Secrets of Ebook Success | The Digital Shift
Librarians swimming in ebook waters offer tips for staying afloat Sep 15, 2011In the past few months—since December 25, 2010, to be specific—ebook circulation and the number of ebook users has been skyrocketing in many libraries. Chicago Public Library doubled its ebook circulation, as did Siouxland Libraries, SD, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Capital Area District Library, Lansing, MI, and many others. And, according to Steve Potash, CEO of OverDrive, the largest distributor of ebooks to libraries, once the Kindle device is brought aboard “soon,” circulation will take off in a way that will make December 2010 look like nothing.
How soon is “soon”? Potash will not say specifically, but some sharp librarians picked up on a clue they say was spelled out in the first letter of four major points that he made in a recent speech: S-E-P-T.
So if the Kindle is truly coming on board this month [and it did—Ed.], and if Potash is right about the demands that will come with it, librarians need to fold digital service into their regular routines, handle it in the most efficient way, and prepare for strain on their websites.
Some libraries have been more successful than others in implementing, promoting, and managing their ebook collections. Fortuitously, OverDrive recently held its Digipalooza users meeting, and many of the speakers shared best practices. The tips they and other successful OverDrive customers offer will ensure your library delivers an effective ebook service.
How to buy
“Content is first,” says Christopher Platt, director of collections and circulation operations at New York Public Library (NYPL). So we’ll begin with selection. Savvy buyers like Jen Wright, assistant chief of the Materials Management Division at the Free Library of Philadelphia, make small purchases frequently. “This keeps our virtual shelves stocked with new titles and gives our users more choices,” she says.
The value of this tip can’t be overstated. Readers who use the OverDrive advanced search can view only items that have been received in the past seven days, 14 days, 30 days, or longer. Weekly purchases enable the library to show that it is constantly adding new content. It avoids readers’ disappointment and saves the library the embarrassment of not having any new titles to offer.
Moreover, the library websites produced by OverDrive automatically populate a new books display on the front page, showing the 100 newest books purchased. So if a library buys 400 books once a month, rather than 100 books each week for a month, 300 of those new books won’t get their chance on the front page.
Wright purchases nearly everything requested by patrons; if one person wants the title enough to ask for it, she says, usually there will be others who want that title as well. Wright usually acquires one copy of most books initially, purchasing additional copies as demand requires and keeping the holds ratio as low as possible. The beauty of ebooks: with delivery nearly instantaneous, there is no lag time for the patron to get the book.
In Philadelphia, patrons set their own loan periods. This unusual approach has worked well, Wright says. After the first few tries of the digital collection, users learn how long they’ll need to finish an item. Letting them choose the loan period means less wasted downtime for a title. The ebook will be returned automatically at the optimal time without the patron having to check it in, thus making it available sooner to other readers.
Peggy Murphy, collection services manager at Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), recommends taking advantage of publishers’ specials to build the backlist with ever-popular titles. These ebook sales are featured regularly on the OverDrive Content Reserve site, announced through its Digital Library Blog, and regularly offer deep discounts such as half-off sales.
Every time Murphy places an order, she checks for patron suggestions and adds them to the order. Noel Rutherford, collection development and acquisitions manager at Nashville PL, not only fills requests for a particular title but buys all the author’s backlist at the same time for more efficiency. Like Wright, she orders one copy initially but uses the OverDrive Holds Manager to set a ratio of 5:1 on holds, with extra copies delivered automatically.
What’s hot
Nashville started with a small core collection in all nonfiction and fiction genres and then watched the traffic. “We didn’t try to create a complete nonfiction library,” says Rutherford, “and we stayed away from reference entirely.” She tasks her regular selectors with choosing ebooks, believing it is more efficient to select all formats of a title at once. Selectors refer to their standing order fiction author [print] list as a buying guide as well.
At the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium, which comprises all 17 public library systems in the state, a selection committee made up of representatives of the libraries has divided responsibility by genre and by age, says project manager Sara Gold. They, too, use the Holds Manager and “actively seek out best sellers and books in the ebook and audio formats that have long waiting lists for the print version,” she says.
