Public library users response to e-books and e-audio Dr Bob Pymm School of Information Studies

E-books In 2000, predicted US market would be $22 bn by Actually was $179 million. Less than 1% of books sold Attractive to publishers – very cheap to produce; no warehouses; no remainders Can have very large catalogues available A global market place – no problems re postage, delivery

Read what you want, when you want Slogan from Amazon’s Kindle - $399 Weighs less than a paperback; long life battery High quality – print-like screen Wireless connectivity to access database, download etc Over 80,000 book titles, including new releases Can program to download daily newspapers so there in the morning

Early e-book activities Project Gutenberg started 1971 – students keying in texts By 1997 – 1,000 books online Arrival of pocket readers late 90s Explosion with coming of the Internet Google – 2004 – deals with major libraries to digitise vast numbers 10m titles – public domain for full text; in copyright – summaries only

But…. How do people react to e-books, especially for recreational reading?

ACT Public Library Service Delivery via Web – simple and convenient – to your home PC (Web 2.0) or through.. Portable devices seen as posing lots of difficulties – cost, loans policy, uploading content, battery life etc. Decision to go with downloading to home PC only Choice of Overdrive – link with SirsiDynix a significant factor

Selection Staff selected 1,000 fiction titles, 750 non-fiction. About half were audio books (e-audio) Concerns over lack of Australian titles (mainly US) Competitively priced – US$12 for e-books, US$45 for e-audio Question of formats – PDFs and Mobipocket acquired – pay for both. E-audio, not available for ipods

Usage Based on a four month period earlier in the year: –E-audio averaged 350 borrowings/month (compared to traditional audio – 8,500/month) –E-books (PDF) averaged 200 borrowings/month –E-books (Mobipocket) averaged 45 borrowings/month

Survey A questionnaire linked from ACT e-library web page active for one month 79 surveys completed 80% users between 25 and 55

E-books 27% had borrowed more than six titles since the service had commenced 45% one time only borrowers Small number positive comments – “I can take multiple books with me anywhere” More negative ones – “I do not find reading from the screen as comfortable as reading a book”

E-books (cont.) 50% read entire book on screen 25% started and gave up 11% printed some or all of the text 29% used special features such as increasing font size and in-text searching For those borrowing more than one title, fiction the most likely genre 39% against any more purchases; 33% not sure

E-audio 33% borrowed more than six titles 31% borrowed only one More positive comments – though common to any form of audio book Negative comments – mainly re inability to download to ipods

E-audio (cont.) 43% downloaded some or all to an MP3 player 30% downloaded to CD Fiction most popular 23% against further purchases, 31% not sure

Concerns Range of titles, especially Australian content Lack of compatibility with Apple products Borrowing limits and not being able to ‘return’ titles early Individual technical issues Reading from screen

Conclusions Focus on e-audio Promote e-audio service Revisit statistics following promotional campaign Research e-book market further – are there potential niches to be exploited? Standardise e-book format on PDF only Consider cost/benefits after 12 months

Try them!!