An open letter to America’s publishers from ALA President Maureen Sullivan September 24, 2012, CHICAGO — The following open letter was released by American Library Association (ALA) President Maureen Sullivan regarding Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin refusal to provide access to their e-books in U.S. libraries. The open letter states: It’s a rare thing [...]

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INFODocket reported this news yesterday about Hatchette prices rising 220% on OverDrive beginning October 1, 2012.  For the full post, see INFODocket.  Dear Library Partner, Hachette will be raising its eBook prices on October 1, 2012 on their currently available eBook catalog (~3,500 eBook titles with release dates of April 2010 and earlier). On average [...]

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Andrew Richard Albanese from Publisher’s Weekly wrote a very nice article about life with eBooks in public libraries.  I have clipped a couple of paragraphs below.  The fulltext is available on the Publisher’s Weekly site. Begin clip: Discussions between libraries and the big six publishers over e-book lending have grabbed headlines in 2012, but despite [...]

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E-Books Drive Revenue Growth Across Book Trade in January 2012 – Digital Book World JK Rowling’s Pottermore Breaks eBook Lockdown, Might Change eBooks Forever – Huffington Post LG Begins Mass Production of first flexible , plastic eInk displays – Extreme Tech An Academic Spring – American Libraries A Look at Students using eTextbooks (Infographic) – [...]

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Library Publishing Report Suggests Partnerships, Creating Positions   – Library Journal Aloha Encyclopaedia Britannica Print Edition – Information Today Thinking more about ebooks and libraries and what big publishers should do – The Shatzkin Files Libraries as Community Publishers:  How to Turn the Tables – Publishers Weekly How to Protect Copyright Is Key Topic at [...]

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Ebook Talks Continued:  ALA Meets with Distributors – eContent blog Boopsie Approaches Integration in Its Own Way; New Competitor Emerges at PLA | Digital Shift Ebook Providers, ILS Vendors Move Rapidly to Remove Friction From E-Lending; OverDrive APIs Coming in April Digital Shift OverDrive’s Library eReader is Better Than 3M’s Library eReader – The Digital [...]

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Bobbi Newman, who blogs at Librarian by Day, has an excellent editorial post about current Ebook conditions in public libraries.  She questions whether libraries should step back and wait for better options, quoting several other prominent bloggers on the subject.  It’s an interesting thought piece from a public library perspective.  The comments are just as [...]

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Librarians Feel Sticker Shock as Price for Random House Ebooks Rises as Much as 300 Percent – The Digital Shift ALA Issues Statement Asking Random House to Reconsider eBook Increase – INFODocket ALA calls on Random House to reconsider major ebook price increase – ALA Random House Not So Random with Library Ebook Price Increases – Agnostic [...]

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It’s been coming for months.  Today Penguin announced it has ended its relationship with OverDrive.  Starting tomorrow, it will no longer sell e-books and audiobooks to OverDrive for library lending.  Interestingly, ALA and Big Six publishers met last week to discuss library e-book lending.  In an article in paidcontent.org, Laura Hazard Owen points out ALA’s [...]

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Yesterday, ALA released a press release summarizing the meetings between ALA President Molly Raphael, an ALA delegation and representatives from publishers Penguin, Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster and Perseus.  It’s a great summary of the meeting.  The discussions show promise!  Here is the text, copied in full from the ALA press release: American Library [...]

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