Hachett raising ebook prices to libraries

[FizzyWater]

Not sure if this is best under news or "general discussions", so feel free to move if this is in the wrong place!

Overdrive's Digital Library Blog is reporting that Hatchett is raising prices on approximately 3500 books - and the prices seem pretty obscene to me! Of course, I wasn't aware the "normal" prices were so much higher than list to start with.

[Synamon]

Initially I thought this was good news, meaning that Hachette was going to actually make current ebooks available to Overdrive, even if at a higher price. Silly me. They are just jacking up the prices on their old catalog (pre-April 2010 published titles).

[FizzyWater]

I didn't even notice that part of it. I was too busy goggling at the prices.

[bgalbrecht]

Just out of curiousity, how much does Hatchette charge a library for a hardcover book of the same title? If the new ebook prices are comparable to what the library pays for a hardcover, I don't think that's unreasonable if Hatchette's not the publisher with the license limiting each purchase to 26 checkouts.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Just out of curiousity, how much does Hatchette charge a library for a hardcover book of the same title? If the new ebook prices are comparable to what the library pays for a hardcover, I don't think that's unreasonable if Hatchette's not the publisher with the license limiting each purchase to 26 checkouts.

Depends what you mean by "new ebook", ebooks published before April 2010 aren't exactly new, paperbacks for those have been out for at least a year.

Btw, HarperCollins are the ones who have the 26 checkout restriction. For anyone else keeping track: Random House increased the prices they charge libraries for ebooks earlier this year, but they at least do sell them frontlist books, Penguin stopped selling even their backlist ebooks to libraries last year, while MacMillan and Simon & Schuster never have sold ebooks to public libraries.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Just out of curiousity, how much does Hatchette charge a library for a hardcover book of the same title?

With paper books, Hatchette has almost no ability to set a different price for libraries than for the general public.

I say almost because there are wholesalers that libraries tend to use for both purchase and rental (they often rent a few copies of a best-seller, but only buy one outright for their permanent collection). I suppose Hatchette could favor or disfavor those wholesalers. But if the library wants to buy a hardback from WalMart or Amazon, Hatchette cannot stop them.

The library could of course still buy an eBook from Kobo or Amazon for the same price as the general public. But the library couldn't live with the license terms, and needs a different variant of DRM.