Costs Are Rising (What A Surprise)

My fellow librarians concerned about how exploding licenses at high costs are making our digital collections unsustainable, we have further bad news. Costs are going up. It isn’t the case with every publisher, but the overall trend is clear. One librarian in our Working Group noted that the price-per-unit for HarperCollins titles had increased 24% for ebooks and 6% for eaudio. So much for HC being our best deal, as they seem to be joining the race to the bottom. Another colleague provided still more data:

In ebooks, PRH’s 24 month cost is slightly down (offset unfortunately by an increase in the 12 month price). That at least is good news. One of Hachette’s imprints has decreased 5.56%, while one Macmillan imprint has decreased a nice 8.83%. That’s pretty much the end of the good news, however, with overall costs going up by over 15%. HC leads the pack with a 31% increase in price-per-unit cost.

In digital audiobooks, the beat (as in, let’s beat up the libraries) goes on in both metered and perpetual access, with the Recorded Books and Tantor posting huge percentage increases.

Granted this is a limited survey (so far—we’ll be adding more results). It occurs in a time of inflation in many prices. But have costs for producing digital media really escalated that much? And this library works with a large collection and its results are likely representative, as we shall establish with more evidence. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the publishers are treating libraries, which face even more patron pressure to provide titles in times of economic difficulty, as a cash cow

RF to the publishers: if you aim is to lower library circulation, keep it up. You’ll succeed. How happy will you be with less author/title discovery? Will it really lead to more individual sales? Will more reading result?

Doubt it.