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This episode of the Straight Download podcast from the 2026 Public Library Association Conference
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is brought to you by Hoopla, a digital service of Midwest Tape. Here's the straight download,
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no fiction, just facts. Good afternoon, everyone. We're so excited to be live on the PLA conference
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floor here in Minneapolis, recording our first on location, the Straight Download podcast.
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Jeff, it's been a while since we've, you know, been at PLA, two years. It's been a while since
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you've been at a PLA. What are you most surprised by? This is my conference, my people, so I love
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it here. And, you know, no schools, no academic libraries, whoa, public libraries. Public library
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only. Yeah, this is a great show. We're really excited to be here today. This, like I said,
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first time we've been live, especially in front of a studio audience here. I'm really excited
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to introduce our guest today. Andrew has spent over three decades at the intersection of ink,
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pixels, and the public interest. And after 16 years as a leading voice at Publishers Weekly,
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he just transitioned to becoming the editor in chief of Publishing Perspectives. Perhaps most
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importantly for our conversation today, he's the founder and editor of Words and Money,
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which is a publication dedicated to centering libraries in the modern publishing business.
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He's also the author of The Battle of 999. And if you didn't know, he is a relentless advocate for
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a sustainable book ecosystem. Please welcome Andrew Albanese. Thank you. Thank you both.
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Great to have you on the show. It's really great to be here. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I had
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a chance to write about the podcast for Words and Money, and I love the approach you're taking,
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and I'm happy to contribute to the conversation. So you've been a huge advocate for libraries.
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You've seen a lot of changes, and you just recently wrote about some of them. You have
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amazing article, and are you going to continue that article? That article is going to continue.
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So it's really about sustainability, sort of the marketplace for digital content and libraries.
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And I've been meaning to write this article since I started Words and Money over a year ago,
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but so many developments have been taking place. I had a 15,000-word article, which I just was
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never going to be able to put that out there. So I decided to break it up and start a series.
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So I'm going to do two a month going forward. We're going to try to preview some of the issues
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that we're going to talk about ahead of time so people know what's coming a little bit. But we
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decided to start with sort of the legislative environment that's now sort of blooming around
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e-books, because it really sort of crystallizes, I think, where things stand with libraries and
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publishers and readers. And yeah, it was a 3,000-word article at the end of the day.
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But thankfully, it's getting a lot of readers, and I'm getting a lot of really good feedback on it.
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Well, you know, I appreciate you advocating for the space and talking about difficult issues,
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because sometimes the people in the room don't want to talk about these things.
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And so we really appreciate you. That has generally been my experience,
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too. I find the librarians are happy to talk about these things. I find the major publishers
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are not so interested in talking about them so much. And I find that the indie publishers
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don't know enough to really talk about them and really need to be brought into the conversation
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more. Well, it's funny. I can relate to that. There are a lot of public libraries that like
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us. There are some that do not like the model, and a handful of publishers that don't like us,
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but most do. It's all coming full circle with the legislation and data. And now that we're
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carrying all the license types, we never carried one-user, one-copy license types before. Now that
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we're getting data in those license types, we just want to make it transparent so libraries
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can make the best decisions to serve their community. I think that's incredibly important,
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which is why I love what you do on the podcast. I love what you advocate for.
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And I think it's time to try some new stuff. We're 15 years since HarperCollins introduced
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the 26Len model. And the major publishers have not really changed their positions much except
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to, you know, a little bit around the edges to offer some different bundles. But the prices have
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gone up and the restrictions have gone up. And the way people are consuming content has completely
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changed from those 15 years ago. Yeah, I know when we got into space, we were inspired by
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patron-driven acquisition and meeting the community where it is in library missions and talking to
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librarians. So we wanted to deliver a product that was different. You know, some of the other
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people in the market did one-user, one-copy as well. And I affectionately call the one-user,
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one-copy model the dissatisfaction model because, you know, you don't get what you want. You just
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settle for something else. And you have all these materials. So let people take an armful of those
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materials. So now we live in a different world where I don't think collection development
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librarians are building collections, unfortunately, anymore, but they're managing demand.
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And that's a mind shift change that has to happen and be talked about. And it's an
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uncomfortable conversation for us to have sometimes in the field. Absolutely. You know,
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it's a complete paradigm and mind shift from doing business the way we've always done it to
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thinking differently about how we're going to move forward. The digital age, you know,
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is changing so much. So many conversations I've had today is about how do we manage this burgeoning
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growth, all this growth on these platforms with a budget that's not growing. I don't think that
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publishers are really thinking about that as well. They're just thinking about how am I going to
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make another dollar? Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's a little different for indies versus
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the majors, right? The majors are thinking about the marketplace, a little about protecting their
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print sales, about protecting bookstores. I don't know what data they're using to come to these
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conclusions, but that's what they're seeing. The indies do see the value in like getting more
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stuff out there, maybe a little more willing to try some different models. I think we're talking
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about a marketplace that I see is like really separated by five publishers at the top and then
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a whole slew of other publishers that are much more open. To do this right, you have to take care of
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all stakeholders. You have to take care of authors. You have to take care of libraries. The platform
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has to be able to have the money to build the new features and functionality. And I think a couple
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of them, I think HarperCollins is very fair in their term of sale, but the term of sale has gone
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up substantially in the last several years, sometimes two, three fold, but it's also limited
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by the meter. And that's what we see with a lot of the legislation. So like tough love, like what
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would you tell the five CEOs or the big publishers? Like what would you tell them about libraries?
