some questions about Amazon, audiobooks and e-books for my academic librarian colleagues

I'm reading a great book called "The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army" by Stephan Talty

The questions I have for my academic library colleagues are not about Napoleon, or the Emperor's invasion of Russia in 1812, or Typhus (although I'd love to chat about these topics), but about how I got this book to read.

Question 1:   Why do I need to pay Audible.com $229.50 for a Platinum Yearly plan to get my audiobooks (equal to 24 credits or $9.56 a book) instead of being able to check this audiobook out of my academic library?

Question 2:  If I also wanted to be able to read the book on my Kindle why do I need to pay Amazon a further $14.85 for the e-book edition rather then checking the e-book out of my academic library?

Question 3:  Why is it that if I wanted the paper edition that my academic library would either have it on the shelves, or inter-library loan it for me within a couple of days (or buy a new copy) if the paper edition was not in the collection?

The thing is that both my brain and schedule make audiobooks far more attractive then paper books.  While I'd have a hard time arguing that The Illustrious Dead is essential to my work at the College, I would say that many (if not most) of the books I read are important in my work.  I tend to think if my brain and schedule make audiobooks essential if I'm going to keep up with reading that some of our students are in the same situation.  Would course books be more read if students could read them while multitasking?  Would our students read more books in their majors if they could read them while exercising, or waiting for the shuttle, or walking between classes? 

The academic library seems to be a wonderful organization for delivery of paper books, and less wonderful for supporting reading.  It's the old Railroad analogy - were railroads in the train business or the transportation business?  Are academic libraries in the paper book business or the reading and information business?

Having to purchase audiobooks from Audible (or e-books from Amazon) means that it is difficult to share books.  Books are much better when more people read them, as I want to talk to people about the books.  I don't want to keep my audiobook.  Once I read it I want to pass it along, I want to have it shared.  But I'm forced to buy the audiobook, when really I just want to borrow it.

I understand that academic libraries are, at least partially, about building a collection.  But if the collection building is at the expense of devoting resources to securing books in formats that folks want to consume them in (audio, e-book) then it seems that this is not a great trade-off.  I worry that our academic libraries have ceded too much ground to Amazon.  Amazon owns Audible.com and basic has a monopoly on the audiobook business.  Through the Kindle device, format and Kindle store Amazon control the e-book vertical market. 

Academic libraries, particularly working in a consortia, could serve as counterweight to the power of Amazon.  I've seen a great deal of concern from academic libraries over the Google Book scanning project, but very little about Amazon controlling the audio and e-book market.  Could some of this energy and resources be devoted to digital books, including audiobooks? 

My academic library is better then any bookstore.  And all the books are available equally to the whole community.  But academic libraries are loosing ground to Amazon and Audible in the format that I most want to consume books.  And the gap seems to be growing. 

Libraries make scarce resources abundant for everyone in the community.  Audiobooks and e-books are scarce.  I'm lucky in that I can pay $10 a week per audiobook.  If I couldn't (if I were a student say) then I'm sure I'd be doing a great deal less reading.

Comments

[Laura Braunstein]

OK, I'll bite!

Neither Audible nor Amazon (for Kindle ebooks) have a business or technical model for working with libraries -- at this point, they only sell to individual consumers. We can't buy audiobooks or ebooks from either vendor in a form that we could "circulate" to patrons. If we want audio books, we have to buy them on CD. (Many public libraries do this, but they tend to be the abridged versions of popular novels, many of which we don't even acquire in print.) Some libraries -- the Howe in particular -- are experimenting with Kindles, but they can only do so by making up a fake patron to whom each Kindle "belongs," circulating the Kindle as a whole, and disenabling the credit card associated with the account -- Amazon doesn't offer a business model that allows libraries to, say, circulate an ebook to you on *your* Kindle or an audiobook on your iPod for a certain period of time.

Not that I speak for all of my colleagues, but we *are* interested -- it's the publishers who aren't yet playing.

(And the print edition of that book should be in the library sometime after the new fiscal year starts, by the way!)

[Joshua Kim]

Laura..thanks for taking this on. I look forward to you taking on our gaps in educational technology.

Sure...Amazon doesn't play. But their are other audiobook providers. Have you looked at Tantor Media http://www.tantor.com

They have a great catalog and they work with libraries.

I'm very curious about how (and if) libraries and librarians are approaching this issue - and even if they see it as an issue.

Thanks again for jumping in - looking forward to continuing this conversation in person.

[Ridie Ghezzi]

Moving this conversation along, I will follow up on Laura's point that of course libraries *are* very interested. We have tried to work with Amazon and Audible (as you say, one and the same) and as yet they do not see the potential for a market here and therefore feel no altruistic urge to make these titles more readily available. They are not libraries, they are businesses and they don't have to play if they don't want to. I haven't heard of that other company, I'll mention it to our head of Collections, thanks.

We do have a few Kindles we are currently trialing to library staff but all of the problems Laura mentioned for the Howe also affect us. We are exploring ways to expand this medium, we definitely do not need to be convinced why this would be beneficial. Your reasons are great ones and we have thought about those too. The Howe also belongs to a NH state library consortium that has ebooks downloadable to MP3s. We have looked into this as well and I believe there was a reason we could not participate, I have forgotten the details.

Despite what it may look like, we are actively pursuing this idea. As a member of the community you should feel free to share these thoughts and move the conversation along. Not to weep and mourn, but this year's budget situation has affected a lot of the work we hoped to be doing this year and not just in the area of collections, and has unfortunately slowed down some of these types of conversations. But finding a resource to provide this kind of service would be very attractive to us.

One of the issues not mentioned here is the issue of copyright. Even if these companies were willing to make this an easy format for libraries and their patrons to use, the system would have to allow easy downloading, as well as a method to effectively take it off a device after a certain amount of time to adhere to copyright laws. I'm not sure what this would mean in reality: you can currently borrow a book, conceivably copy or scan the entire work and return it. You can borrow a CD from the Paddock Library, burn it onto another disc at home and return it. So would that mean you could put some restrictions in place, understanding someone will find a way to download it permanently if they really want to? That's just a side thought, but this is something libraries need to think about and there is not always an easy answer, especially with a process that is fairly new (not downloading audible books, but doing this through libraries).

I think I've begun to ramble, but it is a wonderful topic and already a plan in process in many dynamic and evolving academic libraries like Dartmouth's!