Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
...after you check out the ebook. Which is fine.
I was thinking in terms of pre-checkout: listing them separately, ghettoizing the indies. If indies are to give libraries leverage against the...unfriendly...terms of the BPH titles, they need to be comingled in the catalog. Let them know they have competition for the library dollar and the patron's attention.
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The biggest reason indies aren't in libraries are: Librarians. They do their research--for any book that goes into my local library, one or another librarian checks several review sources, mainly Library Journal (indies can be reviewed by LJ or will be soon). Once librarians determine that Smashwords means self-published many of them will avoid the books. My library has a standing policy to not stock self-published titles even if donated. They are not unique in this.
That is not to say I like the policy. That is not to say there are not libraries who are friendly to all authors. But by and large, libraries want to pick and choose which books are in their library and they are in the habit of looking to see who published said books.
So this will not be a free-for-all because libraries STILL must purchase the books via overdrive and that means they will be doing their research.
There are a lot of libraries opening up to indies--they do their research and they have various ways of determining if the book is a good fit. But this is not likely to be a huge boost to indie authors.