This episode is the "Publishers Who Sell Ebooks" panel from our Exploring the Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy event. It was recorded on October 27, 2023.
Announcer 0:01
Welcome to engelberg center live a collection of audio from events held by the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. This episode is the publishers who sell ebooks panel from our exploring the anti ownership ebook economy event. It was recorded on October 27 2023.
Claire Woodcock 0:26
My name is Claire Woodcock. I am a digital ownership fellow with engelberg Center, and I'm a co author on this white paper, the anti ownership ebook economy, which we're all talking about, and today, I am so pleased to have the opportunity to talk to three different folks that work in publishing. I will start with introducing Emily Hamilton. She is the assistant director and marketing director at the University of Minnesota Press. She leads the presses book division, which publishes approximately 120 books every year with a commitment to leading edge Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship, which is awesome. Claire Kelly, not me the other Claire is a Director of Marketing at seven stories press and is based in Colorado. She previously worked at Knopf Doubleday, Simon and Schuster, Melville House, roost books and bookshop.org. Claire is passionate about advocacy for public library funding and was on the leadership team of the citizens group that helped pass a library district and Boulder in 2022. And she's currently pursuing her MLS degree at San Jose State State University. And Dennis Johnson is the founder of Moby lives, a syndicated newspaper column about books and writers and also the co founder and CO publisher of Melville House Publishing. I'm so excited to chat with you all. And I think that the white paper says that I did interviews with upwards of 40 different, or 30 different types of professionals, it was actually more like 40. But who have a stake in the question of why individuals and institutional consumers can't own the account legal license ebooks, mostly. And I try to wrap up interviews by asking if there's anything I haven't asked them about that they really feel like I should have, like, they're going to be so upset if they don't get this off their mind off their chests before I wrap up the call. And the number of people who told me that, yeah, you're asking me about ebooks. But have you thought about audiobooks was just I brought it to Michael. And Michael was like, stop trying to add pages to this paper. So I, so I just want to go back, though, because I think that raises an interesting question around, you know, publishers are thinking about us a lot of different types of formats at this point. But how much are publishers actually thinking about ebooks selling ebooks today? And I'm so curious. Dennis, can we start with you? Oh, oh, make sure everyone has their microphone turned on.
Dennis Johnson 3:20
xylon in hear me feel like I'm making an appearance at the UN. I almost never think about ebooks. Once we set the price. That's when I stop thinking about them, because I have nothing more to do at that point. With ebooks.
So not the answer you wanted to hear. We think you know, there's a the email discussion that's been going on prior to this raises a lot of issues a lot of issues you just touched on. But it's not the primary part of our job. A primary part of our job is the print book. And ebooks and audio are kind of ancillary ways for us to you know, we have two jobs as a publisher, one is to sell books, and the other is to get people talking about what's in those books. But the way things have kind of shaken out these these other formats really help us make more money for the writer and support the print book operation. So a lot of the selling of ebooks is out of my control out of my hands. It's done by my distributor. They've set the terms of libraries, for example. They've decided that we should be using agency pricing, which is a drag. But generally speaking, it is what it is and so that is not a subject we return to a lot. We do think about pricing a lot because we may So Little Orphan ebook. And, you know, we've gotten over the point where people expect the books to be essentially free, or 99 cents. And that's a good thing. But it's still it's still not a big part of our business. It is for other kinds of publishers, but it's just a general trade publisher. Not a not a big part of our business.
Claire Woodcock 5:26
Okay, thank you so much. What about you, Claire? What do you think?
