From Stephen’s Lighthouse:
The movement to subscription models has some benefits:
1. You’re not locked in forever (or until it wears out) as a purchase can sometimes do.
2. You have the opportunity to offload the ‘keeping up-to-date factor’ on things that need replacing too often at high initial cost (software, servers, devices, etc,) or upgrade with annoying rapidity (like software and phone models).
3. You want to spread your investment out evenly in the annual budget over many years instead of investing in risky decisions that have higher upfront costs and commitments to servers vs browser access.
4. You want to reduce the risk of making a poor decision and committing to one choice that may be overtaken by innovation, trends, competition, time and events.
5. Access to bigger collections at less cost per user annually (like with the periodical experience)
6. Aggregated relationships with book publishers as has happened with periodical article access and standardization of e-formats and metadata and OpenURL compliance, etc.
7. Bulk influence on copyright and licensing of larger assemblages of content (a la Tasini, etc.)
8. Etc.[full blog post]
The last “etc.” could stand for the benefit of being subject to easily changed (by the vendor) terms of use of agreements (c.f. my earlier post on the HarperCollins kerfuffle, a kerfuffle, it should be observed, that could include a great many other vendors).
In fact, though thoroughly optimistic, Abrams’ list is also very one-sided. It’s not hard to imagine why – he is the VP Strategic Partnerships and Markets for Gale Cengage. EBook sales are his business. It’s unlikely he’d call too much attention to the increasingly Byzantine, particularly dictative reality of current subscription business models.
Instead, he blue skies the issue. Abrams end’s his post this way:
We keep open minds and experiment and make choices not inspired by 20th century print era dogma but by a focus on user demands and needs and budgetary flexibility, then we might make progress faster through experience with emerging new models…
[Referring to Netflix] What would that mean to libraries if our key readers move to that model which is less than the cost of the gas or parking to visit the library?
On this last point, Abrams is right on the money. This is exactly the issue at stake for libraries. EBook publishers, though, have less cause for worry.
Considering the ongoing trend, it looks to me like eBook vendors are becoming increasingly skeptical of the role in public libraries play as an intermediary between vendors and readers.
This seems especially likely since established web business models are predicated on cutting out the middle men (think Amazon or any number of successful retail start-ups) because of the increase in their margins.
In this mindset, libraries, particularly public libraries, would be relegated to second class status through limited selection, draconian usage terms, and usurious rates. Or, you can just ignore libraries all together as some publishers do.
This would push readers over to other corporate access points. It’s not a welcome thought, but if I wanted to make money off of the eBook market, direct subscriptions are where it’s at.
Unfortunately, libraries do not have the resources to compete with corporate models (like bookstores), and the eBook market is proving already to be far more treacherous.
Vendors have their interests. Libraries do, too. There must be established a middle ground that protects the core value of open public access for which libraries stand and that reasonably accomondates the vendors’ profit margins.
No comments