Why did Penguin terminate their contract with OverDrive? Here’s what we’ve learned from an INFOdocket source.

We are told that publisher contracts with OverDrive allow them to store and serve library end users ebooks. That’s it.

OverDrive does NOT have permission to first authorize the lending of an ebook to a library end user and then forward the request for actual distribution and tracking of the title to Amazon.com or ANY other retailer. Similarly, in most situations*, publishers do not permit retailers to lend ebooks directly to end users.

Finally, in November and again yesterday we noted an LJ article (November 23, 2011) that included the following comment from Penguin:

Penguin has subsequently been informed by Amazon that it had not been consulted by Overdrive about the terms of Penguin’s agreement with Overdrive.

You have to wonder what did OverDrive tell publishing partners about how Kindle lending would work?  What didn’t they tell them?

We will update this post if/when more details emerge.

See Also: Notice to publishers: curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal (via Librarian in Black)

UPDATE: ALA’s Repsonse to Penguin Terminating Contract with OverDrive Posted

“Yesterday, Penguin Group USA called to alert us that they will no longer offer any ebooks or audiobooks to libraries through OverDrive. While libraries are expected to have continued access to Penguin ebooks already included in their catalogs, the effect today is that readers will have less access to Penguin titles through their local libraries.

“Despite this discouraging development, we are hopeful Penguin will continue to seek a solution to make its titles available to libraries.  As Penguin stated, ‘…it is vital that we forge relationships with libraries and build a future together.’  We are committed to helping build this future.

“This is a radically dynamic time of change, and we look forward to crafting stable and sustainable business models that enable libraries and publishers to connect readers and authors in the digital age as successfully as we have done since Gutenberg. We all need to work together—and quickly—to bring about full access to ebooks in libraries for everyone, and especially for those readers who depend on libraries as their only source of reading material.”

[Via INFOdocket]

From TorrentFreak.  More in the article.

With their unconditional support for SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, Hollywood is pressing hard for new legislation to curb piracy. The studios want ‘rogue’ websites to be censored and are calling on Google and Internet providers to take responsibility.

However, a new study reveals that movie industry itself has the key to decreasing piracy, without passing any news laws.

In a paper titled ‘Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales’ researchers from the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College examine the link between BitTorrent piracy and box office returns. As hypothesized, they find that international movie piracy losses are directly linked to the delay between US and foreign premieres.

In other words, the longer it takes before a movie is released internationally, the more box office revenues are impacted through piracy.

“We find that longer release windows are associated with decreased box office returns, even after controlling for film and country fixed effects. This relationship is much stronger in contexts where piracy is more prevalent: after BitTorrent’s adoption and in heavily pirated genres,” they write.

“Our findings indicate that, as a lower bound, international box office returns in our sample were at least 7% lower than they would have been in the absence of pre-release piracy.”

Aside from their conclusion that a lack of availability is fueling piracy, the researchers report a perhaps even more interesting result. Contrary to what the MPAA and other lobby groups claim, the study doesn’t find a negative effect of BitTorrent piracy on US box office revenues.

(Via TorrentFreak.)

Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet from School Library Journal on Vimeo.

Penguin said it would stop selling new books to OverDrive‘s library side.

In another OverDrive-related development, former librarian Andrew Strong, a library activist in Rockford, IL, told local officials they should consider advocating both an OverDrive purchase and a true national digital system. And he cited a current Rockford library manager’s enthusiasm for the OverDrive-related idea.

Penguin’s dissing of OverDrive and public libraries is hardly alone among publisher, as you can see from this sign from Sarah “Librarian in Black” Houghton, the acting director of the San Rafael Public Library in California. Other won’t-sells include Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Brilliance Audio and Hachette Audio Group. The Penguin Group’s own authors over the years have ranged from Tom Clancy to former Vice President Al Glore—who at one time was pushing to digitize the Library of Congress.