Claire Kelley 5:31
Yeah, so I think earlier, you know, I appreciate the distinction between all the different types of publishers out there, you know, there's the big five, there's indie publishers, like Dennis and I, Melville House, and seven stories press are distributed by Penguin Random House. So like Dennis says, we trust them. And they distributed that for? Well, we have, you know, I think, you know, I think we have to trust them. And I think we'll get into that. So, and then we I mean, Emily's, from the academic publisher perspective, University Press, I think, from seven stories, press perspective. And my background, as Claire pointed out, I worked at the big five publishers, and at three indie publishers, but in a marketing role, so I don't see the overview that you know, the publishers do. But recently, having gone to, you know, pursuing my MLA, as I am talking, honestly, to Emily, and some conversations that we've had, in the independent publishers caucus, IPC, which is a group of 75 member presses, I've come to want to learn more about, particularly the lab library ebook market. And so I've done some deep dives there that we can get to get into, but I think, from my perspective, on the marketing side, you know, it came up earlier. Innovation in format and design in, in ebooks. And when I was at Simon and Schuster, you know, I'm at seven stories press, we're trying to connect our books to readers, above all, and, you know, whether that's an you know, literature and translation, she won the Nobel Prize last year, you know, we sold out immediately of all 12 titles we publish, by any or no, and then we saw ebook demand, you know, dramatically increase on the retail side and libraries, whether it's books that have been challenged across the country, like Cory Silverberg books, which are sex ed, for kids. You know, my goal on the marketing side is to connect those important books with readers, and it's a tough business. You know, it's not like we're making a ton of money. Even in those instances where, you know, we have a Nobel Prize winner, for example. And when I was at Simon and Schuster, you know, I was excited about the possibilities of an ebook platform where, you know, so I used InDesign to make a fiction sampler, for example. And we could include video, and we exported that to, you know, like little illustrations and sound clips from the authors. And we exported that to Apple. And then we had to do like a plain vanilla ebook format to all the other retailers. And that was a fun experiment. But it's marketing. That's on the marketing side. Yeah. And, and I think, you know, we still do that at seven stories press. We make samplers that are EPUB files that are free that people can download, because we want to, you know, generate interest. And so I see ebooks as a tool for for marketing. And I'll also say, you know, we've talked a lot about on the retail side, you know, thinking about ownership. If you go to seven stories, press website, or hay market, or verso, you can buy an ebook. And it's an download it's DRM free, and it has a watermark on it. That says my name Claire Kelly, and my email address throughout the book, you know, so that's kind of a hedge against piracy. But, you know, that's what we have control over that piece. That direct to consumer piece, we don't really have control over the distribution of our books, in the sense that we're not talking directly to overdrive, or Amazon really. Yeah, I'll stop there.
Dennis Johnson 9:38
And I'll throw in that was that was great. I'll throw in maybe it's related on the marketing side. If there's one thing I've learned it's you cannot get at least independent booksellers to read electronically, no matter what. They want to see your books early. If you offer them a PDF, they say, would you print it out for me and mail it? So it's a challenge. It's another challenge, even just in a marketing sense, to get the concept of a digital book. Get the industry behind it in a way. And it's true that we really, I mean, there are two, two big players in the eBook game PRH. And Amazon. Amazon has everybody's it's 90% of our ebook sales, maybe more. And I've never spoken to anybody from Amazon. You know, it's not like you have any kind of relationship with them to negotiate these things. Or to do what's best for the book, the author, or the or the consumer. We really, we can't get near that. And that's, that's where it's locked right now. Maybe Lena Khan is going to help us all with that. But that's, that's down the road right now, for the first, whatever it is 15 years of the book. there's precious little that the smaller publishers, university presses, nonprofits, can really do about how eBooks are sold, or just even transmitted.
Claire Woodcock 11:24
What about you, Emily? Have you spoken with Amazon?
Emily Hamilton 11:30
Not for a very long time, nonsense, we were just starting to try to figure out what Amazon was going to be. And then they, you know, went dark pretty quick. We are a little bit different as a university press we are we are not we don't have a distribution relationship with a larger company. And so we do do our own ebook agreements and sell a lot of ebooks through academic libraries. And as part of that, as a nonprofit, mission driven University Press, we are you know, very much in the in the same game, in terms of trying to get access, and trying to get usage and trying to get readers and trying to connect what the author's that we have a responsibility to the authors that we represent the authors that the reason why we exist, really, to get their work out and disseminated in a responsible way. And and so for us, that's changed a lot in the ebooks space, it hasn't. It's not a hot issue right now, because it's kind of
Dennis Johnson 12:50
it's a mature hot issues right now.
