September 5, 2010

Publishers Join Forces to Sell E-Books to Libraries

Publishers Join Forces to Sell E-Books to Libraries 1

Andrew A. Nelles for The Chronicle

Garrett Kiely, director of the U. of Chicago Press: "Nirvana for me would be to be able to offer our book and journal content on a single platform."

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close Publishers Join Forces to Sell E-Books to Libraries 1

Andrew A. Nelles for The Chronicle

Garrett Kiely, director of the U. of Chicago Press: "Nirvana for me would be to be able to offer our book and journal content on a single platform."

By Jennifer Howard

E-book readers are just as well suited to scholarly books as they are to the latest Jane-Austen-meets-zombies literary sensation. University presses understand that some scholars want the option to buy monographs in electronic form, and they know how to sell to those scholars: one book at a time, straight from the presses' Web sites, or through a vendor like Amazon.com.

What's been harder to figure out is how to market digital books to academic libraries. For those customers, who are