On the first day of the 2012 American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, ALA President Molly Raphael is welcoming a June 20 announcement by Penguin that the publisher is instituting a pilot program with New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library to sell its front-list titles to them:
“I applaud Penguin’s decision to restart ebook sales to libraries so that we may again meet our mutual goals of connecting authors and readers. This has been at the core of ALA’s outreach to Penguin and other major publishers over the past six months, and I am thrilled they are willing to try new business models in collaboration with libraries. This is an important development in our evolving relationship with publishers and intermediaries.
“As we move forward together, we must continue to experiment. One key area is to leverage the library’s role as a place of discovery to find new authors and titles. Having immediate access to titles from first-time and niche authors, for instance, presents a win-win-win for publishers, libraries, and our library users who buy as well as borrow.
“We welcome new partners in creating and supporting a nation of readers. I hope we’ll be hearing more announcements like this very soon.”
According to the June 20 Wall Street Journal, Penguin will make all 15,000 of its ebook titles available to the library market, but will embargo sales of its new ebook titles to libraries for six months after publication. The titles will be distributed through 3M and each library ebook license will expire after one year and is renewable. Library pricing is to be comparable to retail, Tim McCall, Penguin’s vice president of online sales and marketing, told the Journal.
Queens Library is poised to join the pilot pending passage of its FY2013 budget. If Penguin deems the pilot a success, the publisher will make ebooks available to public libraries nationwide, as well as academic and school libraries.