lifted by 5% in December 2014 and that they plan on opening at least a dozen stores in 2015 . Foyles, the London chain of bookstores, said sales of physical books had risen 11% last Christmas. Across the pond, Australian bookseller Jon Page of Page and Pages said "Sales were up 3% last year, and will increase by 6% in 2015, which is fantastic because for the last three years we'd actually seen a decline." United States bookseller Barnes and Noble announced that their "Core" comparable bookstore sales, which exclude sales of NOOK products, increased 1.1% in the first quarter of 2016, while Nook product sales declined 28.0%. Likely the most compelling case of predatory pricing for publishers is in your local libraries e-book collection. Very early on, publishers realized that e-books do not have as much legal protections as physical books do, because they are considered a service and not a product. This has resulted in the e-book cost increasing by over by 800% and limits on the number of checkouts being imposed before the library has to buy a new copy. Real books last MUCH longer than this, at a fraction of the price to the library. The sad truth is, e-book sales are falling all over the world, but libraries don’t have the luxury to abandon buying them and are at the mercy of the publishers. Print is doing so well now, that publishes are heavily investing in infrastructure. According to a New York Times article Hachette added 218,000 square feet to a warehouse last year, Simon & Schuster is expanding a New Jersey distribution facility, and Penguin Random House has invested nearly $100 million in expanding and updating its warehouses. In a few short years most digital bookstores will be out of business and Amazon and Kobo will likely be the only players left. The destruction of the digital book market has already been set in motion and there is nothing that can prevent the format from being completely annihilated. |
Notion Ink Cain Signature Black Edition Now Available
| When the tablet industry started to blossom in 2011, one of the companies to really make a splash was Notion Ink. It was the first Android device that incorporated a screen from Pixel QI, which allowed you to use it in direct sunlight. The company has always done some really cool things with design and this is very evident in their new product, the Notion Ink Cain Signature Black Edition. Notion Ink Cain Signature Black Edition, sports a 10.1-inch multi-touch IPS display with 800 x 1280 pixels and Scratch Resistant Glass. It is powered by a 1.33GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F processor with 646MHz Intel HD Graphics with 2GB RAM. On the storage front, this device comes in 32GB/64GB of inbuilt storage with an expansion option of up to 128GB via microSD card slot. There are two cameras on the front and rear, both are 2 MP. The Notion Ink Cain Signature Black Limited Edition is being billed as a “2-in-1”, since it comes with a magnetic cover with integrated keyboard and multitouch trackpad. The device also comes with ProPen, which is an “active stylus”, as the company calls it. The ProPen allows functions such as scribbling, sketch and drawing. It has been designed with a tip that can be turned either clockwise or counter-clockwise in order to adjust the sensitivity. Currently you buy can buy this device via Snapdeal. The 64 GB variant is available for $317 USD and a 32 GB model will be released soon for $279.00 |
Friday, September 25, 2015
The Atavist is Closing their Mobile App
| The Atavist publishes a monthly magazine and has a self-publishing portal where tens of thousands of storytellers, from giant companies to small nonprofits create their own branded magazines every month. Today, Atavist has confirmed that they are ditching their mobile apps and focusing on web content. Many people have not really heard of Atavist before, unless you have self-published long form articles. The company has been around for over five years and they publish their own original content. Atavist juxtaposes various digital forms that lies in the space between long narrative magazine articles and traditional books and e-books — a bit like music singles in iTunes — Atavist presents stories longer and in more depth than typical magazines, less expensive and more dynamic than traditional books. Today, the founders of Atavist have confirmed that they are abandoning app developed and instead focusing on the web. “Five years ago, a native app seemed like the best way to design and showcase their stories. But since