Libraries and Publisher Price Control: The Net Price System (1901–1914) and Contemporary E-book Pricing

Senchyne, Jonathan; Mei, Zhang

doi:10.5325/libraries.1.2.0171

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…More importantly, the producers of cultural commodities take efforts in increasing the exposure of the products in the repertoire through various distribution channels. Zhang and Senchyne (2017) found that book publishers in the early 1900's mainly relied on bookstores to increase the exposure of their whole list of books to potential customers. Similarly, university presses' reliance on the four vendors to distribute their e‐books could be treated as a contemporary version of the strategy, since presses perceived these vendors as the main outlets for libraries to purchase e‐books particularly in social sciences and humanities, although libraries' preference over certain vendors varied.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, university presses' preference over DRMed e‐books demonstrates their efforts to reduce the fragility brought by the limited scarcity of cultural commodities. A common way to reduce this type of fragility is to limit the access to the product, like adding DRM to e‐books (Striphas, 2011 and Zhang & Senchyne, 2017). Not surprisingly, university presses, despite their not‐for‐profit nature, still need to follow the general business principle to generate sufficient revenue to cover their cost.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, there are a few studies examining publishers' e‐books strategies and practices in public library market. Zhang and Senchyne (2017), by applying the framework of cultural commodity, discussed the different ways publishers could use to affect the price of library e‐books; Bergström et al (2017) published a comprehensive report on the e‐book market in Sweden, including a section on publishers' attitudes towards library e‐books; similarly, Fu, Zhang, and Yan (2018) surveyed the scholarly publishers in China to investigate their attitudes and practices of entering library e‐book market. Giblin et al (2019) compared the availability, licensing and prices of about 10,000 e‐book titles in public library landscape across five countries, by aggregating data from Overdrive, which is the leading e‐book aggregator in the public library market.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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University presses' e‐book dissemination strategies for academic library customers: An exploratory study

Mei

2020

Proc Assoc Inf Sci Technol

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This work‐in‐progress paper examines university presses' e‐book dissemination strategies by focusing on how presses choose certain ways to distribute their e‐books to academic library customers, and the factors supporting their decisions. The study conducted five one‐on‐one interviews with employees from different university presses in the U.S. The preliminary findings reveal that although all participating university presses provided their e‐books to four main vendors, these presses adopted different strategies to distribute their e‐books to different vendors. Further, this study listed the factors affecting university presses' decision on their e‐book dissemination strategies, including increasing exposure of their e‐books, concerns about adding new vendors, and the vendors' imposition of DRM on e‐books. Then this study, by linking the findings to the framework of cultural commodity, argues that the university presses' dissemination strategies demonstrate their effort to reduce the fragility of their e‐books as a cultural commodity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

University presses' e‐book dissemination strategies for academic library customers: An exploratory study

Mei

2020

Proc Assoc Inf Sci Technol

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Bibliographies

Birkwood

Howard

2018

Library & Information History

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Condicionantes en la consolidación de los servicios de préstamo de libro electrónico en las bibliotecas públicas

Rodríguez‐Gairín¹

2022

EPI

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Despite the investment of economic and human resources made by Spanish public libraries to create digital collections while continuing to play their traditional role as mediators between users, technology, and reading, there are conditioning factors that make it difficult for e-book lending to be integrated as yet another service within those provided by libraries and to be fully accepted by readers. With the aim of identifying the elements underlying the slow consolidation of digital lending, a literature review was carried out to determine the state of the art, mainly in both the USA and Spain, the e-book market aimed at Spanish public libraries is analyzed, the technological difficulties involved in lending and downloading for users are presented, and the influence of the measures adopted by the publishing sector and public administrations are examined. The need to make license commercialization models more flexible, simplify digital rights management systems, and decouple collections from electronic lending platforms, as well as avoid the dispersion of library resources across various interfaces, is highlighted. Resumen A pesar de la inversión económica y en recursos humanos realizada por las bibliotecas públicas españolas para crear colecciones digitales y seguir desempeñando su papel tradicional de conectoras entre sus usuarios, la tecnología y la lectura, existen condicionantes que dificultan que el préstamo de libros electrónicos se integre como un servicio más dentro de los ofertados por estas bibliotecas y que goce de plena aceptación entre sus lectores. Con el objetivo de hallar los elementos que subyacen al lento afianzamiento del préstamo digital, se lleva a cabo una revisión bibliográfica que permita conocer el estado de la cuestión, principalmente en el contexto estadounidense y español, se analiza el mercado del libro electrónico dirigido a las bibliotecas públicas españolas, se presentan las dificultades tecnológicas que entraña el préstamo y la descarga para los usuarios de estos centros y se examina la influencia de las medidas adoptadas por el sector editorial y las administraciones públicas. Se evidencia la necesidad de flexibilizar los modelos de comercialización de licencias, de simplificar los sistemas de gestión de derechos digitales y de desvincular las colecciones de las plataformas de préstamo electrónico, así como de evitar la dispersión de los recursos de las bibliotecas en varias interfaces.

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Libraries and Publisher Price Control: The Net Price System (1901–1914) and Contemporary E-book Pricing

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

University presses' e‐book dissemination strategies for academic library customers: An exploratory study

University presses' e‐book dissemination strategies for academic library customers: An exploratory study

Bibliographies

Condicionantes en la consolidación de los servicios de préstamo de libro electrónico en las bibliotecas públicas

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