CEl Newsletter for Publishers 2010

To keep our CEL publisher partners abreast of the rapid pace of developments in our world, we’re inaugurating this newsletter, which will now appear with each royalty statement issued.

New arrangements with ebrary

We’re pleased to announce a significant change in the relationship between CEL and ebrary which will benefit all CEL publishers with improved international marketing and distribution, simplified submission processes and better publisher tracking utilities, all of which will lead to higher royalty payments.

As of the end of August, any title* submitted to CEL will appear in the ebrary catalogue which is distributed in several languages to thousands of libraries worldwide. Canadian publishers will no longer need to submit titles separately to ebrary and CEL. Royalty reporting will be consolidated. You will now receive one semi-annual report from CEL including all ebrary sales with royalty rates standardized to the CEL contract rates. This will provide a 70% revenue share to publishers on all Perpetual Access sales. Your royalty reports will also begin to include geographic region in which the titles were licensed, as well as the name of the vendor making the sale.

This change will be automatic. You need to do to nothing to take advantage of it. All 12,000 titles currently in the CEL collection will (rights permitting*) be simultaneously available in the ebrary catalogue.

Publishers currently holding ebrary contracts will see no changes other than those outlined here; these ebrary contracts will not terminate, and payments will continue to be made by ebrary during the transition period.

The improved links with Swets and YBP/Blackwell described below are made possible by this new relationship with ebrary. There will be more such developments to come. In future reports we will provide more detail on other ways in which we will be working with ebrary to help you benefit from the explosive growth ahead in institutional markets for electronic content.

*Assuming that US or World rights apply. Titles submitted with Canadian territorial rights only will (of course) be licensed only in Canada.

Over $11 million paid to Canadian publishers in four years

With the payment of the last installment of the CRKN license fee in July, the Canadian Electronic Library has generated over $11 million in royalty payments to Canadian publishers from the sale of library licenses over the four years since its inception.

New partnership with YBP/Blackwell

As a result of the ebrary changes described above, all titles* in the CEL catalogue will be available through YBP and Blackwell. Although we can’t be certain, we expect that this development will translate into major new license sales for Canadian content in US and international markets. Currently, less than 5% of YBP/Blackwell ebook license sales of Canadian titles are in Canada. As a result, YBP/Blackwell plan to aggressively market packages of Canadian titles to their library customers throughout the world, for whom the fine-tuned integration between YBP/Blackwell and ebrary makes the purchase process seamless. We will be providing more detail on YBP/Blackwell marketing initiatives in the next few months.

New partnership with Swets

We will also be including all eligible CEL titles in the new Swets ebook service, again available to thousands of libraries throughout the world.

Your royalty payments on perpetual license sales through YBP/Blackwell and Swets will remain unchanged at the 70% mark, and there is no additional requirement or burden (other than the creation of eISBNs—see below) on CEL publishers to enter these new channels.

Simultaneous release

A subject of much debate and uncertainty among publishers is the effect of simultaneous release of frontlist in ebook form on print sales. Our own (admittedly biased) position is that simultaneous release is beneficial because it allows the consumer/user/reader more choice, and provides additional promotional thrust for all editions. Rising tides raise all boats. And as shown below, studies to date show no negative impact on print sales from the release of online editions for libraries.

By adopting simultaneous release, your books will appear in such promotional avenues as the YBP/Blackwell Approval Program, which is in place in thousands of libraries worldwide.

Some publishers in CEL (including Athabasca University Press and WLU) have adopted simultaneous release as a policy, and we are working with them to streamline the submission process and maximize their sales. If you’re interested in doing the same, we’ll be happy to hear from you.

Gibson Publishing Connections offers new quick conversion services

To support simultaneous release, our sister company, Gibson Publishing Connections, working with codeMantra, is now offering a quick digital conversion service. Collection Point QuickStart allows publishers to take control of their digital distribution programs with a simple site which manages conversion and automates distribution to partners.

Metadata!

This poor neglected cousin of ebook publishing is getting a little more attention these days as a result of developments like BookNet’s Biblioshare and the ACP’s Canadian Bookshelf. For more, see http://gibsonpublishingconnections.ca/metadata.html.

MARC Records: As you probably know, we create MARC records for every title in CEL. These enhance discoverability for our library users, and are partially responsible for the impressive usage statistics accumulated by CEL titles, where over 90 percent of the titles in the collection have been used by library patrons. These records are available to the public, and our publisher partners are welcome to download them as use them for their own purposes. You’ll need a username and password to our MARC Archive site, which I’ll be pleased to provide on request.

If you wish to create MARC records for electronic titles not included in CEL, we can highly recommend our supplier, Special Libraries Cataloguing of Victoria BC. SLC can supply these for $5.00 per record. Contact J.McRee (Mac) Elrod <mac@slc.bc.ca>, and he will tell you where to send a spreadsheet of ISBNs (with eISBNs and DOIs if assigned) and titles. SLC will only rarely need to contact you for access to the PDF for very new titles.

Speaking of MARC and discoverability, you’re likely aware of the impact of OCLC’s WorldCat on the use of books in libraries. ebrary is now working with OCLC to add records from the ebrary ebook catalogue to WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database for discovery of library resources.

As a result of this new program, ebrary’s full catalogue, which will include all your titles, will be represented in WorldCat with a link to the ebrary platform, allowing libraries holding ebrary titles to set holdings automatically for the relevant records. WorldCat Local authenticated users will then be able to link directly to titles in CEL/ebrary from the corresponding WorldCat records.

Web users searching through WorldCat.org will also be able to link to the ebrary platform to preview the ebooks, which in turn will stimulate library buying.

Gibson Publishing Connections is also working with Bowker to increase the visibility of Canadian publisher content through Bowker’s full digital content indexing program for Books In Print™, Syndetic Solutions™ and Summon™. These products increase the discoverability of participants’ titles among retailers, librarians and school book-sourcing systems.

There is no charge for this service. To participate, GPC clients need only grant Bowker permission to receive and index their books. As part of the conversion process, we will supply the titles to Bowker. For a fee, publishers may order and incorporate the Bowker-created enhancements with their metadata.

Which of our titles are included in CEL?

Your royalty report will show all titles currently available in CEL along with the list prices and eISBNs that we currently have on file.

How can I make changes or add more titles?

Use the royalty report spreadsheet to make changes in your listings or add more titles. Create new columns, mark the changes and return the edited sheet to bob@gibsonlibraryconnections.ca. Upon receipt we’ll refresh your memory on the simple process for sending us the source files. (Which involves only sending PDFs to our ftp site.)

The effects of online books on print sales in libraries

Counter-intuitively, the few studies done on this subject to date have come down on the positive side.

"Although there is no evidence of any correlation between electronic usage and sales of the print edition...neither is there any evidence the library-licensed course text e-books are likely to lead to a decline in print sales. Evidence from other studies, such as that carried out by the Royal Society of Chemistry, are consistent with the message here: e-books are not necessarily a threat to hard copy sales, and, in certain situations, may actually boost them."

Custom ePublishing with ebrary's SaaS

Now publishers may apply ebrary technology to build their own content packages and sites for their own audiences.

Start-up costs are low and managing the content is easy. There is no need to hire additional staff or invest in expensive equipment. With ebrary’s SaaS, you can begin selling and marketing your digital content within days—hassle free!

Irwin Law has become the first Canadian publisher to take advantage of this new solution, which lies behind the new Irwin Law e-Library.

Using ebrary technology, the company is able to take control of its own online business and make its entire collection accessible to users directly. Irwin sets all terms of access and sale and interacts directly with its audience, which offers the company a tremendous competitive advantage and its users a wonderful new resource.