Emily Hamilton 12:52
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely true. And so it is, I feel like from a publishing standpoint, kind of at a somewhat settled ground, until something new comes along in the way that we can actually provide the ebooks. And the, but for us, just to kind of set the stage about what you know, the role that they've played, I mean, as a, as an Academic Press, Minnesota, was one of the first publishers to go to what's called a simultaneous publishing model, where we publish a library cloth edition, and a paperback at the same time. And that library cloth edition used to be, you know, it was just a huge driver, because all of the academic libraries would collect paper copies, they'd collect the print copies from the, you know, of the scholarship, not all of them, we wish it was all of them, but you know, a lot and it would, it was supported the entire program, it would, it would support the whole investment in the author and the book and the product and the marketing and the distribution. And that started to change. It started to change before ebooks, where those sales started declining. And ebooks in the academic library space really came sort of, it kind of went like this for us. And because academic libraries started collecting the ebook, in a in a big way, and through these platforms and collecting fewer library cloth, print copies for us. And so it's not necessarily been over time, like a giant revenue swing like we were here and all of a sudden we have like, now this is ebooks. It's like the balance of how we sell books kind of show If over time depending on what the market wants. And so, for us, our eBook program is like 80% libraries and 20%. Retail, I would just echo what Dennis said, we have just no control at all over Amazon. And they don't share anything with us. So the, the data kind of the the, the circle or the the communication of data between publishers and platforms is really one directional, for the most part, at least in my experience. So, yeah, leave it there.
Claire Woodcock 15:46
Awesome. Thank you. So from your vantage points, it really sounds like the platform. There's, there's PRH. And then there is Amazon. Can you talk about the role? You've seen platforms playing as an intermediary between publishers and consumers? And how those platforms how it compares to something like the print business?
Dennis Johnson 16:09
What are you calling a platform
Claire Woodcock 16:11
platforms, I'm thinking in terms of for consumers, I'm thinking like individual consumers, I'm thinking about like, maybe Amazon's Kindle, or Kobo and then possibly, like for libraries, I'm thinking about, like overdrive.
Claire Kelley 16:34
I can take that one. So I think my concern is, you know, thinking about the gatekeepers here. And, you know, overdrive serves 90% of public libraries in the United States. So that's a huge market share. Amazon controls over 80% of E Ink reader share in the US. So right there, those are huge drivers of people reading ebooks. And, you know, as an indie publisher, on the indie publisher side, I think there needs to be more players. And, you know, as I've researched the library market, I've been thrilled to see players like Palace project, for example, a nonprofit platform for ebook distribution to libraries. And I would love to work with Palace project. On the retail side, I wrote to Andy Hunter, CEO and founder of bookshop before this week, and he told me that bookshop will launch ebook sales in March of 2024. So that's really exciting. You know, Andy says, you should be able to buy an e book from a bookstore, and read it on your Kindle. But that's gonna be an uphill battle. Because only overdrive and Amazon are where you can read a book on a Kindle. I mean, that's, that's, that's why, you know, I want to see more market share from Palace project, but like, you can't read on Kindle. It's like, this is a problem. And Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Gibbons book took point, capitalism really illustrates that I am fascinated by Rebecca Gibbons research in Australia, about IE lending models at libraries. And honestly, it wasn't till recently that I discovered that as a distributed client, that's what we call publishers, indie publishers that are distributed by Penguin Random House, we have perpetual license terms to libraries, one copy one user, the big the big five, all have metered access that came up earlier. And so I started to ask why, you know, and and, really, that whole publisher marketplace, as we've all said, both on the library and retail side as a blackbox. Like we're not seeing what people are doing in their reading habits when we don't get that data like we don't surveil, you know, readers. I can't even to be honest with you, I would love to know from a marketing perspective, which libraries in the US are buying our ebooks. I don't have that data. I've asked for it. I can't get it.
Dennis Johnson 19:39
So you've asked your distributor.
Claire Kelley 19:40
Yeah. Who presumably has it from overdrive? Sorry.
Dennis Johnson 19:47
Publishers are who were trying to get it from. There are they are the distributors?
Claire Kelley 19:56
I don't know. They do. That's a good question.
