Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
I suspect you grossly over estimate the buying power of the small group of people who have their panties in a wad about this.
|
Also known as "professional librarians", and that's a pretty sexist metaphor.
I don't think this link by Overdrive's founder has been posted yet, has it?
Macmillan publishes a work of fiction
Quote:
"Let’s start with the faulty key premise. In the letter, Macmillan claims that when they test-windowed a selection of Tor ebooks for library lending, it resulted in an increase in retail ebook sales. This conclusion fails to provide any reference or data of scope and scale. With the exception of a few Tor best-selling authors, the vast majority of Tor ebooks and their authors have few to zero units of their ebooks available in US public library catalogs. Without Macmillan sharing information on the starting point for the Tor pilot, any change (increase or decrease) is meaningless. For example, going from two to four ebook units in retail sales is a 100% increase. For the Tor ebook catalog, fewer than 100 units of recent titles were sold to libraries nationwide. Added to the reality of the few available units, the library lending model is self-limiting. How a few dozen copies of an ebook that only one user can borrow at a time or wait weeks to borrow impacts retail sales is a mystery. When Mr. Sargent was asked for data to support this conclusion by the Wall Street Journal in its July 25, 2019 article, Mr. Sargent “declined to be more specific.” The reason is clear, the Tor experiment was unremarkable.
In 2015, a similar test was conducted with unremarkable results. This test used best-selling titles from several UK publishing houses in a study, jointly commissioned by the Society of Chief Librarians and The Publishers Association, funded via the British Library Trust and Arts Council England. The results were predictable. The study concluded that withholding new ebook titles for library users to borrow had no material impact on retail sales. " [...]
For all the Macmillan ebooks that libraries acquired for lending, 79% expired and were removed from library catalogs because the two-year term limit occurred first – not because they were checked out 52 times. The data of actual lending of Macmillan ebook titles by public libraries supports an underutilization of the inventory. The average number of times a library loaned a Macmillan ebook during the 2-year term for each title was 11.5 times (far from 52 checkouts). Using this data, the average cost to the library to lend the title was $6.07 for every time a title is borrowed, 5 times the figure shared in the WSJ story.
|
Overdrive: posting facts and figures. MacMillan: claiming that they have some, but not sharing them, and misrepresenting the ones they do.