Will the Houghton/HarperCollins Deal Be a Bust for Libraries?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is divesting its trade division and HarperCollins is acquiring it.

This deal could be bad news for library digital content.

The issue is differences between the two publisher on license terms.

HMH has been licensing ebooks and digital audiobooks under a one copy/one user perpetual access license. None of the Big 5 currently offers that long-term option. HarperCollins at least uses a circ-based metered model, and not the “exploding” time bound licensed, and we are grateful for that. Will HC offer the classic titles it is getting (including Tolkien, Orwell, Lowry, and Atwood) under the HCH terms, or will it flip them to its current metered option, under which titles expire after a certain number of uses? Worse, will HarperCollins have the right to nullify previous license agreements and require relicensing ?

We could be looking at having to spend a lot of time and money relicensing old favorites. Hope everyone has stocked up under the old HMH terms! HRM, maybe it’s time for Going-Out-Of-Business Sale to benefit your customers?

Even newer titles in HMH often have favorable price terms for libraries, often at or even below hardcover print price for perpetual access. If HC uses its current licensing/cost model for the titles it is gaining and raises the prices on future releases by authors, the financial impact could be significant.

With digital audiobooks, both HRM and HC offer a perpetual access license, so the impact may be less. Overall, however, HMM prices have generally been less than HC's by some 14% or so.

Digital library collections could become poorer in the number of titles offered and in selection, with mid-tier, new, and more diverse becoming more expensive and less sustainable. HarperCollins, to be fair, has some of the more reasonable pricing, at least among the Big 5. Maybe it won’t be too bad. It would be worse if HC used time-bound licenses—thanks for not doing that, HC!

So, HarperCollins, yes, we prefer your circ-bound licenses to those of the other Big 5 publishers. Would now be a good time to adopt flexible models, keeping some perpetual access terms in addition to continuing to offer metered models? You could charge a higher price for perpetual access while allowing libraries the option of a less expensive metered option to meet immediate demand.

We hope at any rate that all past licenses will remain valid.