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Like is it really a lost sale or are they have this amazing advocacy group that also subsidized
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their mid list and lesser successful authors and is a really long-term asset? So what advice would
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you give them? First of all, it's hard for me to give advice. I can give them my observations,
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but they don't listen to me. And I guess the key observation that I would make is that they need
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more voices in the room. I feel like that they are still making decisions based on data that's
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not complete. They're listening to voices that are coming from sort of a, I wouldn't say old school,
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but maybe an outmoded thinking of the way digital content is now functioning. And what we know about
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the digital content market and libraries now is that it's mature. Back in the day, libraries
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could sort of maybe manage their budgets. And like when they had digital demand, they could
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shift things around and make it work. But now the urban libraries council, just I talked to people
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there. They said that more than half of their budgets are going to digital. They can't just
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paper things over anymore. There needs to be a more sustainable way of looking at things. And I don't
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know that the publishers, the major publishers thinking has changed with the maturity of the
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market. It's funny, like we started calling it internally. We talk about this a lot and we talk
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a lot with progressive libraries that are willing to have the conversation and I call it the best
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seller tax. And so big publishers think everything's going to be a bestseller and it's not.
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You know, 95% of even what the big five releases sells 2000 copies or less. Okay. That mid list
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was always supported by libraries buying hardcover, the release and now digital. Okay. Then we have
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the other problem that not only have the prices gone up, but everything's gone to metered and the
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dirty little secret that we're discovering with the data being in this business is that libraries
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are buying the same way that they're buying print and there's a ton of waste and vendors aren't
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showing that waste. So for instance, most libraries have a three week loan period. So it's 17 times
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in a year a book could go out. So if something costs $68 in two years, you could possibly get
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$34 a Cirx, seems like a good deal, $2 a book. But if that gets utilized 25% of the time,
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you're up to $8 a Cirx. And that's getting glossed over by magazine Cirx and everything else
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and what I call napkin math on how the cost per Cirx is being calculated. So like, what would
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your advice be for us talking to publishers and being able to tell them that look, it's one thing
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to price a bestseller a certain way, but it's another to price the rest of your content.
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And what about the advocacy for authors? And what about PR around
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midlist authors about access and availability? All very good points. I don't know what advice
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I would give them, but I would tell them again, I would stress that they need to start looking at
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the market a little bit differently. You made a very good point that not everything is a bestseller.
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And in fact, I would go back back in the day when I was covering the Google
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indexing when they were scanning books and putting them out there. One of the key findings
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that I thought was so interesting was that the percentage of books on a major publisher's
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backlist that sells zero copies a year is incredibly high. We call that dead on arrival.
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And, and there's a lot of those titles. So it becomes $80 for no Cirx. Right. And part of that
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too, is that the number of books that were scanned by Google and made available to be discovered
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through Google, we're still not being read. Nobody was still checking them out. They were just lost.
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I think it would behoove them to look a little more closely at how they could take advantage and
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keep sales going for all of their authors across their backlists and not just focus on their
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bestsellers. I think our philosophy is not to carry everything. We don't want AI slop just like
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anyone else doesn't want AI slop, but we also don't want to censor for libraries. And we want
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to offer everything on the shelf, that long tail diverse content to meet the unique needs of your
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community without any upfront money. So if something is discovered, it's discovered and can
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be recommended on its marriage. So I think that's why a lot of small publishers and independent
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authors, you know, I've seen Malcolm Gladwell doesn't go through a publisher anymore. Authors
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like Frieda McFadden were discovered in the Kindle ecosystem, which survives around $3.99
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and less pricing for libraries. That's kind of the approach. Like if it fits in that value paradigm
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for libraries, we want to offer it if it's good content. I think that is fantastic too because I
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look at my own children and the way they read, they read stuff that is self-published. Like they
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love, like my daughter loves horror. So she finds these horror books on Amazon all the time. Like
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if those were available to her through her library, she would totally use the library to get
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these books and she would probably buy a number of them as well. But it's, it's just really odd.
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I don't think that, you know, libraries don't have a way to really find all of the self-published
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content that is really becoming very popular until it gets so popular that it's bought by a major
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and then, you know, it becomes expensive. So I also think discovery is definitely an element,
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but I think that it's just a squeeze on the budget. And Andrew and I attended on Tuesday,
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a great one-day conference with the Indie Lib group. And this, this group was focused on how
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public libraries and independent publishers can work together. And what came up consistently
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throughout that day was the loss of backlist. And they were talking a lot about the fact that
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the big five publishers take so much of their budget because they're basically just filling
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holds on demand. And we knew that because we're seeing their cattle, you know, when they're
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purchasing, they're spending what, 50 to 80 percent of their budget on filling holds and
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filling expired meters. So where does that leave, what room does that leave for them to be able
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to offer the kinds of things your daughter's looking for? That's right. No, that is going
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to take a fundamental rethinking of how they approach digital for their, their customers,
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for their users in their library. Right. You know, it's, it's, I don't, that's, that is the Lord's
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work if you can get that done, because that is a very important. Okay, bear with me here. So we
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have 25 years of library deciding to buy something digital, the DRM days, putting it in their
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catalog, their staff knows what's available, right, recommending it, and then getting holds
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on items that come out six months before release. They get these holds cues from their power users,
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and then the demand wanes and they buy on the demand. So like, what advice would you give,
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give libraries on how to do things differently? Yeah, again, like very wary of the advice,
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but I will tell them what I see, which is like the holds thing is a real issue. And I'm hearing it
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a lot of them about how they're changing their holds, like the holds now are going up 12,
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16 to one, how is it serving your patrons to have a six month wait on a popular book, right?
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That's a problem. I would certainly want to rethink the way allowing holds to happen.
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Well, like 15 years ago, holds were celebrated. They were like talked about, they were like
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published in the metrics today. They're not right now. They're totally gamified, right? It is
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gamified, but at least they're not celebrated. So I consider that success. Right. I think too,
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it's not just the holds ratios, but it's the settings, the patron borrow setting. I've talked
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about this before on the podcast. When everything was print and you walked into the building,
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that took energy. You had to load up the car, go to the branch. And so having a 30 limit checkout
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made sense because you would load up, go home for three weeks, and then you'd come back and do it
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all over again. On digital, I think libraries have to think about that experience a little
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differently because once you've read the book, you return it, you can instantly get another one.
