I’m headed to BEA next week (I’m on the conference advisory board for the BEA Bloggers part of the conference), and will have a good three days of listening to publishers talk about ebooks (and hopefully libraries).

So I thought it would be a good idea to see where we stand right now with ebooks, the Big Six, and some of our current ebook vendors.

Here’s a list of the major ebook vendors, and what they offer in relation to the Big Six publishers:

3M, Baker & Taylor Axis 360:

• Hachette
• Simon & Schuster (but only if you’re a large NYC-area library – they’re still in pilot project mode)
• Macmillan
• Penguin
• HarperCollins
• Random House
• … and No Kindle formats.

OverDrive:

• Hachette
• Macmillan
• HarperCollins
• Random House
• doesn’t have Penguin or Simon & Schuster
• … OverDrive has Kindle versions of some titles (and that’s probably why they don’t have Penguin).

What does each publisher offer?

• Hachette: Full catalog, released simultaneously with print, ebooks will cost 300% more than the print book. Unlimited number of checkouts, one copy per user model.
• Simon & Schuster: started a 1-year pilot project on April 30 with New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Library. Full catalog, a one year purchase/lease, unlimited checkouts, one copy per user model.
• Macmillan: 1,200 backlist ebooks from its Minotaur Books imprint. Two year, 52-lends lease model. Ebooks cost $25. I’d say they’re still in pilot project mode too.
• Random House: Our ebook friends, for a price – entire catalogue available for “perpetual access” at a higher price to libraries (upwards of 300% over the print book cost).
• Penguin: all titles available, one-year licenses. Except if you’re OverDrive.
• HarperCollins: 26 checkouts per title lease model.

So – at this point, we have all Big Six publishers willing and able to sell [at least some] ebooks to [at least some] libraries. With wildly varying models and price points:

• Checkout models include: unlimited use, 26 checkouts per book, or 52 checkouts per book.
• Time limits include: No year limits, one year limits, and two year limits per book
• Title availability includes: All titles available, some titles available, hardly any title available.
• Pricing: an even $25, a variety of more normal pricing. And two publishers who markup ebooks by 300%. If this was gasoline, we’d call it price gouging.

Pic by pazca

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on responsive design lately (because my library is headed towards that), and that made me think. When designing websites, we tend to design for devices. That’s what responsive design is all about – it’s coding in such a way that your website “responds” appropriately to different screen sizes (i.e., desktops, tablets, smartphones). We design for things: for a desktop; for a screen; for a browser; for a tablet or smartphone.

Nothing wrong with that – a modern website has to work on all those devices, right?

But I also think we need to shift our focus a bit, to where it really counts. And that focus is not on the screen.

We need to design for people.

What’s that change?

We still need to do all the usual stuff – i.e., use great css, work on making our websites responsive, think about screensizes, readability, contrasting colors, etc.

But let’s also focus on people:

• Put content first.
• Ask customers what content they want … and then create that content!
• Answer the why, what, and who questions.
• Provide next steps and calls to action on ALL content.
• Make asking questions and getting responses easy and seamless.
• This works for our physical and our digital branches.
• What else? Add to my list in the comments…

Simply put – put people first.

pic by Nicola Albertini

I just saw some great reviews for my new book Face2Face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections, and wanted to share.

The first one comes from College & Research Libraries. The review was written by John Repplinger. Here are some highlights:

“David Lee King, the author of Face2Face, has put together a wonderful resource for those just beginning to investigate social media as tools to deepen their connections with customers and patrons. Essentially, this book is about how to transition in-person communication to the Internet. It is geared to reach a broad audience, and most of the examples are equally applicable to businesses, organizations, and libraries both large and small.”

and

“He takes his own advice and writes casually in a second-person perspective to readers, and this is largely what makes this book so engaging and refreshing.”

Read the whole book review here.

