Macmillan Drops Embargo

Andrew Albanese from Publishers Weekly has posted news that Macmillan has ended its e-book embargo.

ReadersFirst is pleased that Macmillan is returning to its earlier pricing model for libraries.  It can be hoped this move is a good starting point for further negotiations, with good faith on both sides. Some of Macmillan's recent proposals were worth looking at.  The pricing model of dropping costs over time was welcome, though Macmillan’s initial prices on some of the models were unsustainable for libraries.  

Mr. Sargent, we at RF Working Group hope that we might move from a 2-year time-bound license to a circulation-based license (say 40 circulations at a set price?) for metered access.  Please consider adding a one copy/one user perpetual access license, if only a year after a title is published and demand is lower, or even only on a backlist, but ideally up front. It would be worth a higher cost than the metered licenses, but many in our group say we would often get it, even as we also used metered access when meeting high initial demand.

Thank you, Macmillan, for working to end an unproductive stalemate. It was gracious. Let's move forward together for the good of readers inside and outside libraries.

Meanwhile, we in libraries need to come to a greater consensus on what models we would most like to see and advocate for those models with all publishers. What do we want? Or, since no one model works in every case, what flexibility of models do we want? Let's stop reacting to what we are offered by publishers and advocate for what we need to use our money to best effect. Our ability to offer digital content well is improved by Macmillan’s change, but we still face challenges in creating broad and cost-effective digital collections to match our print collections. In a time when many libraries are closed because of COVID-19, the need has never been greater.