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You don't have to go get in the car and drive to return the book and look through the shelves and
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pick out another one. So I think one of the challenges is how libraries are maybe not
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evaluating some of those settings. They've said it years ago and they still have, you can borrow
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50 things at once on this platform and you can have 50 holds. That's just making the holds problem
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worse because if you're going in every month and placing 50 holds, that's starting to accumulate.
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And do you really need that many holds or that many digital checkouts at one time?
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No, I totally would agree. And we are starting to see that number come down to hold, but it's
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still very high. And librarians, they tell you they buy off holds. And when you're buying off
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holds, a lot of that stuff is you're not going to get the value for it. The cost per circ,
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if something only goes out three or four times, it's going to be extraordinarily high.
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And that's more books from any publishers that you can't buy. That budget money is being very
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inefficiently used. So I do think librarians are now recognizing that whether or not they can
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make the changes needed going forward. I think the problem is that the model has been conducted
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the same way for so long. It's hard for people to change. Is there an alternative and how do you
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re-educate your power users and your power patrons? It's really interesting that libraries
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are still putting in materials six months before they come out and allowing holds.
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And then what's more troubling to me is publishers are talking about
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selling more by marketing the holds list. Yes, that's come up pretty much in every
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conference I've been in the past two years. They've stated very clearly,
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we recognize that driving demand, driving our sales is driving those holds.
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You see that you see social media campaigns geared towards books that are coming out and
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pumping up the holds, increasing the number of buys. So if I'm a publisher and I'm getting a
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premium, five times retail price, this library edition price, back to the old days of audiobooks
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and CDs. So there's no first sale doctrine. There's legislation on the table. But why,
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if I was a publisher, why would I cut my price if it's being supported in the market?
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That's a really good point. And something in this article that I just wrote about the
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legislative environment is something I heard librarians talk to me. Almost every librarian
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I spoke to had an opinion on their agency in the marketplace, how they let this market develop
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because they felt like they had to fulfill this demand they were seeing through the holds.
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And they didn't push back hard enough when the terms got worse. And now because the market is
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mature and they have all this digital demand, they feel like they can't go back. And so they're
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really stuck. OK, so now there's a convergence. Other competitors carry instant paper use like
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we carry. We carry a flex one user, one copy perpetual. We carry one user, one copy metered
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and we carry bundles as well. So in some cases it makes sense to buy a bundle. In some cases
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it makes sense to buy a flex meter title, but in some cases it doesn't. And so we just want to be
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transparent and lean into that math and show the math. And I personally believe that collections
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can't be anchored in metered licenses when the rate of return is not being measured. The great
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thing about instantly available paper use is that it gives you that long tail collection. It meets
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short term demand that libraries have never been able to be met before. But it's not as good for
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bestsellers. So if you have a perennial seller, we're going to tell you to buy it in a bundle
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instead of buying it on paper use instant. But the problem is that even on the largest
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audiobook company in the world, even the largest library systems, it only makes sense to buy those
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bundles about five percent of the time. Right. This whole idea of hits driven versus true demand
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and true sustainability. I mean, I think that needs to be worked out. And I'm not sure like
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what advice you would give us to have conversations about that. Yeah, I didn't. You probably know much
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more about it than I do. But what I see is that, like you mentioned, five percent. I don't even see
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a lot of common data between library. I wish that there was a way to have we all be singing from the
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same hymnal, looking at the same numbers and understanding how this is all working. There's
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almost like a religious fervor to this or they have these articles of faith that they want to
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believe about how the market works and facts and data are impervious to it. If it doesn't support
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their conclusion about how the market has to work, they're not listening to it. So the advice
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that I would give is like, can we at least all get on the same page with some data that we agree
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around and have real conversations about how the market is working or not working around some
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common facts? I have a lot of respect for my colleague, Brad Rose. And I know, you know,
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Brad Rose and Brad Rose is our head of our acquisition in the publishing world. And he's
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very patient. He's very laid back, way more laid back than me. And there's some publishers that
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I won't even talk to because I think they're living in the Stone Age. And it's hard to
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understand. Some libraries want us to bring all the publishers together in a room and talk about
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pricing. That's not going to happen. No, that'll never happen. What are publishers going to respond
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to? They're going to respond to bad press. They're going to respond to declining sales. I think
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that's the only way to get their attention. And I think there's an alternative. I mean,
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in the digital world, the best e-books are driven on price. And if you're not going to play in a
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library value price point, then you got to go buy, buy. I think you bring up a good point to you,
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Andrew, about the data. I think that brings up this idea that the data we collect, IMLS data
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that's collected every two years, the surveys they're doing, I think historically when a lot
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of that was around physical, those data points made sense. And whenever libraries were really
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looking at circulation data, door count data, that was so critical and so important. I think
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as libraries need to think about what is important to capture now on digital, because they're not
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changing. They're trying to apply the same data capture rules to digital as they do to physical,
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and it's not working. So I think there's a conversation that needs to be had around that
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topic because I think we can pull a lot more insightful data and share that with publishers
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that gives them more insight into what's really happening with their books, what's really
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happening in that space. That's another area that we probably need to work on. When I talk to the
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major publishers and they talk about the data that they see, the data that they're mostly referring
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to is coming from Amazon, which is not a neutral party in this. I don't know how much faith to put
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in that. It probably has a role to be part of the mix here. My conversations with publishers
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and what I hear from my colleagues, Brad and others, is that if we were a retailer,
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they would be willing to do business with us. But the fact that we sell to libraries and they think
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libraries are cannibalizing their sales, they thought that even in the physical world. I don't
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think some libraries realize that, that mentality that's been in those buildings for years. It's
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real, isn't it? Again, another data point that would be great to see. That question about
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library lends actually cannibalize sales. You've seen people talk about how libraries spur sales.
