From: Eric Hellman <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2013 11:22:51 -0500 The numbers are important here. We're not talking about a comparison to 1600 books here, since the only major publisher willing to let libraries lend ebooks on a durable basis is Random House, and their comparable per copy pricing would be $80 to $100. So that's 10,000 smashwords ebooks vs. 400-500 Random House ebooks. And the favorable licensing terms offered by Smashwords mean that the same book offered by Smashwords is much more valuable to the library than the same book offered by Random House. Restrictive/onorous licensing REDUCES the value of the licensed product! So this is valuing the average Smashwords title at perhaps 1% or 2% of the average title from Random House. With patron feedback (circa data for example), DCL will be able to preferentially surface the fraction of Smashwords titles that patrons find most valuable. The other number that's important is that DCL serves a population of 290,000 people, 60% of whom are library patrons. So for an expenditure of about 20 cents per patron, access is enabled for 10,000 books. That's 2 millicents per book per patron. That's right, a penny of library funding results in access to 500 books for me. Also, list members seem not to have kept up with recent news in trade publishing. Look at the NYT ebook bestseller list. 4 of these title are from smashwords. Another 4 are "50 shades" related. 50 shades was originally released as free fan fiction! http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2012-08-05/e-book-fiction/list.html http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/07/multiple-smashwords-authors-hit-new.html Having said that, it's important to note that Smashwords has a lot of work to do it getting its categorization and metadata up to library standards to enable the sort of collection development work that libraries do. But on the whole, Smashwords more than Random House is the future of public libraries. Get used to it. Eric (disclosure: unglue.it users recently "unglued" a smashwords title) Eric Hellman President, Gluejar.Inc. Founder, Unglue.it https://unglue.it/ http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/ twitter: @gluejar On Jan 7, 2013, at 5:01 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2013 17:31:38 -0600 My question is, why would any library want to spend $40,000 on self-published books, whose quality is completely unvalidated by any kind of review process? Wouldn't that money spent on 1,600 high quality books be a better purchase for a public library? Self-published books from Smashwords are so cheap that patrons should have no difficulty purchasing their own copies. What kind of service does this public library think that it is providing to its patrons with this purchase? It does not appear to be providing any content quality assurance of its own. Sandy Thatcher