then, they say, "the web caught up." "Not only was there very little we could do in a native app that we couldn't do on the web, but the structures of the native app environment made it nearly impossible to design well for both," they write. Atavist's decision to move away from a native app is consistent with what's happened to some other digital first upstarts that have tried to launch an iPad magazine or app. The aptly named The Magazine, an experiment on iOS, folded. Circa, a news app on Android and iOS, shut down earlier this year. The Daily, an iPad-only magazine created by News Corp, didn't last two years. Apple itself shuttered its Newsstand app with the advent of iOS 9, and petitioned all of their former Newsstand publishers to gravitate towards the new platform. Nowadays stories are shared via social media and can gain some heavy traction when featured on Hackernews or Reditt. The Atavist found having a reliance on apps made it impossible for their stories to gain any meaningful traction. Now that they are focusing on the web, things hopefully will improve for them. |
Kobo Glo HD and Kobo Touch 2.0 Covers and Cases Roundup
| This year Kobo has released two new ebook readers, the Kobo Glo HD with its 300 ppi screen and the entry-level Kobo Touch 2.0. The good thing about both of them is they share the exact same dimensions, so covers and cases are interchangeable between the two different models—that’s something that rarely happens. If you […] |
Facebook Launches New Tools to Appeal to Bloggers
| Facebook has just released a new set of tools that will appeal to people who are writing original content for the social media network. The new update you can add a cover photo that represents what your note is all about. You can caption and resize photos, and format your text into headers, quotes or bullets. To see notes your friends have written or write your own, visit Facebook.com/notes or search "notes" on mobile. |
Oaxis Announces inkCase i6 e-Ink Screen for the iPhone
| Oaxis has announced a brand new product that will make long reading sessions on your iPhone extremely viable. The inkCase i6 adds an 4.3 inch E Ink display to your iPhone 6, adding conveniences and better readability. inkCase i6 connects wirelessly to your iPhone 6 through Bluetooth. Reading on inkCase makes your reading more enjoyable with the paper like display quality and helps you conserve your iPhone's battery. Not only can you read books on the secondary screen but you can also access push notifications, weather updates and email. The always on display ensure you will not miss another important notification; messages, news and other notifications. The case is available for preorder for $99 and will start shipping this November. Once its available for the masses the price will increase to $129. Display Size 4.3″ E Ink Display Resolution 480 x 800 Pixel 217 dpi Connectivity Bluetooth Low Energy (4.0) Built In Memory 128 MB Built In Battery 460mAh Physical Dimensions (attached to iPhone 6) 140.7 x 69.5 x 11mm / 5.54″ x 2.74″ x 0.43″ |
HarperCollins Just Released an Audiobook App
| Findaway has partnered with HarperCollins to enable Harper customers to purchase any of the more than 6,100 audiobooks published by HarperCollins directly on www.hc.com and playback the content on any iOS or Android device through the HC Audio app. HC Audio is powered by Findaway's audiobook distribution platform AudioEngine. "We are uniquely positioned to serve HarperCollins as a technology partner," said Mitch Kroll, Co-Founder & CEO of Findaway. "We are proud to deepen our long-standing partnership with HarperCollins as they expand the market to directly serve audiobook listeners worldwide with their new offering." |
Windows 10 Core Starter Pack for Raspberry Pi 2
| When we released Raspberry Pi 2 in February this year, we announced that Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core, a version of Windows 10 for small Internet-of-Things devices that may or may not have a screen, would be available for the device. Since the Windows Insider release of Windows 10 Core in August, we’ve found that lots of people looking for a Pi 2 are arriving at sellers’ websites from sites catering for Windows developers. Many Windows developers are coming to Raspberry Pi for the first time; we couldn’t be more pleased to welcome them, and we hope they’ll encounter much success and plenty of fun building with Raspberry Pi. Yesterday, Microsoft and Adafruit announced the release of a new Windows 10 Core Starter Pack for Raspberry Pi 2.
