We’re on the road again! This time, you can find us at Book Expo in New York City where we hope to widen the conversation with publishers, librarians and others in the industry on research priorities for the National Agenda for Ebooks. We’ll post copies of handouts and notes here after our session on Thursday.
Thanks for joining us at Book Expo or for checking in on what happened! We had a great showing at our program and were glad of the opportunity to spread the word about the National Agenda for Ebooks. Many thanks to panelists Skip Dye of Penguin Random House, Andrew Medlar of BookOps and Brian O’Leary of Book Industry Study Group for joining us! View the session handout.
At the session, panelists and audience members continued the dialog that began at our DPLAfest program on research priorities. Here are some thoughts from the audience that we’ll use to help inform the work ahead:
What assumptions are driving decisions today and how can we prove them true or false?
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- Library ebook lending removes the impetus for end-users to purchase books. Show how the Panorama Project connects libraries and publishers.
- My patrons only read bestsellers.
- People mainly want bestselling fiction material and not original content for ebooks.
- People want to use the formats that are available to them.
- People who borrow library ebooks will not buy them commercially cannibalizing sales.
- People only want bestsellers and romance/erotica while other genres and titles are ignored.
- There’s no market for Spanish or other foreign language ebooks.
What new information about reader behaviors will aid us to make informed decisions?
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- Who is reading and what are they reading?
- How does school library lending factor into existing research efforts? If they are not, how can they be?
- What are people reading in ebooks?
- Are there new categories of ebooks that are different than print books?
- Where do people read ebooks vs. physical books?
- What are the preferred devices to read ebooks?
- Do people want to read in web browsers vs. on devices?
- How much does a user read/borrow on average? How many are power users that borrow/read above average?
- Demographic information with economic and regional differences in access, devices used and length and frequency of usage.