The Swedish Model

The Swedish Model

The dominant model for ebook lending never really worked. It pitched libraries against publishers in what has often been described as a war over ebooks and it left readers unhappy too. The Swedish model for ebook lending is different and it has set the stage for cooperation rather than antagonism. Now we want to tell the world all about it.

Publishers and libraries basically serve the same purpose.

Even though they need to follow different rules most publishing houses are commercial entities, libraries are funded by tax payers their ultimate intention is to mediate the relationship between reader and writer. Even though their coexistence through the

centuries has sometimes been uneasy, both institutions have played key roles in fostering literate society. Thanks to ebooks, the truce between libraries and publishers is now being put to the test. Its easy to see why. Handling physical books is conceptually clear; when you buy one you get to treat it as you wish. The seller cant keep you from lending it or from giving it away for free and because of the scarcity and friction inherent of all things physical, this poses no threat to the seller. In most corners of the world this same conceptual paradigm has been allowed to influence the

mechanics of ebook lending. A library typically buys licenses for ebook copies and the number of licenses it owns for a title determines the number of patrons that can be given access to the ebook concurrently. This is a model often referred to as one-book-one-license. Since the model is meant to emulate how physical books work, publisher HarperCollins argued in 2011 that ebooks should also wear out. In a move that was wildly unpopular amongst librarians (see http://boycottharpercollins.com/) it therefore appended its own rule on top of the one-book-one-license framework, forcing libraries to

renew its license of any given ebook after 26 circulations. The controversy around the HarperCollins cap isnt the only recent sign that the one-book-onelicense model is starting to burst at the seams. Kansas state librarian Jo Budler ended up in a long drawn-out legal struggle when she decided to move her catalogue of ebook titles from OverDrive, which had just announced a 700 percent increase of their administrative fees, to another service provider. Shed signed up to buy ebooks, but OverDrive had by then gone on to changed its user agreement to imply that rather than owning the ebook, the library were

only being granted the license to loan them to patrons through the life of the contract. Again and again ebooks just wont behave like their print counterparts. And not only when it comes to libraries for that matter; when you click the buy now button on Amazon the fine print shows whats really going on. Heres from the Kindle stores Terms of use:
 Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. The Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict.

If treating ebooks like physical books is beginning to feel a bit

like trying to push a square peg through a round hole, that feeling is confirmed by the letter of the law. In a legal sense ebooks arent goods. Thats why the so called right of first sale-doctrine doesnt apply to them, which in plain English means that you cant do what you want with an ebook just because you payed for it. Instead ebooks are considered to be services, and services are licensed on terms that need to be negotiated between the licensor and the licensee. Thats why libraries and publishers now need to sit down to negotiate between themselves where as before there was really no need to talk.

Some say the war over ebooks cant be solved. We think differently.

Some say the war over ebooks cant be solved since libraries lack enough of a value proposition to make publishers even want to sit down at the table. New York based business analyst Mike Shatzkin has made this point, and perhaps it holds true in America where

the war is raging most ferociously and where none of the biggest publishers are now making their full ebook catalogues available to libraries. But whats true in America doesnt have to be true in Europe, which the example of Sweden clearly shows. Sweden has a long tradition of building community based cultural infrastructure that is controlled in full neither by the state nor by private interest. To mention just one of many examples: Ingmar Bergman probably wouldnt have had such a tremendous reach if he hadnt been backed by the Swedish

film institute, where the private film industry pools its resources together with state money. The book industry is no different. Just over a decade ago publishers and librarians formed a joint task force that came up with a model for ebook lending which still to this day seems unique in the world: transaction fees for every time an ebook is lent; no cap on the number of concurrent lendings and catalogue wide access without entry fees. In short, ebooks are treated as services. The model is self regulatory; ebook lending cant hurt sales since the publisher is free to

manipulate prices for library circulation on each individual title. On the other side of the fence, libraries have tools to filter out exactly what ebooks to carry. This explains why trade statistics from September last year show that six times as many ebooks were distributed through the library system than through all commercial outlets combined. In this dynamic climate some libraries are starting to dip their toe into publishing too, digitising and spreading their own books to their patrons as well as to other libraries. An inspiring example of this happened in 2011 when the rights catalogue of the

Gunnar and Alva Myrdal estate was bequeathed to the City of Stockholm. Both Gunnar and Alva were famously awarded one Nobel prize each (in 1974 and 1982) and produced a string of works that helped form the Swedish blend of market driven social democracy. As historically important as these works are, commercial publishers had failed to keep them available so the rights were released under creative commons license. This unlocked possibilities for a group of entrepreneurial librarians who decided to bring the literary legacy of the Myrdal couple back to life.