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You've seen people talk about how libraries hurt sales. There's no one common hymnal that we can
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all sing from on this. What other industry has this advocate group that also spends millions
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of dollars promoting their product? In this day and age where everybody competes for everybody's
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attention, I know a lot of the publishers. We do business with 20,000 different vendors,
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I believe. A lot of them are leaning into it. Some of them are amazing. I think great value
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propositions. But the ones that don't get it are the ones that are getting most of the library
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dollars. With the legislation and the difficult discussions and the transparency of the data,
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your future ball, your perfect world, you'd wave the magic wand. What's going to happen here?
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The most important part of the legislative movement that's happening now is negotiation.
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There has to be, in a mature market at scale, two sides have to come together and hammer out
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terms that work for each of them. That just does not exist right now, at least for the major
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publishers right now. I think one of the things that the legislation is really hoping to move
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the ball on is to get people back to the table to come out with something that can actually work
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for both sides. Until you have a mature marketplace at scale where there's negotiation taking place,
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we'll never know if it's working or if it's good or not.
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Isn't the purpose of the legislation, some publishers will probably not participate and
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some may and some may after PR. The negotiation has to be done by them making a term of stale
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change. Whether they eliminate the expiration date on the meter or whether they reduce the price,
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it doesn't really matter. But they're going to have to do something at some point,
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right? Or libraries are going to have to move on to the other millions of titles that are available.
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That's right. The implicit threat that you hear from the Association of American Publishers,
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which is really taking point on this issue with the legislation especially,
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is that libraries or publishers, the major publishers will back out of the market a little
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bit. But I'll ask this question to both of you. You saw what happened in 2020 when Macmillan
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tried to pull back on the marketplace with its embargo. The marketplace has advanced a great deal
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since then. So pulling out of the marketplace when you have that much user demand right now,
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how would that look? I think libraries should elicit authors, mid-list authors at these
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publishers where they don't like the terms and start marketing to them and telling them the
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story and sharing the data with them now. And I think from a PR perspective, the ones that
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refuse to participate, you vote with your pocketbook. You vote with your taxpayer dollar.
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I think it would be an interesting way to perhaps prove that libraries don't cannibalize their
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retail sales. They may just experiment that right into reality. I think the author component is huge
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here too, and it really can't be overlooked. I mean, if more authors understood that their books
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are not being bought because a James Patterson book is drawing three times the price, four times
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the price, and libraries can't afford it, I think that would... almost every author I've ever spoken
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to has a very positive story to say about libraries and wants to support libraries.
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Knowing that their budget dollars are being sort of drained away by this upper echelon of authors
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would probably have an impact. I would like you to write more articles about that because I think
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it's a great angle. It is. And somebody in this community has to know Michelle Obama, and isn't
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her book published by Penguin? And why isn't her book available in more libraries? You know, I have
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spoken to some agents about this, and part of the reason is they don't see the accounting. They don't
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see library sales broken out, right? So it's hard to quantify that. That is something that could
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certainly help change things on this. And the other issue for authors too is that, and this is
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what the agents would tell me too, is that, you know, how much money is it really? Well, it's a significant
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amount of money to your bottom line. And until we quantify that for them, I don't know that they see
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the issue. Well, you've been an amazing guest. We really appreciate your time. Ann, do you want to
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lead us to the important question here? Oh yes, we have to ask. So what is everyone reading, watching,
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or listening to? Andrew, you want to kick us off? Oh boy, what am I reading? So right now I'm reading a
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book by a venerable literary agent named Richard Curtis. He wrote a book called Digital Ink,
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which is about sort of the role that he played in the early days of digital in publishing. And
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it's absolutely fascinating. And the reason I picked it up is because I was working on a book
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on the same subject. It's already been done. I have a lot of respect for Richard, so I'll be
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doing an interview with him for Words and Money coming up here very shortly. And then I've decided
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to re-watch Game of Thrones, which has really put me in a sort of dark mood, but it's pretty well
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done. I've been enjoying it. Speaking of dark moods, I watched the Leonardo DiCaprio, the one
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with all the Oscars and Sean Penn one day after another. Great, powerful movie, but it was a
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wild ride. It was a little timely and topical, a little too timely and topical, but it was a
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great movie. So in my video roots, I'm going to stick to a video. What are you reading or listening
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to? So well, you know that for my training, I listen to audiobooks. And so I'm new to the
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audiobook space. I'm typically just a reader. And I found that if I listen to mystery, I will continue
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to work out because I won't let myself listen to the book unless I'm actually walking. So I am
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listening to Tell No One by Harlan Coben. It's narrated by Ed Sala. Recorded Books released this,
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I think, in 2012. So it's a little older, but it's a really great mystery. And I still don't know who
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did it. So I'm gonna have to go work out tonight. Well, Andrew, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much
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for being here. Oh, it's an honor. I'm really happy to be on the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
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Again, I'm a journalist. So if I most of what I'm saying, I'm just repeating back what you've
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told me already. So I apologize if it sounds redundant. But it's been really fun to talk
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about these issues. Right. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I do want to do one big shout out to
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David Schaefer, our sound tech for making this possible and putting all the work in getting us
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set up here today. Thank you, David. We'd love to hear what you're into too out there. So drop
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your favorites in the LinkedIn group. Thanks for tuning in. And as always, keep downloading
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knowledge with The Straight Download. Check out the show notes for links to additional information
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on the topic discussed in this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to The Straight Download
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00:27:47,180 --> 00:27:51,040
to add to these insightful conversations to your playlist and stay informed.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,980
This episode of the Straight Download podcast from the 2026 Public Library Association Conference
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is brought to you by Hoopla, a digital service of Midwest Tape. Here's the straight download,
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no fiction, just facts. Good afternoon, everyone. We're so excited to be live on the PLA conference
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floor here in Minneapolis, recording our first on location, the Straight Download podcast.