As for top genres to purchase, LAPL’s Murphy says that romance is the most popular genre at her library and that includes mass-market original titles, which some libraries still overlook in print. Christopher Baker, downloadable media and electronic resources selector for Gwinnett County Public Library, Lawrenceville, GA, agrees, saying that Harlequin romances check out faster than any other ebooks in his library. And their low prices make them a bargain for collections.
Rutherford’s take is that, “[l]ike everyone else, we noticed that fiction best sellers—romance and mystery/suspense, especially—were the top circulating items. We also increased spending on science fiction and fantasy, which are extremely popular. In nonfiction, we concentrate on current best sellers and have responded to reports that showed that cookbooks, travel, computer books, business, and history were our top requested subjects.”
Expanding the pool
NYPL’s Platt is right that content is the most important thing, and if this is the case, we can’t leave this section without pointing out the biggest problem—that some of the largest publishers refuse to license their digital books to libraries. Platt reminded librarians at Digipalooza that libraries are in personal contact with the readers publishers need and that librarians are experts at connecting books to people, leading book discussions, and curating promotions. And libraries already do all of that work online, with more followers than the publishing community has. Francine Fialkoff, in an editorial in the August 15 issue of LJ, put it this way: “Publishers need libraries to thrive—and libraries need publishers to serve their users.”
Some publishers still disagree. The recent news that Hachette is reconsidering its position and may sell to libraries is a hopeful sign, but Macmillan and Simon & Schuster are so far refusing to license ebooks to libraries. This leaves gaps on library digital shelves where authors like Sherrilyn Kenyon, Isabel Allende, James Patterson, Kathy Reichs, Brad Thor, and hundreds of others should be. For the first time in history, libraries are unable to offer a full selection of works to readers, and we need to find a way to convince publishers to work with us (for updates see NewsDesk).
Balancing budget and circulation
Libraries are all over the map when it comes to budget. Some, like the Oregon Digital Library Consortium, established an opening-day collection with a grant. In Nashville, 15 percent of the materials budget spent is for OverDrive ebooks and audiobooks this year. Wisconsin’s Gold says, “The 17 library system partners have set a goal of $1 million for content in 2012” based on a formula that includes population and OverDrive use and draws on system funds and billing individual libraries, as well as $300,000 from LSTA.
Deb Czarnik, library manager for technical services and collections at the Lee County Library System in Florida, says six percent of the library’s circulation is from the digital collection, and it gets six percent of the budget. At LAPL, Murphy reports that e-circulation (all digital, including audio) is seven percent of the total circulation, and ebook circulation has more than doubled the previous year’s totals. Chris Baker says Gwinnett County has shown a 99 percent increase in circulation and requests in the past year alone. The downloadable collection saw a 113 percent increase in checkouts—from 6,281 checkouts in July 2010 to 13,418 in July 2011.
Taking stock
To see what percentage of newly selected titles have gone out, Tish Lowrey, technical services administrator at Cleveland Public Library, uses OverDrive’s advanced search to find the total number of items added to the site within the past 14 days. Using this same list, she ticks the box to show only the copies that are currently checked in and available. Thus, she can determine the percentage of new items that are checked out. The checkout rate of newly added ebooks at her system is a whopping 90 percent. She also scrolls through the few titles that are checked in to see what kinds of titles are not circulating. While no other library seems to have comparable statistics available, judging by the frantic scribbling of notes at Digipalooza, many attendees intended to check their success rate as soon as they got home.
The point is that librarians can use the powerful and flexible real-time statistics and reports of the OverDrive system to monitor their digital collections in ways that are not possible with print collections, and the information from those statistics can lead to better selection.
Marketing the collection
In 2003, when ebooks were new to libraries, titles were accessed through a dedicated website off the libraries’ main page, and they didn’t get much attention. Then libraries added the digital titles to their regular catalog, and many people began finding ebooks during a catalog search. Libraries now realize that a marketing push is necessary to reach patrons who don’t currently use library buildings but would be interested in digital collections.
Promoting digital collections outside the library is crucial. Wright believes that ebook users are not necessarily the same demographic as people who visit library buildings. There is overlap, but Philadelphia has seen new users who get a card specifically so that they can get to the digital collections. A recent OverDrive study summarized at Digipalooza confirmed that 30 percent of typical users of library digital collections rarely or never set foot in a library building, that 60 percent learn of the service via a website, and that 26 percent stumble upon it through listings in the library catalog.