I have no idea where Gore stands now, but his heart was in the right place in the 1990s.

That said, digitizing LOC isn’t enough. America’s public libraries really need to create a genuine digital system, with the accompanying clout to deal with the Penguins. Local libraries and the new system could develop their own e-books and other offerings as a bargaining chip and for other reasons, such as more diversity of content. All the more reason for libraries to take over OverDrive and modernize it as the first step toward the creation of a national digital library ecosystem—so libraries can hold their own against publishers! A truly sustainable business model would treat publishers more fairly than they are treating public libraries. Rather than constantly refighting the copyright and content wars, librarians and publishers should work together to lobby for higher library appropriations, just as the Pentagon and its contractors have so often triumphed in unison.

Calling for consideration of a national digital system in place of the OverDrive model, Andrew Strong wrote Rockford’s mayor, library director and trustees, and others in a note covering different topics:

“As board members consider their next steps, I certainly hope that they consider the work of David Rothman, author of the blog www.LibraryCity.org, who has adopted Rockford as a poster child buffeted about by the winds of change.

“While I do not agree with everything Mr. Rothman writes (or his rhetoric at times), his proposal for a national digital public library needs to be thoroughly considered. Digital Rights Management issues, privacy issues, portability issues, permanance issues, and, perhaps most importantly to libraries, ownership issues, are all part of a nebulous and sometimes contentious public debate. Rockford librarians and board members need to be a part of shaping this debate.

“I talked with one current Rockford library manager about Mr. Rothman’s desire to see Overdrive bought-out by a non-profit or consortium of public libraries, and this manager was nodding her head before I had hardly finished my sentence.

“Rather than rising to national prominence in infamy, I would encourage board members and librarians to engage the debate in earnest, considering the issues of Constitutional rights, freedom of information, and first principles.”

I have avoided asking OverDrive how it would feel about a sale and about being part of a national digital library system—so the company has more time to ponder the proposal. OverDrive’s troubles with Penguin, however, are yet another indication that its current business model is not sustainable. In OverDrive’s place, I’d sell in a flash at a fair price to libraries or a nonprofit. New competitors such as 3M—not to mention OverDrive’s heavy reliance on Amazon, hardly guaranteed to be an ally forever—are yet another reason to consider a sale. If libraries are smart, they’ll start contacting potential foundation benefactors now rather than simply let OverDrive sell out to another company. CEO Steve Potash, his wife, Loree, and other OverDrive executives could continue with the new system as advisors to assure continuity. As I’ve said before, the company has its good side, and the proposed national system could build on OverDrive’s marketing efforts and its relationships with hundreds of publishers.

Detail: I’ve broken up paragraphs in the Strong note, for greater readability on the Web.

Larger version of an image of Sarah’s sign: Here—so you can write the publishers yourself.

[Via LibraryCity]

Sign at the San Rafael Public Library

I know it’s a small gesture. It’s just a sign (although I did put three of them up).  I am also writing letters as the Library Director (in many cases, again) to the publishers on the list asking them to try to work with libraries…telling them we’re open to negotiation and suggestion, but that walking away the library market is damaging to all of us.

As a librarian and as a reader, I am tired of publishers walking away from the library table.  I have no problem with them walking away from a particular third party vendor, but only if they have a plan in place to offer up their own platform or be signed with an alternate vendor already.  Gaps in service, gaps in availability of their titles to our patrons equals stupidity in my opinion.  Walking away from the library eBook market makes no financial long-term sense, nor does it continue the positive relationship that publishers and libraries have cultivated for centuries to help bring information and entertainment to people.

I think it’s about damn time we, as library professionals, started getting the public riled up about this too.  We need legislation passed (or copyright law clarified) that states that indeed, libraries can license/purchase and lend out digital items just like they can with physical items.  Fragmentation and exclusionary business practices hurt the people we serve.  As a librarian I feel we must stand up, as a profession, and say “no more.”