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Jeff, it's been a while since we've, you know, been at PLA, two years. It's been a while since
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you've been at a PLA. What are you most surprised by? This is my conference, my people, so I love
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it here. And, you know, no schools, no academic libraries, whoa, public libraries. Public library
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only. Yeah, this is a great show. We're really excited to be here today. This, like I said,
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first time we've been live, especially in front of a studio audience here. I'm really excited
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to introduce our guest today. Andrew has spent over three decades at the intersection of ink,
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pixels, and the public interest. And after 16 years as a leading voice at Publishers Weekly,
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he just transitioned to becoming the editor in chief of Publishing Perspectives. Perhaps most
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importantly for our conversation today, he's the founder and editor of Words and Money,
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which is a publication dedicated to centering libraries in the modern publishing business.
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He's also the author of The Battle of 999. And if you didn't know, he is a relentless advocate for
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a sustainable book ecosystem. Please welcome Andrew Albanese. Thank you. Thank you both.
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Great to have you on the show. It's really great to be here. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I had
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a chance to write about the podcast for Words and Money, and I love the approach you're taking,
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and I'm happy to contribute to the conversation. So you've been a huge advocate for libraries.
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You've seen a lot of changes, and you just recently wrote about some of them. You have
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amazing article, and are you going to continue that article? That article is going to continue.
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So it's really about sustainability, sort of the marketplace for digital content and libraries.
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And I've been meaning to write this article since I started Words and Money over a year ago,
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but so many developments have been taking place. I had a 15,000-word article, which I just was
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never going to be able to put that out there. So I decided to break it up and start a series.
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So I'm going to do two a month going forward. We're going to try to preview some of the issues
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that we're going to talk about ahead of time so people know what's coming a little bit. But we
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decided to start with sort of the legislative environment that's now sort of blooming around
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e-books, because it really sort of crystallizes, I think, where things stand with libraries and
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publishers and readers. And yeah, it was a 3,000-word article at the end of the day.
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But thankfully, it's getting a lot of readers, and I'm getting a lot of really good feedback on it.
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Well, you know, I appreciate you advocating for the space and talking about difficult issues,
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because sometimes the people in the room don't want to talk about these things.
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And so we really appreciate you. That has generally been my experience,
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too. I find the librarians are happy to talk about these things. I find the major publishers
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are not so interested in talking about them so much. And I find that the indie publishers
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don't know enough to really talk about them and really need to be brought into the conversation
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more. Well, it's funny. I can relate to that. There are a lot of public libraries that like
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us. There are some that do not like the model, and a handful of publishers that don't like us,
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but most do. It's all coming full circle with the legislation and data. And now that we're
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carrying all the license types, we never carried one-user, one-copy license types before. Now that
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we're getting data in those license types, we just want to make it transparent so libraries
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can make the best decisions to serve their community. I think that's incredibly important,
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which is why I love what you do on the podcast. I love what you advocate for.
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And I think it's time to try some new stuff. We're 15 years since HarperCollins introduced
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the 26Len model. And the major publishers have not really changed their positions much except
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to, you know, a little bit around the edges to offer some different bundles. But the prices have
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gone up and the restrictions have gone up. And the way people are consuming content has completely
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changed from those 15 years ago. Yeah, I know when we got into space, we were inspired by
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patron-driven acquisition and meeting the community where it is in library missions and talking to
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librarians. So we wanted to deliver a product that was different. You know, some of the other
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people in the market did one-user, one-copy as well. And I affectionately call the one-user,
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one-copy model the dissatisfaction model because, you know, you don't get what you want. You just
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settle for something else. And you have all these materials. So let people take an armful of those
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materials. So now we live in a different world where I don't think collection development
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librarians are building collections, unfortunately, anymore, but they're managing demand.
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And that's a mind shift change that has to happen and be talked about. And it's an
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uncomfortable conversation for us to have sometimes in the field. Absolutely. You know,
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it's a complete paradigm and mind shift from doing business the way we've always done it to
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thinking differently about how we're going to move forward. The digital age, you know,
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is changing so much. So many conversations I've had today is about how do we manage this burgeoning
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growth, all this growth on these platforms with a budget that's not growing. I don't think that
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publishers are really thinking about that as well. They're just thinking about how am I going to
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make another dollar? Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's a little different for indies versus
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the majors, right? The majors are thinking about the marketplace, a little about protecting their
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print sales, about protecting bookstores. I don't know what data they're using to come to these
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conclusions, but that's what they're seeing. The indies do see the value in like getting more
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stuff out there, maybe a little more willing to try some different models. I think we're talking
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about a marketplace that I see is like really separated by five publishers at the top and then
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a whole slew of other publishers that are much more open. To do this right, you have to take care of
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all stakeholders. You have to take care of authors. You have to take care of libraries. The platform
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has to be able to have the money to build the new features and functionality. And I think a couple
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of them, I think HarperCollins is very fair in their term of sale, but the term of sale has gone
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up substantially in the last several years, sometimes two, three fold, but it's also limited
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by the meter. And that's what we see with a lot of the legislation. So like tough love, like what
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would you tell the five CEOs or the big publishers? Like what would you tell them about libraries?
