Establishing a Foundation: Trends in the Publishing Industry and User Communities

Brief Overview of the E-book Publishing Landscape E-books are regarded as a disruptive technology and have required publishers, aggregators, and information professionals to completely rethink purchasing models, business relationships, and acquisition workflows. "1 In regard to total publication costs, manufacturing and distribution expenses account for only 12 percent of a print book's retail price.2 While this percentage can be eliminated from an e-book's price tag, the electronic format comes with three additional costs not associated with print counterparts: digitized preparation in multiple formats, quality assurance, and digital distribution through a range of retailers that have unique upload and management protocols.3 The e-book consumer market is based on a retail business model; customers pay for downloads of individual titles and content is stored on personal devices. Many fear that providing perpetual access to e-books through libraries can ultimately impact sales of digital titles, place increased pressures on bookstores, decrease royalties paid to authors, or provide opportunities for piracy.4 Libraries, on the other hand, state that e-book collections introduce texts to wider audiences and promote authors to patrons. Many models also incorporate digital rights management (DRM) that limit patrons' abilities to print or download sections of individual titles in order to prevent a negative impact on book sales or comply with publishing agreements. Another concern is that PDA focuses all collection efforts on the short-term needs of a user community and does not consider "the long tail of need," which refers to robust collections that serve future users.5 Finally, there are concerns...