As I was putting the signs up today, I got a few questions immediately from library users.  Within a half hour of the Penguin/OverDrive news being announced, I had three phone calls to my desk from concerned San Rafael residents about yet another publisher not being available through their library’s eBook collection.  Now, admittedly we have a mightily active and concerned citizenry here in San Rafael (I love you guys!), but I’m guessing every other community has a good base of people who would also think this is ridiculous and be willing to do something about it.  I’m encouraging users to contact the publishers and tell other book-lovers they know.  This is one of those issues we’ve been dealing with in the library vacuum–an issue 99.9% of the public has no idea exists, and an issue that would invoke at least 80% pissed-off-ed-ness if we tell people about it.

Put a sign up in your library.  Say something to people at your eBooks classes.  Do something.  Because nobody, including ALA, is going to do it for you.

(Via Librarian In Black.)

Max Kaiser has published “Putting 600,000 Books Online: the Large-Scale Digitisation Partnership between the Austrian National Library and Google” in the latest issue of LIBER Quarterly.

Here’s an excerpt:

In a public-private partnership with Google, the Austrian National Library is digitising its historical book holdings. Some 600,000 volumes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries will be digitised and made available free of charge. The project demonstrates that public-private partnerships can be successful in enabling our heritage institutions to provide large-scale access to their holdings, provided that such partnerships are not exclusive and free access is ensured. The article outlines the preparatory phase and work flows established in the project.

[Via Digital Koans under a Creative Commons license]

New Features

• Auto-adding: Add an option to check for duplicates when auto adding.
• Content server: Export a second record via mDNS that points to the full OPDS feed in addition to the one pointing to the Stanza feed. The new record is of type _calibre._tcp.
• Allow specifying a set of categories that are not partitioned even if they contain a large number of items in the Tag Browser. Preference is available under Look & Feel->Tag Browser
• Allow setting a URL prefix for the content server that run embedded in the calibre GUI as well.
• Allow output of identifiers data in CSV/XML/BiBTeX catalogs
• Driver for Motorola Droid XT910, Nokia E71 and HTC EVO 3D.
• Cut down the time taken to launch worker processes by 40%
• You can now configure the calibre settings for the currently connected device by right clicking on the device icon in the toolbar, instead of having to go through Preferences->Plugins

Bug Fixes

• Auto-adding: Do not add incomplete files when files are downloaded directly into the auto add folder.
• When running multiple delete from device jobs, fix the device view sometimes marking the wrong books as being deleted, after the first delete job completes.
• MOBI Input: Handle files that have spurious closing and/or tags in their markup.
• RTF Input: Strip out false color specifications, as they cause artifacts when converted to MOBI

UPDATE: Penguin Group Terminating Its Contract with OverDrive (by Michael Kelley, LJ)

“In a stunning development, Penguin Group has extricated itself from its contract with OverDrive, the primary supplier of ebooks to public libraries.

‘Looking ahead, we are continuing to talk about our future plans for ebook and digital audiobook availability for library lending with a number of partners providing these services,’ said Erica Glass, in a prepared statement.

Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with OverDrive, which will allow libraries that have Penguin ebooks in their catalog to continue to have access to those titles.”

From an E-Mail to OverDrive Partners

Starting tomorrow (February 10, 2012), Penguin will no longer offer additional copies of eBooks and download audiobooks for library purchase. Additionally, Penguin eBooks loaned for reading on Kindle devices will need to be downloaded to a computer then transferred to the device over USB. For library patrons, this means Penguin eBooks will no longer be available for over-the-air delivery to Kindle devices or to Kindle apps.

We are continuing to talk to Penguin about their future plans for eBook and digital audiobook availability for library lending.

The end of over-the-air downloads to Kindle devices is interesting. Does it say something about a security issue in Amazon’s wireless download system? Something else? How about trying to make things a bit tougher for library users/OverDrive customers that will slowdown loans OR simply OverDrive and Amazon now following the Penguin’s contract?

