A Conversation With the SELF-e Team: Exploring Payment for Authors
Image – iStockphoto: Quintanilla
Note from Jane Friedman: Earlier this month, I featured a guest post on how self-published authors can distribute their ebooks to libraries, through the SELF-e program from Library Journal and BiblioBoard. That post wasn’t without controversy, since the program doesn’t pay authors for licensing of their ebooks. I invited the folks behind SELF-e to comment on the program, to start a dialogue about its purpose and to offer greater transparency about it. Porter Anderson offered to host a conversation, which you’ll find below. (Full disclosure: Porter is a paid consultant with Library Journal, which he discusses in further detail.)
For those catching up, SELF-e is a service for self-published authors who would like to have their ebooks available to patrons in American library systems. The key objection voiced about SELF-e is its business model: the service is free to independent authors who submit their ebooks but offers no royalty payments to those authors for checkouts of their ebooks.
Access to libraries has been difficult for independent authors so far. While SELF-e’s program gives authors automatic availability to librarians at the state level, and a chance at national-level consideration, the author community is right to place a high premium on the principle of authors being paid for their work.
Library Journal’s SELF-e Select is the curated collection of indie ebook submissions for the national library system.
I spent an hour in conversation on this with:
Ian Singer, vice-president and group publisher of MediaSource/Library Journal
Guy Gonzalez, director of content strategy and audience development of MediaSource/Library Journal
Mitchell Davis, chief business officer of BiblioLabs/BiblioBoard, and formerly a founder of BookSurge, which was bought by Amazon and integrated into CreateSpace.
This is the team behind SELF-e. It’s a partnership between Library Journal and BiblioBoard. It has no outside funding. Its costs during its year-and-a-half of development have been covered by the two companies without revenue. The easiest way to think of the partnership is to see Library Journal as the editorial component, evaluating and curating submissions, and BiblioBoard as the technical enabler and sales channel. SELF-e stands on the BiblioBoard platform, which is designed as an interface between libraries and their e-patrons—it’s the system many libraries use to allow patrons to access ebooks, historical databases, learning materials, videos, and other digital library materials.
Library Journal is a client of Porter Anderson Media, my consultancy. This means that I am bringing it to authors’ attention as a consultant on retainer. This is not an affiliate relationship, so my compensation does not depend on how many authors use the service. Therefore, my brief is to familiarize authors with the availability of this new development, not to pressure them to enroll in it. I believe that SELF-e can be a boon to some, but it’s not for all authors.
In the course of my discussion with Singer, Gonzalez, and Davis, two key points were made.
SELF-e is designed in response to libraries’ acquisition needs, particularly in terms of local author communities.
The program is still in its early stages, and it’s possible that royalty payments for authors might be considered later.
From left are Library Journal’s Ian Singer and Guy Gonzalez, and BiblioLabs’ Mitchell Davis.
How Libraries Acquire Materials: The Need for Curation and Scale
We all know that digital is gaining. One of the services of Library Journal is an annual “Materials Survey” that sorts out US public libraries’ budgets and collection breakdowns. In her report from March, Barbara Hoffert writes:
Trending of Materials Budget Breakdown, Average Findings Based on Population Served, 2014. Library Journal Materials Survey 2015
This year, print books account for just 59% of the budget on average—a figure that has, however, held steady in this survey’s findings over the last three years. Meanwhile, ebooks have jumped from 1% of the budget in 2009 to 7% today. Almost all respondents [libraries] now offer ebooks, up from 66% five years ago.
Singer says that it was very much a grassroots aspect of that ebook jump that prompted the inception of SELF-e about 18 months ago.
“What we know about library acquisition,” Singer says, “is that libraries need to feel comfortable in making purchase decisions. That led us to figure out a way to lend Library Journal’s status in the market to helping them feel more comfortable in acquiring certain self-published titles. That, coupled with our understanding of various models of acquisition in libraries made us know that we’re not selling one and one and one and one book. Instead, we’re going to create collections that will comprise 200 titles to start with, and grow over time.”
That combo of requirements—curation and large volumes of titles—Singer says “led us to the conclusion that the pricing model of not paying royalties in exchange for the broad marketing and discovery opportunity that getting content into public libraries would provide to self-published authors” was the way to go. “We’re creating a trusted link to make it comfortable for public libraries to provide self-published materials for the first time…It did not make sense for us to build a royalty scheme at present.”
But is it possible to consider splitting some of what libraries pay SELF-e with the authors?
“It could well be possible in the long term,” Singer says. At this early stage, he points out, no money is coming in. “But as we generate more overall usage,” he says, “we will certainly take a very hard look at remunerating those titles that are circulating more than others.”
Meanwhile, one of the costs of SELF-e is the evaluation of each manuscript submitted for the national collection. That’s an expense not charged to authors. And if the author’s work is selected, they then get to use the SELF-e badge on their book covers and sites to help promote their work.
Davis says, “This is not a business yet. This is a cost center right now. We have done nothing but work on this and invest money in it for a year-and-a-half, and we’re just beginning to get to the point that people can recognize it and know what it is. We’re trying to change the way independent authors get their books discovered and that’s a big undertaking to tackle. And there will be all sorts of permutations to this thing as it grows and becomes something that’s mainstream and real. But we just released it.”
Gonzales cautions against calling it a start-up, “because people might assume there’s tons of investment capital.” No venture capital or other outside funding has been involved in the development of SELF-e.
“We have funded it completely out of the other parts of our businesses because we believe in it and we believe in its potential. But it’s a long road and we’re right at the beginning,” says Davis.
Davis says, “This is not a business yet. This is a cost center right now. We have done nothing but work on this and invest money in it for a year-and-a-half, and we’re just beginning to get to the point that people can recognize it and know what it is. We’re trying to change the way independent authors get their books discovered and that’s a big undertaking to tackle. And there will be all sorts of permutations to this thing as it grows and becomes something that’s mainstream and real. But we just released it.”