The ebooks were made freely available to library patrons, unencumbered by DRM, and as a further experiment they were also put onto the Apple iBook store. The result was astounding. Not counting the circulation on iBook store the eleven titles were downloaded by library patrons in the region of Stockholm on more than 2 000 occasions only in the first four months. Thats more than 15 times higher than the average, measured as a circulation per title.

Cooperation between libraries and publishers makes it possible.

As exotic as the examples of libraries gone publisher might be, the most interesting aspect of the Swedish model is the cooperation between libraries and publishers that it has made possible.

In a time where brick-and-mortar bookstores are sadly shrinking in numbers, libraries are becoming ever more important as physical spaces where people can meet around books and find unexpected reading by serendipity. Nothing shows this better than the Myrdal project, where book loving librarians managed to create unprecedented enthusiasm for an obscure catalogue of niche titles. This brings real value to a publishing community that is trying to reorient themselves from focusing on frontlist, where sales are shrinking, to a backlist-centred economy. But in order to reap the benefits of the so called long tail economy,

serious investment in digitisation is needed, and in a small language area theres seldom enough demand to justify the slow and costly process of producing high quality reflowable texts from facsimile originals. This is where libraries can play a role. The fact that theyre not market driven gives a freedom of action whereby the return of investment doesnt necessarily have to be immediate, or even financial. In fact shrinking budgets arent primary concerns for libraries in Sweden at the moment, instead its the lack control. When it comes to ebooks many publishers still keep their hottest titles from library circulation, making it ever more difficult

for libraries to stay relevant to patrons that want access to all kinds of titles. In an ongoing pilot project initiated by the Stockholm city library, the publishing house Ordfront and Publit, a partnership has been forged that allows libraries and publishers to scratch each others backs. Within this project, the library helps digitise a portion of the publishers back catalogue and is guaranteed access to all frontlisted titles in return. The costs for bringing titles back to life are shared between the publisher that chips in for royalty and the library that covers the

relatively hefty costs for scanning, digitising and proof reading. To reflect the fact that these titles are brought back to life in a joint effort this part of the project has been dubbed dual licensing. The term originates in the open source community where its used to describe products such as Linux or Arduino that can be shared freely while at the same time also circulated commercially. What will happen to the publishers ability to sell its frontlisted titles when theyre made available without windowing? An important part of the project revolves around collecting and sharing data to answer that question, but also to cross

reference how anonymized patrons and consumers interact with the same catalogue of titles in different contexts.

The sum is greater than its parts.

The story told on these pages is really a collective one. The Swedish model has been forged by a million tweaks and conceptual micro transactions as its proponents; publishers and libraries as well as technology players have made it work for them. The net result of this sprawling decentralised process is surprisingly

cohesive and synergetic in a very real sense of that word; the sum being greater than its parts. We feel entitled to tell this story because Publit has been instrumental in developing both the concept of the Swedish model, and the technical infrastructure that makes it possible. We fixed the critical bug that meant prices for library circulation were hard coded. In the past all titles from all publishing houses had the same mandatory price tag of 20 krona. Now a publisher has full control over what titles to circulate at what price points. We also bridged a gap by building a service that allows libraries to actively curate their

ebook catalogues. It used to be difficult for libraries to manage what titles to carry, they basically had an all or nothing proposition, but they can now use our platform to actively curate their ebook catalogues. Perhaps most importantly we came up with the idea of dual licensing, a concept that allows for partnerships which bring real value to publishers and libraries alike. We want to tell the world about our hard earned success because we think the Swedish model can and should be exported. Perhaps not to North America, where the rethoric in the wake of the war over ebooks is at its loudest and

where the global nature of the English speaking market affords the largest publishing houses to take a position of splendid isolation. In Europe however, nobody is big enough to make it on their own.

In a world locked down by the near global war over ebooks Sweden is different. Where the dominant paradigm sees ebooks as commodity, the Swedish model treats ebook lending as a service and this has proved central to undo the antagonism between publishers and libraries. Hannes Eder is co-founder and CTO of Publit, which has played a key role in developing the Swedish model and has built the infrastructure that allows not only for peaceful coexistence but also for dynamic partnerships at the intersection between the worlds of libraries and publishing.

www.publit.se

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