In November Penguin said that Amazon.com was never told about the terms of the Penguin/OverDrive contract. Perhaps it said that wireless downloading was not permitted?

Otherwise, perhaps it’s some form of retribution directed at OverDrive  with Amazon.com or maybe we’ve watched to many reruns of The Soprano’s. (-:

From Michael Kelley’s LJ article (November 23, 2011)

Penguin has subsequently been informed by Amazon that it had not been consulted by Overdrive about the terms of Penguin’s agreement with Overdrive. Amazon has undertaken to work with Penguin and Overdrive between now and the end of the year to address Penguin’s concerns. Penguin will, as a result, restore the supply of these titles until the end of the year in order to return the availability of older titles to all its digital customers.

One thing is for sure, there will likely be a lot of libraries having to modify web sites, documentation, and training programs about how to download Kindle ebooks with today’s news of only USB transfers being available.

[Via INFOdocket]

From the description on the British App Store:

The draft score of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” is one of the greatest musical treasures in the British Library.  Handel established and developed the English oratorio as a musical genre, and “Messiah” is its best known and best loved example.  As only fragmentary sketches survive, this manuscript is the source for Handel’s first known ideas for the work; it also includes many of his alterations for later performances.  It illuminates his working methods and includes performance directions.  It’s detailed dating reveals the composer’s characteristic speed of composition: the work was begun on 22 Augurst and completed just 24 days later on 14 September, 1741. …

This is an eBook Treasures facsimile editon, containing additional interpretative text and selected recordings from “Messiah”.

From the National Library of Israel Web Site

The manuscripts found at the National Library are from the collection of Abraham Shalom Yehuda (1877-1951), an expert in Middle Eastern affairs. Professor Shalom Yehuda purchased the manuscripts at a public auction at London’s Sotheby’s in 1936. Other manuscripts in the collection, dealing mostly with the topic of alchemy, were purchased by the well-known economist, John Maynard Keynes, and are located at King’s College in Cambridge University.

The National Library’s collection of the Newton Papers is now available to the general public in digital format. All of the papers are also linked to the Newton Project, where they are presented in two versions: a ‘diplomatic’ version that includes all the changes and corrections as they appear in the original manuscript, and a ‘clean’ version that enables a continuous reading of the text.

Direct to Digital Collection

[Via INFOdocket]

From The Bookseller:

Nearly a quarter of all books sold on Hive since October have been digital, Gardners has revealed.

The book wholesaler launched the consumer-facing site in June, linking with 350 independent booksellers and giving them the much called-for ability to compete with larger, chain retailers in selling e-books.

In September, the company announced it would be the first UK platform with the capability to sell Google e-books and now Hive says nearly 25% of all sales through Hive have been digital. However, the company would not give exact sales figures and Google declined to give an update on its digital book sales in the UK.

Targeted customers emails focussing on e-books as people were downloading digital books onto their new gifted e-readers just after Christmas helped to achieve Hive’s e-book sales, the company said, which remained strong into January.

More in the article.

Could children be better readers if we went “back to the future,” even in the era of e-books and calls for massive budget calls? I’ll share thoughts.

But first let’s hear from Andy Strong, a children’s librarian at the library in Rockford, Illinois, during the 1990s:

“When the library cut its hours, it drastically reduced storytime programming. In fact, service to parents and young children is a shadow of what it once was.

“In its heyday, mothers and children would leave the library with armloads and tote bags full of books. Head Start would routinely bring busloads of children to dedicated storytimes weekly, introducing new families to the joys of reading and the power of library use.

“Part of the mission of assuring an informed citizenry is in supporting the growth and development of our youngest future sovereign citizens. And I would argue that learning to pull a book from a shelf with one’s own hands, and learning to read from a book with pages is qualitatively different than using a screen. The research is already starting to bear this out. Add to this the caution regarding health effects from electronic devices, and I think I’d prefer to cuddle up next to my child with a non-EMF-emitting paper book, thank you.”