The pack is available with a Pi 2 for people who are are new to Raspberry Pi or who’d like a dedicated device for their projects, or without one for those who’ll be using a Pi they already own. The box contains an SD card with Windows 10 Core and a case, power supply, wifi module and Ethernet cable for your Pi; a breadboard, jumper wires and components including LEDs, potentiometers and switches; and sensors for light, colour, temperature and pressure. There’s everything you need to start building. The Windows 10 Core Starter Pack website provides very clear directions for setting up your PC and programming environment and your Raspberry Pi. It also has links to tutorials for four carefully chosen projects to get you up and running on hackster.io. You can buy the Windows 10 Core Starter Pack from Adafruit, and Microsoft will be showing it off at a demo area in the Maker Shed at World Maker Faire in New York this weekend, where there will also be packs available to purchase. The post Windows 10 Core Starter Pack for Raspberry Pi 2 appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
Lets celebrate #BannedBooksWeek!
| By Sheila Henline, a librarian and Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive. (ED. Note: for optimal enjoyment press play before reading…)
Every year libraries and librarians, booksellers, publishers and authors become involved in #BannedBooksWeek, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. The importance of choice is crucial when accessing information and reading. This year Banned Books Week celebrates Young Adult Books! "Young Adult books are challenged more frequently than any other type of book" said Judith Platt, chair of the Banned Books Week National Committee. She states: "These are the books that speak most immediately to young people, dealing with many of the difficult issues that arise in their own lives, or in the lives of their friends. These are the books that give young readers the ability to safely explore the sometimes scary real world. This Banned Books Week is a call to action, to remind everyone that young people need to be allowed the freedom to read widely, to read books that are relevant for them, and to be able to make their own reading choices." One such example this year is the book Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers. A South Carolina high school pulled this title from their summer reading list after a parent complained about references to a drug deal, drug use and sexual assault/attempted rape. The Charleston (SC) County Public Library received 1,000 copies of this book, donated by an online donation drive at BookRiot. Students asking for a copy at this library, receive one to keep for free! As we observe Banned Book Week, take time to reflect on the many titles that have been questioned and even censored in some communities. OverDrive contains a wide variety of books that have fought to stay on the bookshelves. As for me, I plan on eReading Some Girls Are and then I'll settle in with an eBook of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Be sure to check a banned book out today!
 |
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight Plus will be Announced Soon
| Barnes and Noble is in the late stages of announcing the first e-reader they have produced in two years. The Nook Glowlight Plus will heavily compete against the Kindle Voyage and Kobo GLO HD in terms of overall specs and a solid price point. The Nations largest bookseller has begun to make changes to their main website in order to gear up for the full product listing. Currently they have a placeholder section for the Nook Glowlight Plus, which is said to comprise of an e-Ink Carta screen and a resolution of 1430 x 1080 and 300 PPI. Barnes and Noble has been biding their time for an announcement for the new e-Reader and they basically just wanted the internet fanfare to die down from all the new products that Apple and Amazon have produced in the last few weeks. |
Libraries Report 2015 Has Been the Best Year Ever for e-Books
| The e-reader and consumer e-book industry has hit the proverbial glass ceiling in terms of sales. One of the segments that has been consistently on the upward trend has been libraries. A recent report by the Library Journal has stated that 95% of all US libraries have an e-book collection. That's up from 89% in both 2013 and 2012, when researchers thought that adoption had plateaued for good. The average number of e-books carried was 20,244 by each library, but that of course was skewed toward large libraries. Medium sized libraries statistically had around 10,434 titles. Over 10 different libraries in the US and Canada had over one million digital loans in 2014, with two libraries lending out two million e-Books. This number is poised to double in 2015 as Overdrive, 3M and Baker & Taylor gain more market share. One of the greatest success stories of 2015 has been the rise of Hoopla has being a serious contender in the library space. They started out the year with only 13,000 titles and only a few hundred libraries were dealing with them. Hoopla now has an extensive collection of over 350,000 titles from companies like Disney, DC Comics, Universal Music, and Starz. Over 800 library systems are doing business with Hoopla, which service over 1,000,000 registered users! Hoopla is signing up 15 – 30 library systems every month and service between 1,400 – 3,000 new users every day! The Hoopla business model is quite different from most other companies in the digital library space. They make their entire collection available and libraries only pay when a user borrows the title. Overdrive on the other hand sells each title individually. If you want 10 copies of an e-book, you better be prepared to pay the money in advance. 