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez 19:58
You can get that done. data from overdrive. If you're a direct client, if you're going through PRH, or as an intermediary, then bad access would theoretically come through them. But you wouldn't have direct access. Similar to Amazon, if you're not a direct client. And with Amazon, a big client, you're gonna have very limited access to data.
Claire Kelley 20:21
So that's one of the things Rebecca Goodwin talks about, you know, in her research is trans, this transparency piece, you know, and data like, I would love some transparency to.
Dennis Johnson 20:32
Well, and just to emphasize what Claire is saying, you know, the book industry did try to stand up to Amazon, on exactly the issue of ebooks. And the Obama administration, effectively sanctioned Amazon. At that time, I mean, it was a decision where the judge Denise Coates actually said she's suspected Amazon was a monopoly, but the publishers went about fighting the monopoly the wrong way. So in other words, she, we were, they were prosecuting the victims. But this is exactly what five out of the then big six publishers were trying to make reasonable pricing of ebooks and the control of ebooks and they lost, and they were badly damaged a lot of them by the really excessive fines and
post. So that's one reason people just move on. And we're so ignorant of the data of our own business.
Emily Hamilton 21:37
I am fortunate, I think, in this way, because we do have direct relationships with the platforms and can get data, I will say that, you know, not reading habits, nothing like that. But just like where it's being bought and sold. I will say that one of the big challenges in the ebooks space is that because the platform's all report things, so totally differently, it's nearly impossible to analyze things, you have to have a very, very good database. And that's not really what publishers are great at always. But we've, we've worked it out. So we can see trends and things like that, and we can see how things break down. In terms of sales, I really see our relationship with the, you know, between the platforms, and the publishers, as are the platforms, as far as I'm concerned are sort of a bridge to the reader. And there isn't really a good way to get across the river without the bridge. And so, you know, of course, these companies could sort of grew up into this space that was that was open for, you know, for somebody to make some money off of off of the industry, which is, I mean, publishing is littered with people in the middle, trying to make money off of a very inexpensive product and very valuable intellectual property. And so the, you know, I think from a publishing standpoint, we're sort of working with what we have. And also wanting to make things as the strategic move that we made, kind of in the early days of ebooks, when we realized that, first of all, we had to digitize everything in order to get it into the libraries or into the readers hands, which was not something that publishers were doing. Or had, and, and then realized that we needed to, you know, figure out how we were going to sell it. And the, you know, as these companies started to grow, we realize, like, there's no way that we can supply, nor can the libraries receive this data and file information from us without an intermediary. You know, you tried to think of like a rural librarian in the middle of Minnesota, like trying to get our books. It's not I mean, from a practical standpoint, it was just really complicated. And technologically, you know, not something that any of the other players in the space were very adept at, at the time. I could see that changing but I see it, I see them as a way to readers. Not the best players, always. I mean, we all worry that corporations in the middle can be very rapacious. We've had lots of experience with that. But yeah, look,
Claire Woodcock 24:43
I mean, like I'm I write about technology, but I'm not a technologist. I'm a writer, right. I can I can empathize with you are working in publishing your your business's books, and you have to find a way to get this digital version of a book to someone in I don't know, just in a totally different place, and you have to have the technology to be able to do that. So in a way, like, of course, like there was a need that needed to be filled in the industry, and it did that. But for some reason, okay. But I just want to talk a little bit to like, I'm so curious how, how can publishers and platforms and libraries from your vantage points better work together to address some of the access issues? Like, are there things that publishers are doing now? And are there things that they could be doing more of? Or the opposite?