The LibraryCity take: I don’t agree with everything above—for example, a Kindle isn’t the same EMFthreat as an old cathode ray tube monitor, especially if you don’t use WiFi—but oh how right Andy is about library priorities!

We need to reinvent early childhood education, family literacy and library storytelling hours to accommodate the new technology.

Children should learn to read from e-books as well as p-books, the gateway drug. That means not cutting the number of branches or their hours. If librarians or teachers can visit receptive families at home to tailor-make family literacy programs, based on what they find there—well, so much the better.

Football, baseball or basketball game on the tube? Then on the spot, the visitor could ask a few questions to guide the family to appropriate books or other fiction or nonfiction.

E-books, including the open access variety favored by the Digital Public Library of America, could drive down the costs and allow the books to pop up instantly on the e-reader gadgets the librarians were accustoming the families to.

As I see it, a national digital library system among other things could team up with local libraries and schools on family-oriented pilot projects that used both e-books and p-books and focused on words and stories and related them to children’s surroundings, as opposed to relying simply on technology alone.

Parent-child reading, with both generations asking questions and commenting on the content, as opposed to fixating on techno frills, is the ultimate social medium.

Related in the New York Times: Before the First School Bell, Teachers in Bronx Make House Calls.

Detail: I’ve shortened the paragraphs in the quote from Andy.Similar Posts:

• Helping kids get going on e-books: The wrong approach could HURT them
• Tips for using e-readers in children’s book clubs: Attn. parents, libraries, and schools
• More ammunition for a national digital library system playing up early childhood education and a family literacy approach? Thanks, Messrs. Kristof and Friedman!
• E-book strategies for Rockford, Illinois: LibraryCity’s guest column in local daily
• How e-books and a national digital library system could boost student achievement

[Via Library City]

Not ebook related, but this is so interesting that I just had to post it.  From Open Culture:

The great French filmmaker François Truffaut would have turned 80 today, and to celebrate, we’re bringing back a wonderful series of audio recordings — Truffaut’s lengthy interview with another legendary director, Alfred Hitchcock.

Back in 1962, François Truffaut, the inspiration behind French New Wave cinema, met with Hitchcock. And, assisted by a helpful translator, the two directors talked through Hitchcock’s life and vast filmography, moving from his early films shot it Britain (Blackmail, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent), to his later Hollywood productions – North by Northwest, Psycho and Vertigo. In total, Truffaut and Hitchcock talked for over 12 hours, and, several years later, Truffaut published a now classic book based on these conversations: Alfred Hitchcock: A Definitive Study (1967).

More in the article.

Last week’s issue of Bloomberg’s Businessweek included an article titled Amazon’s Hitman. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is enlightening.

The gist of the article is that Amazon is gearing up to challenge the publishing world on its own turf: the signing of and creation of big-name authors who sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books. And this assault worries the Big 6 publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Random House, and Harper-Collins – with good reason: Amazon has more market value and disposable cash than they do combined.

The article discusses the history of the relationship between the Amazon and the publishers, along with what Businessweek thinks is Amazon’s thinking. But with all of their crying the blues, the Big 6 currently are in the driver’s seat; all they have to do is be willing to drive.

There is no reason why the Big 6 can’t offer exclusive deals to Kobo and B&N. Give them a 3-month exclusive selling period for expected ebook best-sellers and do away with the agency pricing during that period. After 3 months, make the ebooks available to everyone and reinstate agency pricing. This would boost competition and play against Amazon’s exclusivity program.

I suspect that this scenario won’t occur because the Big 6 simply do not have the spine. I don’t see any antitrust violation — if Amazon can do it each of the Big 6 can do it, too — but even if there were a possibility of antitrust violation, do it anyway and keep the program going while you hash out with the government the antitrust issues. That hashing out could take years, which would give Amazon’s competitors an opportunity to become real competitors. More importantly, it might well be an effective weapon in the crusade to keep competition in publishing alive.