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Like is it really a lost sale or are they have this amazing advocacy group that also subsidized
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their mid list and lesser successful authors and is a really long-term asset? So what advice would
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you give them? First of all, it's hard for me to give advice. I can give them my observations,
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but they don't listen to me. And I guess the key observation that I would make is that they need
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more voices in the room. I feel like that they are still making decisions based on data that's
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not complete. They're listening to voices that are coming from sort of a, I wouldn't say old school,
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but maybe an outmoded thinking of the way digital content is now functioning. And what we know about
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the digital content market and libraries now is that it's mature. Back in the day, libraries
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could sort of maybe manage their budgets. And like when they had digital demand, they could
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shift things around and make it work. But now the urban libraries council, just I talked to people
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there. They said that more than half of their budgets are going to digital. They can't just
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paper things over anymore. There needs to be a more sustainable way of looking at things. And I don't
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know that the publishers, the major publishers thinking has changed with the maturity of the
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market. It's funny, like we started calling it internally. We talk about this a lot and we talk
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a lot with progressive libraries that are willing to have the conversation and I call it the best
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seller tax. And so big publishers think everything's going to be a bestseller and it's not.
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You know, 95% of even what the big five releases sells 2000 copies or less. Okay. That mid list
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was always supported by libraries buying hardcover, the release and now digital. Okay. Then we have
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the other problem that not only have the prices gone up, but everything's gone to metered and the
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dirty little secret that we're discovering with the data being in this business is that libraries
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are buying the same way that they're buying print and there's a ton of waste and vendors aren't
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showing that waste. So for instance, most libraries have a three week loan period. So it's 17 times
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in a year a book could go out. So if something costs $68 in two years, you could possibly get
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$34 a Cirx, seems like a good deal, $2 a book. But if that gets utilized 25% of the time,
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you're up to $8 a Cirx. And that's getting glossed over by magazine Cirx and everything else
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and what I call napkin math on how the cost per Cirx is being calculated. So like, what would
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your advice be for us talking to publishers and being able to tell them that look, it's one thing
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to price a bestseller a certain way, but it's another to price the rest of your content.
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And what about the advocacy for authors? And what about PR around
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midlist authors about access and availability? All very good points. I don't know what advice
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I would give them, but I would tell them again, I would stress that they need to start looking at
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the market a little bit differently. You made a very good point that not everything is a bestseller.
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And in fact, I would go back back in the day when I was covering the Google
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indexing when they were scanning books and putting them out there. One of the key findings
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that I thought was so interesting was that the percentage of books on a major publisher's
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backlist that sells zero copies a year is incredibly high. We call that dead on arrival.
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And, and there's a lot of those titles. So it becomes $80 for no Cirx. Right. And part of that
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too, is that the number of books that were scanned by Google and made available to be discovered
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through Google, we're still not being read. Nobody was still checking them out. They were just lost.
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I think it would behoove them to look a little more closely at how they could take advantage and
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keep sales going for all of their authors across their backlists and not just focus on their
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bestsellers. I think our philosophy is not to carry everything. We don't want AI slop just like
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anyone else doesn't want AI slop, but we also don't want to censor for libraries. And we want
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to offer everything on the shelf, that long tail diverse content to meet the unique needs of your
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community without any upfront money. So if something is discovered, it's discovered and can
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be recommended on its marriage. So I think that's why a lot of small publishers and independent
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authors, you know, I've seen Malcolm Gladwell doesn't go through a publisher anymore. Authors
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like Frieda McFadden were discovered in the Kindle ecosystem, which survives around $3.99
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and less pricing for libraries. That's kind of the approach. Like if it fits in that value paradigm
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for libraries, we want to offer it if it's good content. I think that is fantastic too because I
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look at my own children and the way they read, they read stuff that is self-published. Like they
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love, like my daughter loves horror. So she finds these horror books on Amazon all the time. Like
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if those were available to her through her library, she would totally use the library to get
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these books and she would probably buy a number of them as well. But it's, it's just really odd.
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I don't think that, you know, libraries don't have a way to really find all of the self-published
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content that is really becoming very popular until it gets so popular that it's bought by a major
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and then, you know, it becomes expensive. So I also think discovery is definitely an element,
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but I think that it's just a squeeze on the budget. And Andrew and I attended on Tuesday,
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a great one-day conference with the Indie Lib group. And this, this group was focused on how
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public libraries and independent publishers can work together. And what came up consistently
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throughout that day was the loss of backlist. And they were talking a lot about the fact that
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the big five publishers take so much of their budget because they're basically just filling
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holds on demand. And we knew that because we're seeing their cattle, you know, when they're
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purchasing, they're spending what, 50 to 80 percent of their budget on filling holds and
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filling expired meters. So where does that leave, what room does that leave for them to be able
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to offer the kinds of things your daughter's looking for? That's right. No, that is going
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to take a fundamental rethinking of how they approach digital for their, their customers,
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for their users in their library. Right. You know, it's, it's, I don't, that's, that is the Lord's
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work if you can get that done, because that is a very important. Okay, bear with me here. So we
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have 25 years of library deciding to buy something digital, the DRM days, putting it in their
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catalog, their staff knows what's available, right, recommending it, and then getting holds
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on items that come out six months before release. They get these holds cues from their power users,
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and then the demand wanes and they buy on the demand. So like, what advice would you give,
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give libraries on how to do things differently? Yeah, again, like very wary of the advice,
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but I will tell them what I see, which is like the holds thing is a real issue. And I'm hearing it
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a lot of them about how they're changing their holds, like the holds now are going up 12,
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16 to one, how is it serving your patrons to have a six month wait on a popular book, right?
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That's a problem. I would certainly want to rethink the way allowing holds to happen.
