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Long thread incoming on a subject I've been giving a lot of interested thought to lately: libraries and ebooks! 1/?
So, I learned just last year what the average big publishing house's pricing model is for ebook sales to libraries. This thread basically blew my mind. (The whole thing is worth reading, but this is where she gets into the nitty-gritty of numbers.) https://twitter.com/kidsilkhaze/status/1115295950539456513
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As a reader, a library worker, *and* an author/indie publisher, I've done a lot of thinking from both sides of the question about how a better pricing model could be worked out that would be fair to everyone. 3/?
I mean, I get the publisher's point of view. They feel if they sell an ebook for a simple list price and the library can loan it out indefinitely, they're getting nothing for an indefinite amount of readers reading their book. 4/?
However, I *don't* think the solution is to charge libraries a gouged price repeated every two years, which might end up discouraging them from buying ebooks or at least limiting how many they can buy. 5/?
I wondered: how about a system where libraries paid a low fee—say 99¢ or $1—each time an ebook was borrowed? This might be easier on libraries' budgets, but still give the author/publisher a small steady stream of income. 6/?
If a book was wildly popular the checkout fees would add up over time—but maybe that would be offset a little by libraries *not* having to pay $50-$70 upfront for other mildly popular ebooks that are only checked out once in a while. 7/?
Well, lo and behold: I learned this month that OverDrive has actually introduced "cost-per-circ" titles that work very similarly to what I imagined (I was even pretty close about the fee). However, it looks like right now this is limited to "select" titles from publishers. 8/?
Could this be an initial experiment with a new business model? I think that would be pretty cool if it's successful. But that got me started on another train of thought: indie ebooks in OverDrive. 9/?
When we distribute to OverDrive through Kobo, Smashwords et al, we can set our own list prices; but how many checkouts do libraries get? How often do they have to repurchase? I'd love to hear from #librarians, #indieauthors etc who know any details about this! 10/?
Another thought: would libraries possibly be more willing to take a chance on indie ebooks if they knew it would only cost them when the books were actually checked out? 11/?
I'd love to see more quality indie ebooks in digital library catalogs. I think it would be cool if indies could lead the way in experimenting and figuring out a better pricing model. Could we do this if we had more control over how OverDrive sells our books to libraries? 12/?
