How much should e-books cost? It's one of the most divisive questions of the past fifteen years or so (in our small corner of the world at least), right up there with perennials like pineapple on pizza. The sub-question of this wider question that caused so much angst just before Covid is how much libraries should pay for e-books. You will remember, I dare say, there was much talk for a while of metered usage, and anger at the limited licensing time covered by the purchase of an e-book.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Now the debate has reignited in the US as libraries face straitened budgets. They have hit out at the Big Five publishers, arguing they should provide more flexibility in pricing models to allow, for example, per-usage pricing. A letter from library organizations notes that by contrast “many independent and small publishers have more flexible e-book terms, up to and including ownership in some cases.” This, of course, includes indie authors who can distribute to libraries through OverDrive on platforms like Draft2Digital, with complete control over pricing. Library lending is one of the areas where the freedom we have really can be made to work to our advantage.
Independent Bookstores Boom
And thank you to Jane Friedman for the tip on the next story, which again looks at the places people go to indulge their reading habit. The American Booksellers Association has claimed that its membership has grown in the last year by more than five hundred to 3,417.
Two things are particularly of note in this. First is that I remember reporting on falling bookstore numbers for many years, so this feels like a welcome trend. Per the press release, this is the highest level since the 1990s.
And second is the fact that romance, fantasy, and romantasy trends are given credit for a lot of this growth, citing stores such as the Spicy Librarian in Denver or the Flutter Romance Bookstore in Austin, Texas. I could add that just last week, I saw a sign in my home city of Oxford that a new bookstore, Bad Girl Books, is opening with a focus solely on romantasy. I would make two points about this. First is that it reinforces that these are not only popular genres but genres where readers really value physical books. But second there's a note of caution, because stores that are genre-specific are fragile to the extent they are at least a little vulnerable to changing trends.
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