One sterling example of a marketing push is a recent Lee County promotional campaign that encourages library use and reading, including ereading. The plan includes an annual book festival called ReadFest, a library presence at all community events, hands-on demonstrations of digital technology, billboards, press releases, social networking, morning show appearances, QR codes posted in the libraries, newsletters, and much more. The library makes sure to promote ebooks in every component of the campaign and in everything it does.
Philadelphia features its digital collection front and center on its main website, which gets 25 million hits per month, and promotes it using the usual electronic newsletters, blog posts, radio ads, and social media sites. But Wright adds that they make sure to respond quickly to support questions from users, which she sees as just one more way to promote access.
In Nashville, the library foundation conducted a marketing campaign for the library’s digital collection employing the theme “Books Are Only Half the Story.” The campaign included ads on NPR, local radio stations, and on billboards. Staff wore buttons and T-shirts with the ubiquitous slogan. The foundation partnered with the local school system, set up a website for use by students and faculty that displayed OverDrive holdings and databases, and teamed the launch with a huge library card sign-up campaign. Students were given the option to tie their school ID to their library card, enabling them to download ebooks at school.
Solving customer problems
Many of the libraries in the Oregon consortium have presented programs in partnership with area retailers such as Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, or Sony to introduce patrons to ebooks and let them try out several different reading devices. The Wisconsin consortium has purchased devices for libraries to use, with a tiered system of patron support.
Kim Edson, head of reader services at Rochester Public Library, MN, advises using OverDrive’s marketing kit, available on its website, for promotions. She also suggests identifying barriers to use and overcoming them one by one. If the technology is difficult for some, do training. If devices are needed, buy devices and circulate them. Solving customer problems is important with new technology, and libraries are good at instruction. In fact, some Barnes & Noble stores first sell a Nook, then send customers to the library for training.
Nashville Public Library purchased Nooks and iPads for staff use, and its web team developed one instructional video for staff and another for the public. Classes were conducted during the annual Staff Day; ongoing classes were offered for staff and the public on how to use the OverDrive service.
At Corvallis-Benton County Public Library (a member of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium), Carrie Ottow says they’ve budgeted for purchase of various ereaders so that staff can train themselves. Then, they’re up to speed when it comes to “troubleshooting problems for patrons,” she says. This approach makes perfect sense. Library employees don’t make much money, and they may not be able to afford the latest devices that their patrons are using, but familiarity with the devices is essential if library staff are to serve their public well.
What’s next?
Philadelphia is currently exploring OverDrive’s Max Access program for ebooks, a subscription service that makes selected titles always available. While the titles are accessible to multiple users at once, the cost is higher and the subscription must be renewed. Wright says Philadelphia experimented with Max Access in its downloadable audiobook collection but found that the turnover rate was not high enough to justify the cost. In the future, it will experiment with the program again in the ebook format. The library will also be adding shortly ebooks in foreign languages.
The experts agree that flexibility and experimentation with different approaches are key to the success of digital collections. The robust statistical reporting offered with the OverDrive service makes it easy to evaluate the success of a new format, author, or subject and to respond immediately.
This kind of nimbleness will be needed to address the upcoming Kindle challenge. OverDrive promises a seamless implementation with no need to buy anything extra, but Potash cautions libraries to prepare for a gigantic spike in web traffic when Kindle users come aboard. As he sees it, libraries will become the premium destination for access to copyrighted digital media.
With many cash-strapped libraries already doubling their digital circulation since 2010, this may be a somewhat frightening scenario for those who wonder how they will afford to meet the new demand. But just as ebook popularity didn’t take off in libraries until after the Kindle success led to better media coverage of the format, perhaps this new demand from thousands of outspoken Kindle users will challenge reluctant publishers to agree finally to do business with libraries. That would be the greatest success of all
| Author Information |
| Cynthia Orr is a Contributing Editor, LJ; editor of the Reader's Advisor Online Blog; and a library consultant in Cleveland |
This article is part ongoing coverage leading up to the LJ/SLJ virtual summit October 12, EBooks: The New Normal.