Claire Kelley 25:53
Yeah, so I'm really interested in that question. I think that there's a lot of Publisher education that happened has to happen, particularly for indie publishers, and small publishers, university presses around this marketplace, and really what to advocate for, you know, I think the big five is sort of settled in there, metered access and time bound licenses. And, you know, I've learned a lot from NIC Stephanie Anderson back there from book ops, who really helped the independent publisher caucus, learn about what it's like to be on the front lines of the library, you're trying to build a collection that has depth and diversity, and you're trying to respond to patron demand. And so from my vantage point, having heard that all that from Stephanie and other librarians is that I want to be able to offer not only a perpetual license, one copy one user, so that, you know, every library in the United States could have a copy of the books we publish. But also, when any or no wins the Nobel Prize, there should be a cheaper license, maybe a one year or paper, paper Cirque that can can address that demand. You know, Palace is doing some interesting things with five, five at a time, which I think, you know, could inspire some discovery of titles. And so I think there's so much to learn. And, you know, I almost I'm also a little bit concerned about, I mean, obviously, there's these huge platforms that control so much of the market share, but also the financialization of these marketplaces. Michael brought up earlier KKR. So I, you know, saw on the news reports that KKR, a private equity firm, was going to buy wants to buy Simon and Schuster. And I also saw that KKR already owns overdrive and bought them in 2020. And so thinking about, you know, what is the relationship there? And what would happen to these platforms, and potentially book publishing companies, when they're owned by private equity firms? I pitched a piece to Library Journal, and interviewed Sandeep for SHINE SOS for the legal, you know, they said, No, there's a lot of people, lawyers in the audience. He's the legal director at the open markets Institute. And, you know, I think the idea that, you know, Simon and Schuster is going to be under extreme financial pressure to produce profits for private equity owner. And, you know, I think that we've already seen that KKR owned RB media, the largest audio book, publisher in the world, at the same time that they owned overdrive. And in my piece, you know, you see the connections there. And KKR put a billion dollars of debt on RB media and took a $250 million dividend for themselves. I mean, what's going to happen to these marketplaces, financialization has already come to the to the e book landscape. And now it's coming for book publishing. And I just am curious to see how that influences these equations that we're talking about in terms of platforms, libraries, publishers.
Claire Woodcock 29:17
That's so interesting, thank you.
Emily Hamilton 29:25
Nobody else I'm sort of lost in thought about those numbers. So how could we sort of work more collaboratively, collaboratively together? Was that the question? Yeah,
Claire Woodcock 29:37
I mean, I think that everyone has a perception of someone else as the bad guy. And when we went out to ask a lot of these questions of stakeholders what we weren't trying to assume that anyone is a bad guy. I think in some cases, everybody's a bad guy and no one's a bad guy. In a sense, right? Because every ones playing a role in a system that is struggling right now, I think.
Emily Hamilton 30:07
Yeah, I mean, I think there is a lot to unpack there, I think there's, there's also probably a lot of like history between different, you know, parts of the parts of the industry or parts of the market or, you know, different people that, that each player serves primarily, and publishers are really focused on serving their authors and their readers, and then creating terrific books. And so that's a little different than libraries, who are focused on readers, but also on, you know, access free access to information, or providing a third space or community, you know, lots of other things, right. And there's some inherent tension there, even without the platform's who are just coming in, really to, you know, make something possible and make as much money as they can. Off of that process. And so, I think that understanding kind of where each, you know, where people are situated, and what it is, their primary concerns are, can really be can go a long way. You know, for publishers, the issue of piracy, and, and free circulating books is a major, it's a major concern. And it's not that piracy is something that is proven to cannibalize print sales, although, you know, that's certainly, you know, been a been a big topic of conversation as ebooks have started to circulate. But also that, you know, the unauthorized duplication of copyright copyrighted books has been a, it's been a, it's been a problem for a very long time. It's been litigated many times. And so we kind of I think publishers came at ebooks with that background, sort of a Kinkos background, and wondering, who can really control where these files go? And what like, we don't know. Nobody knows what is going to happen when it comes to the circulation of files. And so I think that, I think that sort of understanding some of the some of the ways that some of the reasons behind, you know, one player or another might might approach this issue differently, can really, like bring us to a middle place.
