Written by Glenn McEowen
This article discusses the cost of the e-books[1] service. We will look at vendors' annual fees, the cost of titles and the time the library staff uses to manage e-books.
Vendor Annual Fees:
When we select a vendor to for our e-books service, we contract with them to manage the highly technical process that permits e-book files (titles) to be downloaded and read. This includes encryption, assigning return dates and downloading to many different devices which, by the way, use vendor-provided apps. The vendor also manages holds, provides a web catalog of just our titles, handles training, coordinates title ordering procedures and negotiates contracts with hundreds of publishers. These are functions that simply cannot be done by a church library.
For these services we would expect to pay a fee. We will not be able to quote fees in this article because they are subject to change and negotiation. (Please contact the vendor for up-to-date numbers.)
OverDrive® has an annual service fee and a title budget combined into one payment. Half of the fee covers the services while the other half is used to purchase titles. Their annual fees are based on your church size (not library usage) and have lately been quite competitive especially for smaller (under 1,000) churches.
bibliotheca® [formerly 3M Cloud], on the other hand, charges a lower annual fee, but charges separately for each title. The lower annual fee is certainly attractive for getting started but requires a separate budget for growing the collection.
One other option is a consortium[2]. These are difficult to organize, but they do save on expense. OverDrive prefers stand-alone libraries while bibliotheca has, at least, been open to idea.
Cost of E-book Titles:
Your e-book collection, like a traditional library, will grow a title at a time. The titles you can purchase are limited to the publishers and titles that your vendor has contracts with. (The publisher list will be an important criterium when selecting a vendor.)
The costs for e-book titles are about the same as paperback versions of the book. Some vendors charge less for limited usage[3] titles. A few large publishers charge outrageous fees for their titles. (We skip those ordinarily.) Heavily illustrated children's e-books will generally cost somewhat more than adult titles. The cost of an Audiobook is about the same as that of a CD set, generally much more than the e-book.
Cost in Time:
Maintaining an e-book collection will require additional time from the library staff. It can involve several hours each week.
Prior to going "live" with your e-book collection, there will be staff training, policies to be set and ordering of the first titles to create the initial collection. You will, of course want to promote the new service. The vendor will be work closely with your staff through this startup phase. And if any of your staff have never read an e-book, now is the time to try!
On your "go-live" date and the few weeks following you will want to have helpful staff to assist your members in loading the apps onto their devices and setting logins. Take them through the process of downloading their first e-book.
After startup there will be several tasks that require regular attention:
- Ordering new titles will regularly involve staff time. As with buying new print books, you will need just as much research for e-book purchases. Making an order is a several-step process.
- Your vendor can provide MARC records of your e-book purchases in case you wish to merge the e-book titles into your primary collection. It will require editing each record to fit your library's cataloging style. Thankfully, you will not have to cover, to bar code, to shelve or inventory any of your e-book collection. We recommend you add the e-books to your primary collection as it permits them to be searched and listed along with your print titles.
- Statistics about the e-book circulation are maintained by the vendor. This is valuable information and should be reviewed periodically. Since it is separate from your library software, it may be worthwhile to combine the stats in a spreadsheet.
- While it is optional, you can curate your own groupings to appear in the vendor-provided catalog. Groupings might include Christmas e-books, Amish fiction titles or any kind of grouping you can imagine. The vendor will have default groupings, but you will probably want to add to theirs. The curation process can be tedious depending on how expansive your groupings are.
- Of course, you will want to promote your e-books. ("Did you know that 20% of our library collection is invisible?")
Adding e-books to your library ministry is a wonderful opportunity but go into it realizing there is ongoing costs in time and expense.
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Glenn McEowen serves as a library volunteer at Wedgwood Baptist in Fort Worth, TX. He is the VP of Sales and Development with Library Concepts.
This article is a part of a series on e-books on the Church Librarians Network.
[1] The term e-books is used to describe both electronic books (including text and illustrations) and audio books. These are typically downloaded (or streamed) to devices such as e-readers, smartphones, tablets and computers.
[2] The term consortium describes an agreement between several libraries that work together to pay the fees and to expand the collection. Each of the libraries and their members share the one collection.
[3] Normally, titles are checked out by one user at a time with no limits as to the how many times they can be checked out. Some publishers, however, limit the number of check outs (commonly, 26) or a limited time (2 years) after which the title must repurchased or dropped from the collection.
To download, click here: E-BOOKS: The Cost
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