Instead of wringing their hands and acting as if there is little to nothing they can do, publishers need to creatively fight Amazon’s onslaught while they are in a position to do so. Right now Amazon has no Stephen King-level authors in its stable. Amazon still needs the resources of the Big 6 to fill out its ebookstore. Remember that it was Amazon that caved in the dispute with Macmillan and brought agency pricing to ebooks. But the day isn’t far off when the advantage will shift to Amazon and the Big 6 will be able to spend their days writing their own obituaries.

The difference between Amazon and the publishers is that Amazon is willing to continue to lose money on its book operations for as long as it takes to control the field, relying on its other business to shore up its balance sheet. In contrast, the Big 6 are unwilling to lose money even for one day, even if it means their ultimate survival. Jeff Bezos is capable of thinking years ahead, like a great chess player who can think dozens of moves ahead; in contrast, the Big 6 CEOs are like the starting chess player, unable to think strategically even one move ahead, let alone several. Bezos has the spine to tell shareholders no payout this quarter or next; the Big 6 CEOs do not.

Yet the Big 6 have an opportunity to shakeup the ebook market and turn it, at least temporarily, until Bezos’ next countermove, in their favor while simultaneously shoring up Amazon’s biggest competitors, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

Right now exclusivity is working a one-way street. Although the Big 6 declined to participate in Amazon’s current experiment, it is worth noting that Bezos had no compunction about asking them to do so. If the Big 6 won’t offer exclusivity to B&N and Kobo, perhaps B&N and Kobo should approach the Big 6. This is the one area in which Amazon is vulnerable. It is one thing to have exclusive rights to a self-published author’s books, but quite another to have them to a Stephen King’s writings.

The ball is now in the court of the Big 6. What will they do to counter Amazon? If I were a gambler, I’d say the odds were that all they will do is complain but do nothing substantive. There wasn’t much at stake in the agency pricing showdown on either side. An exclusivity arrangement with B&N and Kobo, however, puts a lot at stake. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

(Via An American Editor.)

The video was recorded during the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall 2011 Membership Meeting.

Title: “Preservation Status of e-Resources: A Potential Crisis in Electronic Journal Preservation”

Direct to Video (59 minutes)

Direct to Slides (.ppt)

Presenters:

• Oya Y. Rieger
  Associate University Librarian
  Digital Scholarship Services
  Cornell University

• Robert Wolven
  Associate University Librarian
  Bibliographic Services
  and Collection Development
  Columbia University

E-journals have replaced the majority of titles formerly produced in paper format. Academic libraries are increasingly dependent on commercially produced, born-digital content that is purchased or licensed. The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of a 2CUL study that assesses the role of LOCKSS and PORTICO in preserving each institution’s e-journal collections. The 2CUL initiative is a collaboration between Columbia University Library (CUL) and Cornell University Library (CUL) to join forces in providing content, expertise, and services that are impossible to accomplish acting alone.

Although LOCKSS is considered a successful digital preservation initiative, neither of the CULs felt that they fully understood the potential of the system for their own settings and collections. In support of this goal, a joint team was established in November 2010 to investigate various questions to assess how LOCKSS is being deployed and the implications of local practices for both CUL’s preservation frameworks. This study was seen as a high-level investigation to characterize the general landscape and identify further research questions. One of the practical outcomes was a comparative analysis of Portico and LOCKSS preservation coverage for Columbia and Cornell’s serial holdings.  A key finding was that only 15-20% of the e-journal titles in the libraries’ collections are currently preserved by these two initiatives. Further analysis suggests the remaining titles fall into roughly 10 categories, with a variety of strategies needed to ensure their preservation.

Direct to Slides (.ppt)

Direct to Video (59 minutes)

[Via INFOdocket]