Dennis Johnson 32:50
I mean, I think part of the thing that needs to be understood is that the book business is there's a lot of different kinds of people in the business as a publisher, you're not only dealing with a product that can be made in multiple formats. But it can be sold in multiple, varied places. And it's a really complex ecosystem. And a huge chunk of the echo system, or Luddites came into the business. Well look, more power to them, they are dealing with a book is a really superior piece of technology, you can still read the first book, from 500, whatever it was years ago, it's pretty great. And they see no reason to expand their concept of what a book is. We learned during the pandemic, independent booksellers had to rethink their whole game. You know, a lot of them didn't even have a website. It's a different business, running a website, selling books on their websites, a different business and what they got into it for libraries, no two libraries alike like snowflakes. I mean, it's just a really, it's, it's, it's a lot of different kinds of people. And getting cooperation is like herding cats. I keep hoping that there will be. I mean, the core of the core problem is that, you know, year to year 50%, of book sales are the big five. And those of us selling the other 50% of books in America have to survive in a marketplace controlled by essentially PRH and Amazon, really giant machines, running algorithms, and to sit around and think what can I do to make this better? How can I work with libraries more closely? How can I work with at least independent booksellers more closely? It's a huge area occasion project. And we don't have the resources that the smaller presses or even some of the bigger independent presses to really do that. I mean, I traveled the country visiting bookstores, reminding them that they love Melville House. But it's a it's a, it's a very complex project that needs a bigger player to, to take it on, or we need the bigger players to be made into smaller players.
Claire Woodcock 35:29
And something that I'm hearing I've heard eMERGE is this idea that a perpetual license for a library is as close to digital ownership as as you can get, or in so many words, it's good enough for now. Right. But there are also some, like long term preservation concerns, there's also the storage issue. But as publishers, do you think that a perpetual license is good enough for a library? Or like an individual consumer, if that was ever floated?
Emily Hamilton 36:09
Um, so I think it's good enough?
Claire Woodcock 36:15
Or can or can we do more?
Emily Hamilton 36:17
I don't, I mean, I think that the difference between a perpetual license and ownership when it comes to a digital file might be might not be as much of a distinction as it sounds like it is. Because any, you know, I think there was a point in the paper, and I think that it called to mind sort of some of the challenges of this, like, if you've ever tried to open an e book file from 10 years ago, you're not getting anywhere, like the file is totally bad. And so, so is that what ownership looks like in an ebook space, like you have an obsolete file? Does that does that is that what you know, libraries are, are wanting when we talk about ownership. I, you know, one of the things that, that I think about when I hear sort of the difference between perpetual license and ownership is that like, as soon as in order to make ownership real, it has to continue to evolve. And so the ebooks base, like the file, the way that that gets delivered, the way that it looks, the way that you read, it is going to change. And the publisher, is the entity who has to create who has to change all of the files, to promote a new standard, who, and everything will change about that, because and then we and then get it out to the library so that you can continue to own the same book, and have it be relevant to the collection. And so some publishers outsource that work, we have changed our entire workflow to produce books that are also ebooks. And so I just I wonder about what, what we really mean, when we say, ownership. And if I don't know that publishers are as worried. And again, I'm speaking from, you know, a university press standpoint, not a corporate publishing standpoint about, you know, someone sharing an ebook with their neighbor. That's not what publishers are sort of, you know, really, really, that's not the big worry, the big worry would be that it gets available for free, and the author never gets paid for any of it. And, and that's, you know, that's part of our responsibility. Yeah, so I mean, I just I'm very curious about sort of what that what does that mean, in the eBook, space to own it, because I have a lot of ebooks that I can't ever get to, again, from back in the day.
Claire Kelley 39:12
I think if we want to consider ownership in the library space, we have to look at an example, like Douglas County, which has been brought up earlier today, where you know, Jamie LaRue, and David Farnan. I'm based in Boulder, Colorado, he's the older library director there now. You know, they really tried to create an ownership model for libraries and host and circulate their own files. And it didn't work. You know, they couldn't get content from publishers, which you know, we've kind of addressed that previously. I think where I am is, I think there's some space for advocacy here. Like when Dennis is saying, What can we do? You know, public indie publishers, big five publishers spend a lot of money going to winter Institute every year. which is a conference where publishers and independent booksellers, you know, collaborate and work together and, you know, really support each other. And in one of our independent publisher caucus meetings, Stephanie pointed out that, you know, there 6000 booksellers in the US, there's, what 127,000 librarians. And Michael Reynolds from Europa editions and other indie publisher said, why don't we do winter Institute, a winter Institute for librarians. And I thought, well, who's going to organize that?
Dennis Johnson 40:38
Michael Reynolds?
