The Inaugural LibraryReads List, With e-Lending Annotations

This morning the inaugural LibraryReads list was announced. However,  a number of the selected books may not be available in digital form in your library.

Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell
Published: 9/10/2013
by St. Martin’s Griffin
ISBN: 9781250030955
X Macmillan does not do e-lending of the St. Martin's Griffin imprint. However, the Director of Library Marketing at Macmillan says "stay tuned as we continue to roll out new titles for e-lending."

How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
by Louise Penny
Published: 8/27/2013 by Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9780312655471
X Macmillan has some of the books from its Minotaur imprint in its e-lending pilot. But not this one. Again, "stay tuned". Apparently the audiobook is available for pre-order on Overdrive.



Night Film: A Novel
by Marisha Pessl
Published: 8/20/2013 by Random House
ISBN: 9781400067886
✓ Random House has a strong e-lending program, but the books are expensive! The ebook pre-order is currently available on Overdrive for $84; it's $12.99 on Kindle Store.


Help for the Haunted: A Novel
by John Searles
Published: 9/17/2013 by William Morrow
ISBN: 9780060779634
✓ HarperCollins allows e-lending. The ebooks expire after the 26th lend, but they're priced at a discount from retail print.


The Returned
by Jason Mott
Published: 8/27/2013 by Harlequin MIRA
ISBN: 9780778315339
✓ Harlequin has a good library e-lending presence. The library ebook is available for $21 on Overdrive. It's $9.46 on the Kindle Store.


Burial Rites: A Novel
by Hannah Kent
Published: 9/10/2013 by Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780316243919
✓ Little, Brown is part of Hachette Book Group. Hachette recently announced that its full list would be available for library e-lending. The program is comparable to Random House's.


Margot: A Novel
by Jillian Cantor
Published: 9/3/2013 by Riverhead
ISBN: 9781594486432
? Riverhead is part of Penguin, (now part of Random Penguin House). I'm not sure what the e-lending status of this will be.


Songs of Willow Frost: A Novel
by Jamie Ford
Published: 9/10/2013 by Ballantine Books
ISBN: 9780345522023
✓ Another Random House title, should be available for e-lending.


Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
by Sheri Fink
Published: 9/10/2013 by Crown
ISBN: 9780307718969
✓ Yet another Random House title, should be available for e-lending.

A House in the Sky: A Memoir
by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett
Published: 9/10/2013 by Scribner
ISBN: 9781451645606
X Simon and Schuster is at this point in time the least e-friendly to libraries of the big 6 publishers. This title should be available as part of a pilot with New York City public libraries, but if you live anywhere else you are screwed.

It seems to me that if the librarians participating in LibraryReads really want to promote reading in libraries, then they should push to have any selected books available for e-lending, and not just in New York City. Just three years ago, fully half this list would have been digitally forbidden to libraries; just because some advances have been made doesn't mean the struggle for library survival is over. Not even close.

The covers are linked to Amazon. So there! Updated with some real pricing/availability info.
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Hachette at the Tipping Point

Hachette CEO David Young

But it's not the tipping point that you might be thinking of. At this week's Publishing Point Meetup, David Young, Chairman and CEO of Hachette Book Group took his turn being interviewed by Michael Healy. Here's the bit that caught my ear:

If you just rewind the clock five, even ten years, the negotiations that one had with with Barnes and Noble, or WH Smith or Waterstones seemed like the most challenging things in the world, you were entering a G8 summit or something, and now they appear like a vicar's tea party compared with the people with whom we now regularly deal. Massive companies, Amazon, Apple, Google, and in fact last year was a tipping point for our company, because 50% of our net revenues were made through outlets that were not invested in us. Companies like Walmart and Costco and all the others you can think of, not directly invested in our business. And I think that was a big moment and it means you're having to deal with people who think about books in a way totally different from the way Barnes and Nobles regards books. Every retailer who does sell books understands that they drive traffic into their stores, I have no doubt that's why Walmart and Target and Costco love them so much, but they do tend to cream off the top. [..]

We have a very wide ranging, wide array of customers with whom to deal. They're selling our books in our special sales department through TJ Maxx and Anthropologie now. I know they even think about covers of our new books ahead of time to make sure that they're in this season's color.

That's right, Amazon just announced they were selling more Kindle ebooks than print books, and the big transition in Hachette's business is that they don't sell the majority of their books in bookstores anymore.

I had never been inside an Anthropologie store before, so I decided to go and take a look at the future of the book selling business. It seems to be mostly pink and pale green this year. Also a sort of pale purplish blue.

Here are some of the titles I found:

• Things Good Mothers Know
• Your Mother Was Right
• Vanity Fair's Proust
• Etcetera
  
• The Stylist's Guide to NYC
  
• Modern Vintage Style
  
• Casual Living
  
• Creative Walls
  
• Domino
  
• The Cocktail
  
• Soil Mates
  
• Grow Your Own Food
  
• I ❤ Your Style
  
• How to Sew a Button
  
• Vintage Cocktails
  
• Things I Want My Daughters to Know
  
• The Lover's Dictionary
  
• I Was Here
  
• Markets of New York City
  
• The Traditional Shops and Restaurants of London
  

What a brilliantly arranged store! The casual cotton dresses look at least twice as slinky with a stack of color-coordinated Lover's Dictionaries piled next to them. And my mom loved candles- I never realized their connection to good parenting!

That other tipping point I've been writing about here? The library ebook thing? In the Q&A session, Young was asked: "What's your policy on ebook library lending?" Since Hachette allows Overdrive to distribute its ebooks to libraries, I hoped this would be a softball. But it wasn't. (Or maybe Young, an Englishman, only knows cricket.)

That is, I think, a really really big question, and I wish I knew the answer to it. All I know is we're putting a lot of thought into it. I'm meeting the President of the ALA in New Orleans in June and we're talking with our various partners around that. I think its something that needs a lot of careful thought because if you let that particular genie out of the bottle and get it wrong then you could get yourself in all sorts of trouble. Should there be a library solution? I'm certain there should be, but what it is we haven't figured it out. We're putting a lot of thought and effort into it.

The beginning of dialog at the very highest level between book publishers and librarians is definitely good news, and long overdue, but I'm not sure what advice I would give to ALA President Roberta Stevens for that meeting. Maybe she could offer to put the genie in one of those pot-candles that look so great alongside books at Anthropologie?

Related articles

• Publishing Point: conversation with David Young, Chairman/COS Hachette Book Group (teleread.com)

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