Burke's Peerage

We have opened a new on-line store for some of the major family history books published by Burke's Peerage and Gentry.

These are substantial books and some of them had to be processed from scans of the original typesetting. There are some wonderfully evocative titles: Burke’s Great War Peerage Noble British and Irish Families on the Eve of the First World War. Nearly 3,000 pages and the OCR has tackled type from the time of the Kaiser. These books have intriguingly recondite elements (two of my favourites: 'Foreign Titles Held by British Subjects', or 'Maids of Honour in Order of Precedence') and they are rich resources for genealogists.

Eight of the titles can be subscribed to as a package, Burke's Peerage Shelf, for the bargain fee of £80 per annum (otherwise they are £20 per annum each).

Institutional licenses are also offered, for individual titles and for the shelf.

A certain amount of searching is available to non-subscribers for free. Taking advantage of this, I note that 'Hodgkin' only appears in these books 25 times; this confirms my theory that the Hodgkins of history were peasants or 'trade' rather than 'gentry'. I am sure that we would figure more prominently if there were to be a Burke's Oxfordshire Peasantry.

Who Wants to Own Books?

Do we really want to own books? Do institutions really want to own books? I am a bit agnostic about the first question, but I suspect that on the second question the answer is more clear cut. For quite a lot of reasons (but not because they might want to sell them) institutional libraries really do want to own the books they have. They want to be able to keep them for as long as they might need them (and a bit longer) and they want to be able to do things with them that they and their users have not yet thought about. They want ownership in the round.

These thoughts are prompted by the comment of a friend who is rather taken with the Spotify music service, which streams you as much music as you can listen to, but does it all on the fly. My friend is rather relieved no longer to be carrying his gigabytes of digital music and thinks that something similar may be on the cards for books.

Suppose that you could have access to pretty well everything ever published, but you did not actually own any of it? This new service (call it Yangtse Book Search or Facebook Library) would allow you to sample everything in its purview (search and browse access) but the full reading rights would be gently rationed. Leave on one side, for a moment how that deal would be negotiated with the authors and publishers: but look at the matter as a consumer. Would you be willing to pay $9.99 a month which gets you reading access to five books a month, and $19.99 a month which get you reading access to thirty books a month (US or UK market only -- not world literature in original languages)? Once you have selected books for your choice in that month they remain open to you for an agreed period. A slew of specialist technical and professional books will be outside the catchment zone. They would cost extra. Household or family access via the cable channel? No problem $29.99 a month for the 30 book offering.

I don't know about you, but I would be mostly content with access to that digital library, and with enough subscribers it would pay the necessary royalties to authors, agents and publishers (no doubt mostly usage based). But libraries would not be very happy with such a scheme. Libraries want to own books, and they want to own books which readers may never consult. Or hardly ever.

If persistent search but intermittent reading, is the future of our individual enjoyment of books, widely shared but not owned, it would seem to me that the Google Books Settlement has got things upside down. In the Settlement Google envisages delivering annual licenses to libraries for large collections of books (collections with shifting contents) but individuals will be able to buy 'life time' access (quasi ownership) to individual titles. The assymmetry in the settlement between the market for individuals and for libraries is striking, and not really explained or justified, but it may be completely the wrong way round. Perhaps Google should go back to the negotiating table with the Books Rights Registry and strike a different deal? Or is that a complementary proposition that the BRR should offer to a Google competitor? The competing service would have the franchise to sell 'term of copyright' licenses to libraries for particular titles and short term access rights to individuals. That should introduce some competition which could help to mitigate the monopoly charge.

Usage Statistics from Exact Editions Institutional Accounts

Librarians who subscribe to our institutional content licenses now have some convenient statistical tools which summarize monthly page use and search terms.

The statistical reports are only available to Librarians who have a personal management account with Exact Editions (typically the librarian who places the original order). When such registered librarians log in to Exact Editions with their username and password they will find a new "librarian: stats" link on the toolbar.

This link takes them to our stats page, with traffic reports on each available issue (we stop at this level - we don't show exactly which pages of each issue are being read). We also display the principal search terms used by the library's members in any period (this data can be quite informative and is not intrusive -- no individual data is logged).

The figures are available by month, by issue, and by publication and can be exported to Excel.

Shopping Around

The Exact Editions service started with an 'aggregation' model for digital subscriptions to magazines. There is an Exact Editions shop where you can buy most of our magazines. Then we added 'shops' for magazine subscriptions in Euros, and another for Australian magazines. As we have started working for book publishers we have worked with a different model. We are building shops 'per publisher' branded for each publisher. There are now shops for Berkshire Publishing, Debretts, Alastair Sawday's, Profile Books, Time Out and recently Gower. There is a page on our service where all these shops and more can be referenced.

The book publisher's shops are branded for the individual publisher. Different shops, different publishers, different languages, different currencies -- but for the individual who buys a subscription there is only one account, one service. All his/her/its content goes in the same account ('its' for the institutions -- did not earlier mention the various 'institutional shops' we now support). As was to be expected, users are now buying collections of mixed magazines and books in the same shopping basket. This ability to buy, search and read books and magazines in the same way from different publishers will become an important factor in our appeal to small and medium-sized publishers.

Here is a mixed shopping basket, which has the 'look and feel' of the Gower shop because the two Gower books were those most recently added to it.



What you cannot do at the present time is buy books and magazines priced in different currencies in the same shopping basket. Mind you, this isnt a real limitation because you can buy in different currencies from the same account. PayPal or your credit card can see to that.

"Low hanging fruit"

Is a phrase I dislike, almost as much as "leaving money on the table". I tend to shudder when these phrases are used because bitter experience tells me that 'low hanging fruit' really only comes to us when we have put in a lot of effort. You need to be able to reach the fruit for it to be low-hanging: make sure that you are tall enough to reach it! Goose bumps from 'money on the table' for a slightly different reason. Consultants use the phrase as though it were a mistake to leave something on the table, but any good deal always leaves some of the benefit (ideally a good chunk of it) with the counter-party. A successful business will always leave lots of money sitting on the table. That way customers are satisfied and they will come back again next year.

These musings are sparked by today's news that on behalf of our publishers we have sold institutional site licenses to the embassy of an Arabic nation in Eastern Europe, a Lycée in Alsace, a middle-sized British charity, the city library of one India's biggest cities (yes India not Indiana!), and one British FE College.

I am certain that modestly priced institutional licenses, delivered via IP addresses which the clients supply to us, are a considerable market. Publishers simply have not twigged this yet. Only in the case of the FE College was there a visible promotional initiative from the publisher. In the case of the embassy there was an alert reaction from our support team -- a matter of confirming that an institutional license, rather than an individual license for the ambassador was what was needed. These institutional sales are mostly happening because the customers are finding that the offer of an institutional license is there for the taking, and they are taking them up because they are there. Of course, Indian libraries will be taking lots of digital subscriptions in ten years time (and I should not be surprised that some are doing so now). But the subs will have to be at a reasonable and affordable price. That means leaving quite lot of money on the ......

I hate to say this, but book and magazine publishers who do not offer site licenses to their digital offerings (who do not have digital offerings so that they can offer site licenses to them) are -- how shall I put this? -- leaving a lot of money on the table, or if you prefer they are ignoring low hanging fruit....It is a funny old world.