2015 has been very kind to Overdrive, the undisputed king of the digital library space. Back in March they were acquired by Rakuten, the owners of Kobo. They got a huge cash injection and will be expanding the empire into new markets. Overdrive has the largest footprint out of any company that markets digital content to libraries. They have a presence in almost all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Hadie Bartholomew, Communications Manager at Overdrive said “Every month we add thousands and thousands of titles to our catalog and recently added hundreds of thousands of Smashwords titles” One of the keys to Overdrives success is that they are the only company to offer Kindle e-books. They have an exclusive agreement with Amazon to provide libraries with the ability to deliver books to Kindle e-readers and Fire tables. They also are very active in the international library scene and have a very active blog. Baker and Taylor has also been experiencing tremendous growth over the course of 2015. Michael Bills, the Sales Director, Digital Products said “We have well over 2000 Axis 360 customers now and this is up from about 1200 a year ago. Our growth, and our expansion into Canada in partnership with Whitehots, is gaining traction as more libraries begin to realize the advantages of ordering print and digital formats at the same time from a single vendor.” He went on to say “We continue to sign new supplier agreements, and broke the 1 million mark for e-Books available for library sale this year, along with an additional 50,000 digital audiobook titles. The number of users and circulation are growing year-over-year at existing accounts, and we also are seeing a surge of new patron activation since the release of the all-in-one Axis 360 app earlier this month.” The 3M Cloud Library has been dramatically improving their catalog of e-books. In 2015 the company now has 587,562 titles in their system, whereas in 2014 they only had 419,358. Heather McCormack is the Collection Development and Publisher Relations Manager at 3M. She told me “The most obvious signs of change for us in 2015 are overseas, in the UK and Australia, where we're signing publishers left and right, both Big Five subsidiaries and powerful indies (HarperCollins UK/AU, S. & S. UK/AU, Faber & Faber, Faber Factory, Canongate, Allen & Unwin). In the United States, W.W. Norton joined in August. That's the biggest news on our shores, really. When the American comics industry in the guise of DC and Marcel offers most of their catalogs to libraries in e, I think library patrons will have an excellent level of access. Not equal to print, but more than decent.” The High Cost of e-books The companies that are responsible for making sure digital content is available to all libraries are doing brisk business, but libraries budgets are being stretched thin. This is primarily because all of the major publishers have different revenue models, some e-books expire after a certain number of loans, whereas others cost dramatically more than the print edition. Michael Connelly novel Burning Room costs $14.99 on Amazon, but libraries are paying $106.00 per copy. John Grisham's Grey Mountain costs $15.99 for a retail edition but costs libraries $85.00. James Larue of the Douglas County Library system recently said "libraries and taxpayers who support libraries are being ripped off in ways that not only outrageously inflate the payment to publishers (surely their costs are not three times greater to provide the book to us than to the consumer), they also greatly reward distributors. The result? At a time when about half of our patrons use e-readers, we barely offer 10% of our collections to them in their preferred format. When does a vicious price become complicity between publisher and distributor, to the detriment of the public?" The Digital Content Working Group co-chair Carolyn Anthony told members ALA officials were “continuing to dialogue with representatives from the Big Five publishers,” and that e-book pricing remained a major issue. “We generally believe that the current pricing models are not sustainable, and that libraries cannot develop collections of critical size if they’re paying $90 per title or re-buying titles every year,” Anthony said. However, she added, a number of independent and smaller publishers are proving “much more flexible on terms,” and “much more eager” to work with libraries. “That’s a very good sign,” Anthony said. “Maybe this is an avenue that will help us develop richer and deeper digital collections.” Wrap Up Libraries are serving the needs of the community more than ever before. Every branch I have spoken with have told me that 2015 has been the most successful year ever, in terms of their growing collections and the number of checkouts. "Demand for e-books continues to grow – in fact, it's our fastest growing area of circulation at Toronto Public Library with 3.5 million checkouts last year alone and this figure will double at the end of 2015" said Vickery Bowles , City Librarian at Toronto Public Library. There are still major challenges facing libraries, such as the high cost of e-books and how to better showcase collections in apps and websites. Dispite all of this, 2015 has been the best year on record in terms of the companies that serve libraries and the number of checkouts for digital content. |