The second one comes from HispanicBusiness.com, written by Cheryl Terisi. Here are some highlights (read the whole review here):

“I brought Face2Face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections to bed with me, mistakenly thinking an explanation of how social media tools can help create customer service is just what I needed to lull me to sleep. Ha! Once I started to read this very common sense book, I could not put it down.”

and

“Face2Face is invaluable for organizations that currently use social media or those who want to improve their image. There are abundant examples as well as in-depth information to help you become more comfortable and relaxed, letting your customer know you care about them by showing the real face of your organization.”

and (my favorite):

“This book isn’t written like a text, but reads more like a mystery. By the time you reach the end, you don’t find out who did it but rather how to do it!”

Thanks John and Cheryl for the reviews!

Oh – and don’t forget. Face2face is on sale this summer. It’s a good time to get it if you haven’t yet

Has your library ever really thought about the experience around becoming a library card holder, or worked to improve it?

At most libraries, when someone gets a library card for the first time, here’s what we do: we give the person their library card. We might also hand them a printed list of either “stuff you can do” or “stuff you can’t do ” (i.e., rules, regulations and circulation policies).

Are balloons released? Does anyone celebrate? Does it usher our new customer into some cool, “members-only” club? Do we follow-up with the customer after 3 months or so to see how it’s going? Nope. For most of us, nothing else happens.

What happens with other types of membership cards?

• Sam’s Club: a membership card gets you members-only discounts.
• Airline reward programs: earn reward miles. Use it enough, and you can get seating upgrades and trade in miles for flights.
• Grocery Store Cards: discounts on store purchases and fuel points.
• Amazon Prime: free, 2-day shipping, movie and tv show streaming, and access to the Kindle ebook Library.

Now back to libraries. Is there something else we can do with a library card to make it more “membership” friendly? Reword that brochure we give out? Check back with our customers after 3 months to see how they’re doing (remember, we have their email address and snail mail address)?

How about give perks for use? For example, if they check out five books, they get that 3-day express movie for a week?

What do you think? Anyone do something special for library card holders that isn’t just “here’s your card, now go check stuff out?”

Image by Leo Reynolds

These are some notes I took on podcasting at last fall’s Podcamp Topeka. I “rediscovered” them, and decided they could be useful to some of you.

Rob Walch, who’s Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Wizzard Media/Libsyn and does the Today in iOS podcast, gave this presentation. Here are the notes – maybe more libraries need to start a podcast!

Some podcasting facts:

• There are over 1.8 million blogs, but only 200,000 podcasts
• Podcasting is much easier to listen to now. You can still do it the old way – dump it to an iPod. But you can also use an app, download directly from iTunes to your iPod, or just listen on the web.
• Podcasts have really loyal audiences – one podcast has listeners who are getting tattoos related to the podcast!
• Audio is much more popular than video podcasts. Audio is much more portable.

iTunes and podcasting:

• iTunes is really important to the success of a podcast
• The podcast’s title is really important, especially in iTunes. Make sure to stuff keywords into the title, because that’s a primary keyword area for iTunes.
• Artwork has to be great on iTunes. There are apparently two guys at Apple who pick featured podcasts for the podcast app, and they don’t pick bad artwork…

September 2012 podcasting stats from Libsyn (a major podcasting service):

• 50% got 153 downloads per episode
• 20% – 1000 downloads
• 10% – 4000 downloads
• 8.6 % – 5000 downloads per episode
• 5% 10,400
• 1% – 50,000
• If you can get to 1000 listeners, you are doing an awesome job

Submit your podcast to:

• iTunes
• Podcast411.com – directories
• Zune next best place
• Blackberry podcasts

Some How-To’s for Podcasting:

• One mic – you hold it, you are in control of it.
• Don’t host on your website. If you store your media files there, and your podcast gets too popular, your whole website might shut down… that means you have shut your whole business down. So host the podcast somewhere else….
• Frequency sweet spot … Weekly and consistent – like every Friday. You will be put into people’s routines. Same day, same time
• Edit! Hugely important. Even in interviews. Editing is good. Remove ums, ahs, etc.
• Prepare – do some prep work.
• Get a call in number for your show and leave voice mail messages. If people hear themselves, they share it. Especially teens…

