As a book lover I can’t help but adore book paraphernalia. Give me an outdated encyclopedia from the 1960s, a spiral wooden staircase adjacent to a massive bookshelf or the florescent lighting in a 6-story college library and I find myself pleased and right at home. The beauty in these destinations resides in their coexistence with isolation and variety. Public libraries have mastered this chaotic concept of mixing the adventure of a novel or excitement in a published study with the quiet cliché of shushing librarians and slow moving check out lines and they are finally receiving recognition from the business world.
While forgotten by some and embraced by others, public libraries were a key focus in New York City last week at The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. Library Journal’s Barbara Genco argues in her keynote, Public Library Power Patrons Are Your Best Customer: Lessons from Patron Profiles, that publishers need libraries more than libraries need publishers. Genco explains that book readers fill up public libraries and have a substantial effect on the market. These patrons who visit their local library once a week are all—yes, all, as in 100%—book buyers. Any myth that those who check out books are interested in solely saving money are false, as half of these go on to purchase other books by authors introduced to them at the library. With buying power in the book business obviously holding a lot of weight, it is odd that this inherently free form of author/brand advertising has yet to receive credit or exploitation.
The book world has had endless conversations regarding the eBook throughout our current technological revolution and it has a place in this library conversation as well. Book publishers have been wary of incorporating the rights to their eBooks in public libraries, though there is this huge opportunity to contribute to this market of book buyers. Genco’s study reveals that patrons read eBooks as well as those old fashion bound paper contraptions that one finds in a library and these vivacious readers want more eBooks at their disposal. I’d argue that eBooks and public libraries hold a similar function: to make literature more accessible. This occurs by making books free for temporary use or convenient and quick to own, but when a reader finds that striking author or simply good novel, they are more likely to purchase the physical book for their own collection. So, if all publishers allowed their eBooks into the public realm, would there be a detrimental loss in the eBook market? Could eBooks become the convenient and free tool used to find literature worth physically buying? Possibly.
Nevertheless public libraries have influence in the book business, as they function a subtle and very effective salesman. Who knew?
J.A.J.