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Well, like 15 years ago, holds were celebrated. They were like talked about, they were like
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published in the metrics today. They're not right now. They're totally gamified, right? It is
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gamified, but at least they're not celebrated. So I consider that success. Right. I think too,
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it's not just the holds ratios, but it's the settings, the patron borrow setting. I've talked
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about this before on the podcast. When everything was print and you walked into the building,
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that took energy. You had to load up the car, go to the branch. And so having a 30 limit checkout
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made sense because you would load up, go home for three weeks, and then you'd come back and do it
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all over again. On digital, I think libraries have to think about that experience a little
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differently because once you've read the book, you return it, you can instantly get another one.
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You don't have to go get in the car and drive to return the book and look through the shelves and
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pick out another one. So I think one of the challenges is how libraries are maybe not
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evaluating some of those settings. They've said it years ago and they still have, you can borrow
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50 things at once on this platform and you can have 50 holds. That's just making the holds problem
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worse because if you're going in every month and placing 50 holds, that's starting to accumulate.
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And do you really need that many holds or that many digital checkouts at one time?
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No, I totally would agree. And we are starting to see that number come down to hold, but it's
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still very high. And librarians, they tell you they buy off holds. And when you're buying off
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holds, a lot of that stuff is you're not going to get the value for it. The cost per circ,
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if something only goes out three or four times, it's going to be extraordinarily high.
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And that's more books from any publishers that you can't buy. That budget money is being very
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inefficiently used. So I do think librarians are now recognizing that whether or not they can
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make the changes needed going forward. I think the problem is that the model has been conducted
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the same way for so long. It's hard for people to change. Is there an alternative and how do you
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re-educate your power users and your power patrons? It's really interesting that libraries
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are still putting in materials six months before they come out and allowing holds.
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And then what's more troubling to me is publishers are talking about
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selling more by marketing the holds list. Yes, that's come up pretty much in every
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conference I've been in the past two years. They've stated very clearly,
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we recognize that driving demand, driving our sales is driving those holds.
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You see that you see social media campaigns geared towards books that are coming out and
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pumping up the holds, increasing the number of buys. So if I'm a publisher and I'm getting a
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premium, five times retail price, this library edition price, back to the old days of audiobooks
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and CDs. So there's no first sale doctrine. There's legislation on the table. But why,
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if I was a publisher, why would I cut my price if it's being supported in the market?
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That's a really good point. And something in this article that I just wrote about the
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legislative environment is something I heard librarians talk to me. Almost every librarian
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I spoke to had an opinion on their agency in the marketplace, how they let this market develop
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because they felt like they had to fulfill this demand they were seeing through the holds.
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And they didn't push back hard enough when the terms got worse. And now because the market is
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mature and they have all this digital demand, they feel like they can't go back. And so they're
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really stuck. OK, so now there's a convergence. Other competitors carry instant paper use like
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we carry. We carry a flex one user, one copy perpetual. We carry one user, one copy metered
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and we carry bundles as well. So in some cases it makes sense to buy a bundle. In some cases
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it makes sense to buy a flex meter title, but in some cases it doesn't. And so we just want to be
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transparent and lean into that math and show the math. And I personally believe that collections
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can't be anchored in metered licenses when the rate of return is not being measured. The great
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thing about instantly available paper use is that it gives you that long tail collection. It meets
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short term demand that libraries have never been able to be met before. But it's not as good for
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bestsellers. So if you have a perennial seller, we're going to tell you to buy it in a bundle
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instead of buying it on paper use instant. But the problem is that even on the largest
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audiobook company in the world, even the largest library systems, it only makes sense to buy those
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bundles about five percent of the time. Right. This whole idea of hits driven versus true demand
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and true sustainability. I mean, I think that needs to be worked out. And I'm not sure like
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what advice you would give us to have conversations about that. Yeah, I didn't. You probably know much
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more about it than I do. But what I see is that, like you mentioned, five percent. I don't even see
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a lot of common data between library. I wish that there was a way to have we all be singing from the
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same hymnal, looking at the same numbers and understanding how this is all working. There's
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almost like a religious fervor to this or they have these articles of faith that they want to
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believe about how the market works and facts and data are impervious to it. If it doesn't support
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their conclusion about how the market has to work, they're not listening to it. So the advice
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that I would give is like, can we at least all get on the same page with some data that we agree
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around and have real conversations about how the market is working or not working around some
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common facts? I have a lot of respect for my colleague, Brad Rose. And I know, you know,
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Brad Rose and Brad Rose is our head of our acquisition in the publishing world. And he's
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very patient. He's very laid back, way more laid back than me. And there's some publishers that
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I won't even talk to because I think they're living in the Stone Age. And it's hard to
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understand. Some libraries want us to bring all the publishers together in a room and talk about
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pricing. That's not going to happen. No, that'll never happen. What are publishers going to respond
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to? They're going to respond to bad press. They're going to respond to declining sales. I think
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that's the only way to get their attention. And I think there's an alternative. I mean,
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in the digital world, the best e-books are driven on price. And if you're not going to play in a
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library value price point, then you got to go buy, buy. I think you bring up a good point to you,
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Andrew, about the data. I think that brings up this idea that the data we collect, IMLS data
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that's collected every two years, the surveys they're doing, I think historically when a lot
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of that was around physical, those data points made sense. And whenever libraries were really
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looking at circulation data, door count data, that was so critical and so important. I think
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as libraries need to think about what is important to capture now on digital, because they're not
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changing. They're trying to apply the same data capture rules to digital as they do to physical,
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and it's not working. So I think there's a conversation that needs to be had around that
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topic because I think we can pull a lot more insightful data and share that with publishers
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that gives them more insight into what's really happening with their books, what's really
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happening in that space. That's another area that we probably need to work on. When I talk to the
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major publishers and they talk about the data that they see, the data that they're mostly referring
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to is coming from Amazon, which is not a neutral party in this. I don't know how much faith to put
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in that. It probably has a role to be part of the mix here. My conversations with publishers
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and what I hear from my colleagues, Brad and others, is that if we were a retailer,
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they would be willing to do business with us. But the fact that we sell to libraries and they think
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libraries are cannibalizing their sales, they thought that even in the physical world. I don't
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think some libraries realize that, that mentality that's been in those buildings for years. It's
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real, isn't it? Again, another data point that would be great to see. That question about
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library lends actually cannibalize sales. You've seen people talk about how libraries spur sales.
