Seattle Public Library and "eBooks Now!"

I had been planning to have this blog be simply a list of all the libraries and groups that were doing self-hosted platforms, or pursuing direct relationships with publishers, even if it was on a vendor hosted platform.  But there just don't seem to be enough projects going on that would justify a regular blog, and anyway, the point has been to highlight library-driven innovation, which can take a lot of different forms.

So I'm going to expand it a bit more to cover a lot more library-driven development in the eBook sphere.  That means more stuff to post about!  But, seeing as how they're a pet project of mine, self-hosted projects will still be highlighted more often.  Because it's my blog, and I make executive decisions like that.

I've been noticing Seattle Public Library in the news a lot lately.  Back in August they partnered with Smashwords to have a self-publishing contest where they invited patrons to write a book, create an account on Smashwords, and then enter the contest.  Up to three winners would be added to the library's eBook collection.  The winners will be announced on November 15.  They have a very complete Seattle Writes section of their website with tools and support for self publishing, as well as the Smashwords portal.

Something else that caught my eye was the article on October 25 about their new project eBooks Now! which allows patrons to see eBooks which do not have a waiting list. We all know how holds lists are a pain in the ass for patrons.  Patrons can browse the digital collection and find items currently available.  The list repopulates every hour with newly available books.

According to Jim Loter, the Director of Information Technology at Seattle Public, they are using the OverDrive API to query the holdings from OverDrive and sorting out the items that have at least one copy available.  That information is populated into a website that patrons may browse by format, or search.  Then they took the interface elements from Bibliocommons so the page looked more like their website.

This is yet another project that shows how, if you combined the brains of all the amazing librarians out there working on the issues around eBooks, you can really create some awesome solutions.

After browsing a little bit more on their site, I found their collection of photographs of the history of the Pike Place market.  Totally worth a look if you ever have some spare time.

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In enki news, we just signed a deal with Kensington, which I am extremely pleased about.  They have amazing romance and mystery titles, and the files are currently being ingested into our system so the patrons will be able to read the titles soon.  I'm going to do another Happy Dance after I post this.

Community Self Publishing

Sometimes I feel like a zeitgeist.  When I was 11 I started putting granola in my yogurt.  Suddenly in a few years Dannon is selling little prepackaged granola pots stuck on top of plain yogurt.  My 14 year old self thought I should have patented the idea.

I'm feeling a little vindicated (read: smug) at the sudden interest in self publishing from libraries.  From enki's inception, I didn't want to woo the Big 5, arguing that there were tons of amazing titles we could have from publishers who wanted to work with us.  There were already plenty of national organizations in talks with the big publishers.  It wasn't my fight.  So we made a strategic decision to really pursue the great independent and small presses.  

I also first met Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, in 2012.  I was so excited to meet him, because he's been such a visionary in making self publishing work for individuals.  He has a style guide, he provides resources on getting great covers made; in short, he wants to support people in telling their awesome stories.  And he talks a lot about libraries being able to support building a "community of authorship."  Being a NaNoWriMo geek (National Novel Writing Month - write a 50,000 word novel in a month) since 2008, this excites me.  In fact, I'm personally going to be putting some of my edited NaNoWriMo novels up on Smashwords soon (it was a New Year's Resolution).

Ok, so I'm totally biased towards Smashwords - full disclosure.  And mostly I'm biased because they will provide publishing portals for libraries for free.  Freeeeeeeee!  Los Gatos Library has been using it for a year or so now - you can see how they implement the platform (did I mention that it's free?) on their site.  

But even beyond that, I'm really biased towards empowering people to write their stories, and supporting them in that.  I can't tell you how many people, when we were first building enki, said things like, "oh, that's going to be a collection of self-published works...no one's going to want to be part of that."  Seriously, people (you know who you are) said that to me.  

Oh what a difference two years makes!  At BookExpo I first heard about the Library Journal/BiblioLabs self publishing partnership, Self-e, in which libraries can put up a portal and have their patrons submit their works.  If the works are chosen (by a team at LJ) they will be included in a collection that is hosted on BiblioBoard.  So then of course the library can subscribe to the collection on Biblioboard - which is unlimited simultaneous user access.  

Another partnership that seems to be making news is the Recorded Books partnership with FastPencil.  FastPencil is a competitor to Smashwords, but from what I can tell they have services like designing cover art, editing, and other ways to make a book look and feel a bit more professional. I'm a little confused by their entry into the library market, because back in 2012 they announced a partnership with AutoGraphics.  Recorded Books has a habit of finding great products to sell (like Zinio, their magazines product) and I applaud them for being so forward thinking.

While it doesn't directly relate to libraries pursuing relationships with publishers, which is what most of this blog is about, I think it's relevant to the discussion because self-published/indie books are only going to get bigger in the next couple of years (especially once I add mine to the mix) (that was a joke) (sort of) and the whole point of projects like enki are for libraries to take ownership of the eBook process, and the relationships with the publishers.  When the authors and publishers are your patrons already, there's a great opportunity to have a great relationship with them.

For example you can:
- build local collections of novels by local authors
- have workshops where successful self published authors teach others about the process
- support NaNoWriMo and other writing events by having write-ins at your library, and then putting on editing workshops after the events, providing self publishing tools, and finally having a collection of books by the local authors - like the My Town National Novel Writing Month Winners! collection.  I'd read that stuff.

The success of story sharing sites like wattpad are all the evidence I need that people will read self published stories, and they'll love them.  Sure, there's a lot of stuff on Smashwords that doesn't meet the standards of a library's collection development policy.  But they have like 300,000 titles.  Of course there's going to be some work involved with separating the wheat from the chaff (is that how that saying goes?).  There's some really great stuff there, and it's just getting better.

You know, back during the days when Eastman Kodak was first starting with their inexpensive cameras, photographers and artists freaked out about laymen taking pictures.   In 1899 Alfred Stieglitz wrote,

"The placing in the hands of the general public a means of making pictures with but little labor and requiring less knowledge has of necessity been followed by the production of millions of photographs.  It is due to this fatal facility that photography as a picture-making medium has fallen into disrepute."

I look at that quote now and call it snobbery.  It's great that we all have cameras on our cell phones!  It doesn't take away from the amazing artwork that the world has seen since then.  It just means more pictures in my instagram feed!  More cute cats and more cute babies and more pretty sunsets.  Sure, there's a lot of junk, but that doesn't mean that people shouldn't have cameras.

The same goes for self publishing.  And it's my contention that the libraries should jump in and support their local authors - who are writing and publishing already, and want to do things like donate ebooks to their library and get support from the library.  And I'm glad that there are more and more libraries and vendors who are jumping on board.