Claire Kelley 40:39
Well, we're gonna do it. We're doing it. Mica at Palace project, myself and Anna and Daniel IPC. And now we have Ingram onboard, we are going to be hosting the first winter Institute for indie publishers and librarians at PLA in Columbus, Ohio. Next year, it will be an off site Summit. On April 2, and anyone interested should get in touch with me or Mike, I will send you an interest form. But I'm really excited because I think that's a way that we can put indie publishers and librarians and direct content to start working towards. So you know, advocacy in the space. I'm interested in things like, you know, granted, it's difficult sometimes, you know, to make things happen, it's not like I can pull a lever and offer simultaneous access license at book ops, you know, but I'd like to ask for one, you know, we, there's so many interesting models out there, not just perpetual access. When copy one user, I've learned from Emily, Emily told me once I have a cheat sheet of all the different license models that she offers, to academic libraries. I thought that was fascinating. You know, how can we, I was at ALA at the ALA ebooks working group session, and a school librarian came up to me and said, You know, I'd love to buy a collection of your we have a series of books called for young people. It's like Howard Zinn's for young people, history of the United States and a bunch of others. She's like, can you bundle those together, I'd love to buy them from my classroom, like, great, that's, that's a tangible thing that I can take to my distributor distributor and ask for it. Or I could take to, you know, palace and ask for like, I think that, you know, I was talking about how, as a market young marketing person at Simon and Schuster, I tried to be innovative with what we could do on the marketing side with digital books. I'm really excited to innovate with some of these, you know, types of licenses, and work with librarians to make them happen. And it's, you know, Michael Blackwell is also been part of organizing this conference, founder of readers first, you know, he, he says, Claire, it's not going to happen overnight. And I appreciate his perspective. But I think this is a place where we can start.
Claire Woodcock 42:58
I think we have time for like at least one question. If anyone has one question. Yeah.
Speaker 7 43:06
Hi, I just I have a question that I want to hear from everyone, but especially for you, Emily, just because I'm a young academic and young writer. And I'm trying to enter this space, with understanding and taking into consideration the values of widespread circulation and widespread information. But also, like you said, there's this tension between protecting readers and authors at the same time as as considering and taking into account larger systemic issues in terms of information within the United States. And I was just really curious as to what you guys think about going into that space, and not contributing, if it's even possible, or not being appended to this perpetual cycle that's ultimately tied to like, economic and legislative systems that are beyond what we're talking about today in terms of ownership. And when I put that writing out there that I hope is valuable. I would want to make sure that, yes, it's as especially in terms of academic academia. A lot of academics rely on ebooks, for people to even just read it because it's like in syllabi, or students can't afford it. And so we have it in libraries, so that I can go on NYU Bobst and be like, Okay, great. It's right downstairs, or I can just download it right now. So how do you or what do you think about the, the issue of, of participating in a system that kind of like you're talking about everyone is like, almost everyone or no one's an enemy. And no one's trying to have mal intent, but they're protecting themselves in their own priorities. Um, how do you almost So how do you decide to initiate that engagement?
Emily Hamilton 45:05
What a fabulous question. Well, I guess two things come to mind. And I hope that this addresses, you know, addresses what you're thinking about. One is, you know, really, when you're an academic or an A writer, and you're and you're doing your scholarship and want to bring it to a readership, you want to think about who's going to be the, the caretaker of that work, and how are they going to interact with it? How are they going to bring it to the market? How are they going to interact with you. And I think that that's a really important part of the process for people who want to become published, like, you want to have a relationship with the people who are working with you in a way that, that you that understands that you are the positionality, of where you want to be in that ecosystem. One of the the other thing is one of the coolest things that has happened for us over the past. I don't know, I want to say 15 years, but that might be not quite right, is the rise of Creative Commons licenses. And if you have values where, you know, you want to have certain amount of control over your work, but you don't necessarily, you know, you want certain types of copyright, but not others. You want to allow people to, you know, duplicate it, but not, but not, you know, to only to a certain degree, there's all these gradations that authors can choose now, in terms of copyright related to Creative Commons, which I think does sort of OPT you out of those, you know, bigger machinations in some way.
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