Update and the need for a single repository

So guess what world, I'm back.  Well, sort of.  Remember ALA Midwinter?  Chicago?  The blizzard?  Yeah, well, I'm a (sort of) casualty of that fun experience, having slipped on ice at my hotel, and broken my shoulder.  Spent the night in Northwestern University, flew home the next day, had surgery a few days later, and then spent months in rehab.  I'm still not sure that I won't need yet another surgery because things aren't healing the way they should be, but I won't know that for sure until the end of August.  So in the meantime, I'm trying to pick this blog back up.  I also actually started a fresh wordpress site for my posts, and will be moving things over there in the next little while, so stay tuned.

So let's get back to it.  Things have been happening, even though I've been convalescing (I'm not the center of the universe!  Imagine that!).  I actually left my job at Califa at the end of May, so I have lots of freedom now to speak my mind on things (as if my opinion on OverDrive wasn't already pretty obvious - ahem) since I don't officially represent any vendors or projects in a professional way anymore.  Nope, my job with this blog will be to report on what libraries are doing in an honest way; what the challenges are, what projects are working, which ones are having a tough time, in the hopes that the knowledge will benefit all the libraries who are trying to start their own projects, or are thinking about things from a different angle.

DPLAFest this past April had a track on ebooks, which was, according to those who attended, pretty much standing room only.  Lots of different projects were represented, including NYPL and the Library Simplified project and Califa with enki.

The consensus of all the meetings was that there needs to be a marketplace for the libraries who have built a platform to purchase content.  For those of you who don't know, the self hosted platforms right now all use spreadsheets to buy content.  ebooksareforever is stepping in with a great acquisitions module, but they don't have a platform per se, and plus, they're still a vendor (even though I love them - really, I do).  The library owned projects are still sending emails back and forth, uploading spreadsheets into gdocs (if they have a group working on collection development) and emailing PO's back to publishers with spreadsheet requests for metadata.  Well, at least that's how it was at Califa.  Honestly, you guys, this is a royal Pain In The Ass.  Plus there is a ton of room for human error to enter into the equation.

An additional part of this is that you have lots of libraries all working out deals with publishers on their own.  Talk about reinventing the wheel.  We know that Smashwords wants to work with libraries, right?  Why do they have to sign agreements with Califa and with Harris County and with Douglas County and everyone else and their mother to do so?  Wouldn't it make it easier for everyone involved (including the libraries) if there was some kind of central repository where all the publishers who want to work with libraries could sign up?

Yeah, that's what vendors do.  I get it.  But vendors do not have any inherent self interest in making sure that the libraries have the best deal possible.  Vendors want to sign up publishers, period.  They won't say to a large publisher, "I'm sorry, this looks more like a lease than an ownership agreement" the way Califa did two years ago.

Maybe there would be some libraries who would be ok for leasing content.  I still maintain that leased content has a really important role to play, especially with bestsellers.  So what if there was some kind of national repository where libraries could sign up.  Say I was, I don't know, Lancaster Public Library (because I'm currently in Lancaster Pennsylvania) and they want to build a platform.  They sign up with the Digital Repository and put in their wishlist of publishers, the terms they'd take (ie leasing if it's a Big 5, leasing for bestsellers, etc., with ways of defining what a "bestseller" is), and other information like that.  Then a publisher, say Smashwords, can sign up.  There would be a person who worked for the Repository (probably more than one person) who would negotiate on behalf with the libraries, knowing what all their members want (because they've seen the signup forms).  So the Digital Repository employee can say to Smashwords, "look,  your content is desirable, but we need to own it, and not pay retail" (these are, incidentally, the terms they already offer, thanks to their authors who are very supportive of libraries).   They go back and forth a few times, finally a contract is signed and uploaded for all the members to see, the pertinent information is highlighted and easily accessible and searchable, and an email is sent out to every member saying that Smashwords content is going to be available.  Smashwords uploads their title lists and metadata into one place, and boom, the libraries who want to buy Smashwords can easily buy it.

This sounds a bit utopian, I know (things are never as easy in real life as they are in my head) but it's doable, and it's exactly what one of the main conversations at DPLAFest was about, and one aspect of the Library Simplified project aims to do.  DPLA has set up a working group for those who are interested in moving this goal forward, and I think it's important that every library who is interested in doing a project like this be part of it.  You don't have to do things on your own; you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel.  If you all put your heads together and focus on the end goal of getting a project like this done, it is eminently doable.

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.