“The ebook library lending policies of the Big Six publishers garner most of the attention, because public libraries regard access to best-selling titles as a critical service.
However, it may help to scan the landscape not only for the “Big Six” trade publishers but also for the “fairly large” and the “not so big” and the “further afield” in order to get a fuller sense of publishers’ participation in the overall library marketplace.
The list is meant to be a helpful, not comprehensive, resource. The focus is whether or not publishers are in the library ebook marketplace. It is not meant to be a listing of all possible ways to acquire ebooks for a library collection. Comments and suggestions are welcome.”
The Big Seven
Random House Inc.
Macmillan
Penguin Group USA
Simon&Schuster
Hachette Book Group
Scholastic Corporation
The Next Tier (in alphabetical order)
De Gruyter
Elsevier
Gale
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hyperion Books
John Wiley & Sons
McGraw-Hill Companies
Oxford University Press
Perseus Books Group
Sage Publishing
Sourcebooks
Springer
Taylor & Francis Group
W.W. Norton & Company
Publishing Partners of Distributors, Aggregators, and Others
The list of publishers that participate in the library ebook market can quickly become very long once beyond the most prominent firms. A quick way to see if a publisher makes ebooks available is to consult the list of publishing partners that many of the larger distributors, aggregators, and others make available online. Here are links to a few of these lists. A number of notable companies such as Baker & Taylor, Ebooks on EBSCOhost, 3M, and others do no apparently have a publicly available list of publishing partners online.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. Contact Michael Kelley at [email protected]”
I bet that Michael Kelley will be updating this list regularly as things develop.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/02/ebooks/a-guide-to-publishers-in-the-library-ebook-market/
I’d suggest that it would be wise for librarians to follow these sites as well:
1. Follow what happens in Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s publishing programs.
2. Follow what occurs as Bookish launches (http://bookish.com). This is being built for the top publishers by Baker & Taylor. It is runoured to be a site for selling, renting and borrowing books.
3. Follow what certain bestselling authors are doing. One to watch is JK Rowling and her laucn of e-books through the Pottermore website (http://pottermore.com) whihc was built for her by Overdrive and Sony.
4. Follow development in book rental or subscription sites that use the Netflix model. One is Lendle (http://lendle.me/) and another is 24Symbols (http://www.24symbols.com/) and, of course Amazon lends (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000739811) along with B&N (http://www.nookboards.com/forum/71-nook-lending/9033-nook-lending-please-read-first.html).
Of course, my librarian soul knows that it’s reading that’s important – any way we can support it – not just physical books. Otherwise ALA would have BOOK posters instead of READ posters!
Ah, this is just baby steps so far. We’re watching a sea change in the book ecology.
Stephen
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