Joe Follansbee, an independent publisher,  writer, journalist and blogger based in Seattle, has started a very interesting and disturbing thread on Linkedin about a problem with how ebooks are included in the set up that Kindle and Overdrive have with libraries in America, which I felt was important enough to share with you guys.

It seems that once again, in the USA at least, the Moloch of large corporations is riding rough shod over small companies and individuals, to the detriment of us all.  And certainly to our detriment when it precludes any ebooks written and published by small companies or individuals getting into public libraries.

Not exactly censorship, but it would have a very serious effect on the spread of non- mainstream literature if it isn’t addressed and changed.

It appears that this problem may well be local to the USA rather than international, or at the least, based on a misunderstanding between Overdrive/Kindle and public libraries.  If this last is the case, then the sooner that the interested parties get together and sort it out the better.

So, here is what Joe has had to say on this issue with his full permission to quote him:-

I’d like to relate my experience following up with my local library after hearing about the Overdrive deal to distribute Amazon ebooks via public and school libraries. As an independent publisher, I won’t benefit from this deal. But I believe Overdrive’s business practices will exclude a significant number of non-traditional publications teachers and library patrons use for historical research. This represents a step **backward**, not forward, as libraries pursue a mission of information curation and distribution for the benefit of their patrons.

I applied to Overdrive as publisher, hoping to make my ebook historical novel, Bet: Stowaway Daughter, available in the Seattle Public Library. I planned to give copies to the library, as I have done with print versions of my other books. (The novel is not available as a print book.) I live in Seattle, and I’ve supported the library for decades. The novel is strongly rooted in Seattle’s maritime history, and I believe teachers and patrons interested in local history would benefit. Seattle Public Library has a strong print collection of local history and local authors, as do most community-based libraries.

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Guest writer Blake Sanders casts an eye over the current situation with public libraries and ebooks.

Read on………………………..

Local Libraries Lending eBooks

With the rising trend of eReaders, public libraries have joined the masses with new downloadable eBooks and audio books for their customers. If you have a library card and a high speed internet connection you can download an eBook at the select libraries offering this service. These eBooks can be downloaded from the comfort of your home to smartphones, iPads, computers, and many other types of devices. Generally, eBook downloads are available in MOBI, ePUB, and PDF formats. Some branches also offer a selection of eReaders for check out including Kindles, Nooks, Kobo, and Sony readers.

How it Works
The checkout process for an eBook is easy, and eBooks are available on your eReader or computer for anywhere from seven to 14 days. Renewals are not available given that libraries are only allowed one copy of each eBook at a time. After the checkout period is over, the eBook expires and automatically returns to circulation for others to enjoy. This means no more remembering to return books and no more late fees. Happily, this also cuts back on competition for checking out new novels. Mostly new, popular fiction is available for downloading, but some older, classic titles might be available as well.

Getting Familiar

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Mackin educational Resources announce the release of the entire Britannica range of books in ebook form:

In a rather amazing move (given the current mania for protecting revenue streams with all manner of restrictive practices by most publishers), Mackin have just announced that the entire range of Britannica’s educational books will be released as ebooks, with the wonderful thing being that once paid for, these ebooks become the total property of the school, with no further charges.

Or as they put it in the press release announcing this move:

Featuring full content ownership, Britannica ebooks enable schools and libraries to own perpetual access to every Britannica ebook purchased with no ongoing annual subscription or platform fees. This broad span of ebook titles for PreK to adult allows students and educators continuous access from any Internet-connected computer or Windows-based mobile device and offers the ability to create password protected notes and bookmarks and print pages.

We are looking at a range of hundreds of ebooks here as well, not simply a couple of ebooks released under these terms as a sort of gesture, but a total commitment to the idea that books once purchased become the property of the person paying for them.  A truly dramatic move, and one that deserves nothing less than huge praise.

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Ebookanoid and The Digital Reader are loved by librarians:

Yesterday I Googled Ebookanoid, to see what other websites say about my blog – something I do every so often as part of keeping track on how ebookanoid is viewed in the rest of the web.

I was very pleased to discover that an amazing number of libraries  in America are suggesting via their online News Letters to their members and users that they read ebookanoid regularly in order to get useful information about ereading.   Good to know that they feel I write in a manner that is useful, especially to people who may well not be all that computer literate or fully fledged techies.

Equally pleasing to me was to discover that not only ebookanoid met with their approval, but also the blog run by my friend Nate the Great (The Digital Reader) was the other blog that they recommended.   Seems to me that between Nate’s blog, which tends to be rather more technical than ebookanoid, and my blog, which is specifically aimed at a non-technical readership, we more or less cover the entire area of ereaders and ebooks.

Good to have this confirmed in this manner.

So, many thanks to all those American Librarians who are supporting what we do in this manner….. It is appreciated.

Kindle owners (at least American ones) will no longer be banned from borrowing ebooks from libraries:

In a recent press release, Amazon have announced that they have been in discussion with Overdrive( the software company whose software is the backbone of all library ebook lending) and have reached agreement on a system to allow Kindle owners to join the rest of us and borrow ebooks from the local library.

This will be launched in the USA later this year, and I very much hope in the rest of the world shortly thereafter.

It will work in exactly the same way as the current ebook borrowing system works, with a couple of very interesting additions, which I suspect will help the sales of Kindles even more.  If you borrow an ebook for your Kindle, you will be able to make annotations and so on on it, which will be stored in your account with Amazon, so that should you borrow that particular ebook again, all your notes will be available to you, as they will be should you later purchase that ebook from Amazon.

Basically, you will have all the Whispersync functions available to you that you normally have with any ebook you purchase from Amazon for your Kindle.

This will be available for all models of the Kindle ereader, not only the most recent models.

By this action, Amazon will effectively removed what was becoming a considerable block in their Kindle sales, as more and more libraries start lending ebooks to their clients, currently only in ePub format, and thus not accessible to Kindle owners.

You have to give it to Amazon, they are not prone to locking themselves out of any market that looks as if it might earn them a dollar or two.

You can’t read ebooks from your library on a Kindle:

This simple statement may well conceal a growing problem for Amazon in relation to the future sales of their Kindle ereaders.

Whilst the Kindle ereader is currently the world’s best selling ereader,  is a superb piece of equipment, well made, easy to use (seriously easy to use), reasonably  priced and generally a device that one would recommend without any hesitation to anyone wanting a good, dedicated ereader, it does suffer from a problem that the people at Amazon had never considered when they decided to use their own propriety ebook format with the Kindle, and this is the exponential growth of public libraries all over the developed world, who now offer their members ebooks as well as paper books.

But the wrong ebook format…..

The problem being, the format that libraries all over the world use for the ebooks they offer is the effective industry standard, ePub.   And Kindle ereaders can’t work with ePub formatted ebooks.  Thus Kindle owners are excluded from this source of ebooks to read.

Which is obviously a sad situation, and one that I imagine Amazon is concerned to address before to long.

Computer literate folk…. not a problem, but the rest of us?

I know that those of you out there who are handy with computers, Read full story »