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You've seen people talk about how libraries hurt sales. There's no one common hymnal that we can
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all sing from on this. What other industry has this advocate group that also spends millions
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of dollars promoting their product? In this day and age where everybody competes for everybody's
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attention, I know a lot of the publishers. We do business with 20,000 different vendors,
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I believe. A lot of them are leaning into it. Some of them are amazing. I think great value
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propositions. But the ones that don't get it are the ones that are getting most of the library
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dollars. With the legislation and the difficult discussions and the transparency of the data,
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your future ball, your perfect world, you'd wave the magic wand. What's going to happen here?
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The most important part of the legislative movement that's happening now is negotiation.
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There has to be, in a mature market at scale, two sides have to come together and hammer out
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terms that work for each of them. That just does not exist right now, at least for the major
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publishers right now. I think one of the things that the legislation is really hoping to move
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the ball on is to get people back to the table to come out with something that can actually work
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for both sides. Until you have a mature marketplace at scale where there's negotiation taking place,
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we'll never know if it's working or if it's good or not.
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Isn't the purpose of the legislation, some publishers will probably not participate and
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some may and some may after PR. The negotiation has to be done by them making a term of stale
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change. Whether they eliminate the expiration date on the meter or whether they reduce the price,
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it doesn't really matter. But they're going to have to do something at some point,
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right? Or libraries are going to have to move on to the other millions of titles that are available.
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That's right. The implicit threat that you hear from the Association of American Publishers,
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which is really taking point on this issue with the legislation especially,
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is that libraries or publishers, the major publishers will back out of the market a little
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bit. But I'll ask this question to both of you. You saw what happened in 2020 when Macmillan
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tried to pull back on the marketplace with its embargo. The marketplace has advanced a great deal
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since then. So pulling out of the marketplace when you have that much user demand right now,
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how would that look? I think libraries should elicit authors, mid-list authors at these
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publishers where they don't like the terms and start marketing to them and telling them the
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story and sharing the data with them now. And I think from a PR perspective, the ones that
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refuse to participate, you vote with your pocketbook. You vote with your taxpayer dollar.
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I think it would be an interesting way to perhaps prove that libraries don't cannibalize their
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retail sales. They may just experiment that right into reality. I think the author component is huge
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here too, and it really can't be overlooked. I mean, if more authors understood that their books
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are not being bought because a James Patterson book is drawing three times the price, four times
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the price, and libraries can't afford it, I think that would... almost every author I've ever spoken
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to has a very positive story to say about libraries and wants to support libraries.
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Knowing that their budget dollars are being sort of drained away by this upper echelon of authors
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would probably have an impact. I would like you to write more articles about that because I think
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it's a great angle. It is. And somebody in this community has to know Michelle Obama, and isn't
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her book published by Penguin? And why isn't her book available in more libraries? You know, I have
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spoken to some agents about this, and part of the reason is they don't see the accounting. They don't
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see library sales broken out, right? So it's hard to quantify that. That is something that could
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certainly help change things on this. And the other issue for authors too is that, and this is
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what the agents would tell me too, is that, you know, how much money is it really? Well, it's a significant
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amount of money to your bottom line. And until we quantify that for them, I don't know that they see
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the issue. Well, you've been an amazing guest. We really appreciate your time. Ann, do you want to
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lead us to the important question here? Oh yes, we have to ask. So what is everyone reading, watching,
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or listening to? Andrew, you want to kick us off? Oh boy, what am I reading? So right now I'm reading a
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book by a venerable literary agent named Richard Curtis. He wrote a book called Digital Ink,
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which is about sort of the role that he played in the early days of digital in publishing. And
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it's absolutely fascinating. And the reason I picked it up is because I was working on a book
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on the same subject. It's already been done. I have a lot of respect for Richard, so I'll be
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doing an interview with him for Words and Money coming up here very shortly. And then I've decided
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to re-watch Game of Thrones, which has really put me in a sort of dark mood, but it's pretty well
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done. I've been enjoying it. Speaking of dark moods, I watched the Leonardo DiCaprio, the one
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with all the Oscars and Sean Penn one day after another. Great, powerful movie, but it was a
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wild ride. It was a little timely and topical, a little too timely and topical, but it was a
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great movie. So in my video roots, I'm going to stick to a video. What are you reading or listening
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to? So well, you know that for my training, I listen to audiobooks. And so I'm new to the
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audiobook space. I'm typically just a reader. And I found that if I listen to mystery, I will continue
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to work out because I won't let myself listen to the book unless I'm actually walking. So I am
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listening to Tell No One by Harlan Coben. It's narrated by Ed Sala. Recorded Books released this,
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I think, in 2012. So it's a little older, but it's a really great mystery. And I still don't know who
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did it. So I'm gonna have to go work out tonight. Well, Andrew, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much
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for being here. Oh, it's an honor. I'm really happy to be on the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
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Again, I'm a journalist. So if I most of what I'm saying, I'm just repeating back what you've
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told me already. So I apologize if it sounds redundant. But it's been really fun to talk
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about these issues. Right. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I do want to do one big shout out to
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David Schaefer, our sound tech for making this possible and putting all the work in getting us
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set up here today. Thank you, David. We'd love to hear what you're into too out there. So drop
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your favorites in the LinkedIn group. Thanks for tuning in. And as always, keep downloading
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knowledge with The Straight Download. Check out the show notes for links to additional information
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on the topic discussed in this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to The Straight Download
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