Pic by owaief89

Just a quick note on my book, Face2Face … it’s on sale! Information Today is running a really cool sale on some of their books from May 6 until June 10, 2013. They are offering 30% off the retail price on these books:

• The Accidental Systems Librarian, 2nd Ed [Sale price: $20.65]
• The Embedded Librarian [Sale Price: $34.65]
• Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook, 4th Ed [Sale price: $17.47]
• Face2Face [Sale price: $17.47]
• UContent [Sale price: $34.65]
• The Librarian’s Guide to Negotiation [Sale price: $34.65]
• The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing [Sale price: $34.65]

From InfoToday: “There is no need for customers to use a code – the web order sale prices are on the book’s web pages and the Yahoo store pages. Standard shipping is free for orders shipped within the continental United States. NJ residents must pay state tax. Ebook purchases are not included in this sale and the discount cannot be combined with other promotions.”

So, for those that haven’t bought my book yet, 30% off is a good deal Even better, there are some really good books in this list. Get em if you’re interested!

Ever wanted to know what your customers think is missing from a service point in your library?

There’s an easy way to find out … just ask! Post something that asks “what’s missing?” and start gathering answers. For example:

• Want to find out what’s missing on your public PCs? Tape a form to the table by each computer and ask for comments.
• Have a teen room, and you want to find out what’s missing there? Put up a white board that asks “what’s missing?” (and be prepared for some snarky responses. They’re teens, after all).
• Have a mobile website or app? Do what my library did. The last link on the main page of our mobile Boopsie app is “What’s Missing? Send us a Suggestion.” Clicking that link leads to an email form that gets sent to me. And believe me, people fill that out!
• Ask through your library’s social media channels.

You can ask a similar “what’s missing” question on a website, in a room of the library, or even in the stacks. The point is this: if you want to make improvements in the library, you need to find out what’s missing … and fix that stuff.

Pic by crdotx

I recently saw this post at problogger.net about strategies for growing community on your blog, and thought the suggestions were great. Here are the 7 strategies mentioned:

1. Write in a conversational voice. I usually call this “talk like you type.”
2. Invite interaction. That means you need to ask people what they think!
3. Consider a dedicated community area. This can be accomplished by creating a forum or a Facebook Group, for example.
4. Use interactive and accessible mediums. Blogs that allow comments, Google Plus hangouts, etc.
5. Run projects and challenges. These are basically tricky ways to jumpstart conversations and interaction. Examples include a 31 Days to a better …” set of posts, or a Photo a Day meme.
6. Real life events. talk about what’s actually happening in your community. Relate it back to your library.
7. Put your readers in the spotlight. Use guest posts, link to them on social media discussions, comment on their blogs, etc.

I’m curious – anyone do any of these? Which ones are the most useful in your library or blog?

Pic by Chiot’s Run

Here are the presentations I gave while at Computers in Libraries (not counting my presentation on 15 Web Design Trends for 2013):

Here’s one of my presentations for Computers in Libraries 2013 – great conference! I’m posting this one separately, since there’s some good stuff here. I poked around in Google, and condensed a lot of “web design predictions” posts into this handy list of 15 web design trends for 2013. Which ones are you thinking about?

1. Content first
2. Design simplicity
3. UX Centered Design
4. App style interfaces
5. Responsive design
6. No skeuomorphism
7. coding languages (as in HTML/CSS/Javascript)
8. Fixed header bars
9. Large photo backgrounds
10. CSS Transparency
11. Social media badges
12. Infinite scrolling
13. Homepage feature tours
14. Sliding panels
15. Parallax design

Enjoy! I’ll post links to my other CIL 2013 presentations in another post.