BiblioBoard Getting your ebook into libraries The Reedsy Blog

BiblioBoard Getting your ebook into libraries The Reedsy Blog Getting Indie Authors Into Libraries - An Interview with Mitchell Davis of BiblioBoard When you want to know where to sell your ebooks, availability is always king. Why do you want your book on the Kindle store? Because Kindles are everywhere. Why do you want to be on the iBook store? Because iBooks is is available on over 800 million iOS devices. So when BiblioBoard say they want to help indie authors reach a network of over 2500 participating libraries, every single indie author should be paying attention.Part of their strategy for this comes back to two big ideas we’ve encountered across conversations with authors and entrepreneurs. First they offer curation that helps buyers, whether they’re readers or librarians, find the kind of books they’re looking for. Second, they’re helping to normalise independent publishing, giving indie authors an equal footing with traditionally published authors, and of course by getting their books into new spaces like public libraries.Mitchell Davis is the founder and chief business officer of  BiblioLabs ,  the creators of BiblioBoard. We spoke to Mitchell about why they started BiblioBoard, and how they’re going to help introduce the work of self-published authors to libraries across first America, and eventually the world.MITCHELL DAVISLibraries had talked to us quite a bit about knowing there were good self-published books out there, but not having the time, energy or resources to sift through them to figure out which ones they should make available to patrons. I think our background made us a natural fit for wanting to solve this problem.We first visited Library Journal in early 2014 and they knew they wanted to do something with self-publishing, but felt the LJ brand was not right to sell reviews (other publications had started selling reviews to self-published authors). As we talked, it became clear that LJ and their network of librarian reviewers were the perfect â€Å"advisory† for self-published books. They could apply their expertise to helping librarians l icense the best self-published books by genre. By paying a subscription fee and trusting LJ’s review process the library could make self-published books available to their patrons for small cost and with no headaches or hassles.What we bring to the table is the technology, product development and sales. Libraries have a huge untapped potential as a book discovery platform, but they have never had an eBook distribution platform that would let them do this successfully. LJ did a patron profile survey a couple of years ago that showed 50% of people who discover an author in the library go on to buy a book by that author. This partnership unlocks the potential of that statistic to the benefit of self-published authors.Authors selected for SELF-e get a â€Å"badge† for their book and marketing materials, exposure via Library Journal and inclusion in a service that will reach millions of potential readers. This is a marketing exercise for them to have their writing discovere d.Since our platform allows unlimited multi-user access to books (most library lending systems force books to be loaned out one at a time) librarians do not have to be terrified that if a book becomes popular it will cost them more money or create long waiting lists. Librarians can now be allies with self-published authors to help them build readership.Once an author has built an audience, they can start trying to build a writing career if that is their desire (by selling other books or selling print books). And, of course, there are plenty of self-published authors who aren’t writing for the money. So for them this is about getting people to discover and read their writing or ensure their library can have an eBook available to the local community. Whatever an author’s motivations for self-publishing, we think SELF-e can help them achieve their objectives.REEDSYCuration seems to be the #1 word in any book distribution business nowadays. How will you curate the content for SELF-e?MITCHELL DAVISThe Library Journal has developed a process to manage the workflow. The books are being assessed for ease of reading, pacing, editing and other common issues seen with self-published books. Publishers do this for books- but librarians have done this for decades as well. This gives librarians a chance to get on the front end of the process. I wrote an interesting article called â€Å"How Libraries and Patrons Can Beat Publishers at Publishing† that dives into this a bit more. The title is a bit tongue in cheek, but the points are valid.REEDSYAnother great feature of BiblioBoard/SELF-e is the â€Å"local library† approach. You can make your book available to your local library (something many indies are already trying to do on their own). How does this work exactly, and how does your platform make it easier?MITCHELL DAVISLibraries have been struggling to solve this problem since self-published eBooks began. Libraries get a branded submission form from their own website. It takes about 5 minutes for the author to submit their eBook. We accept ePubs and PDFs (meaning, that even if an author has not yet converted their book to ePub, they can still make their book available). The author can then opt to make the book available through any public library in the state that subscribes to BiblioBoard. It is a very simple process for both the author and the library.REEDSYHow big is your network of local libraries? Is it U.S.-only or do you cover other countries?MITCHELL DAVISCurrently we reach over 2500 libraries in the U.S. We have customers in the U.K. and continental Europe, but these are mostly academic and national libraries so they are not really involved in SELF-e yet.REEDSYNow to the good old startup question: the business model. Authors hate to pay, and libraries provide â€Å"free content†, so it’s even more difficult to take money from their side†¦ so, where do you make money?MITCHELL DAVISSELF-e is free to authors, but we also do not pay royalties. It is common for authors to pay commercial services like BookBub to give books away for free in order to promote themselves. We thought there was a better business model around this activity than charging the authors.We sell a platform to libraries- BiblioBoard- and we also sell content that libraries can make available to patrons on the same platform. The platform pricing is based on the size and budget of the library (larger libraries with more patrons pay more, smaller libraries pay less). The SELF-e submission system is part of the core BiblioBoard platform.The modules that will be curated by Library Journal (by genre) are an additional product sold as a subscription service to the libraries. There is a compelling value proposition to the library in the work of selecting and making available hundreds of great self-published books on an elegant platform. New titles will come in every quarter and the subscription will grow its conten t offering over time. The first products will come out next year and our intent is to price them inexpensively to encourage as many libraries as possible to participate.REEDSYI see that some of the biggest names in the indie author community (Barbara Freethy, CJ Lyons, Hugh Howey) actively endorse you guys. So I guess they are themselves using SELF-e to have their book distributed to your network of libraries, right?MITCHELL DAVISThese authors see the value in what we are doing because doing these kinds of promotions and building readership launched their own careers. And they endorse what we are doing because they believe in the power of libraries to help authors. But these authors are not part of SELF-e. We have created a different model for the distribution of books by self-published authors who are already successful.We just announced a new product called Indie Rock Stars where Hugh, Barbara, CJ and around 30 other successful self-published author’s books will be availabl e for reasonably priced, multi-user access on BiblioBoard. We do see ways SELF-e and Indie Rock Stars can work together as things move forward. As authors start to take off within SELF-e we believe some of them will break out and become Indie Rock Stars.REEDSYI discussed this question with Libiro (an indie-only eBook store) a few weeks ago, and it’d be interesting to have your view on it from an indie-only distribution-to-libraries platform perspective. Can you envision a future where readers, libraries and bookstores don’t care how the book has been published? If yes, how far away is this future?MITCHELL DAVISI don’t think readers really care much today. I think librarians care to the extent that the publishers make their jobs easier in selecting books. One big problem that publishers solve for librarians is they give a degree of confidence that the books they purchase will not embarrass them.What we are doing with SELF-e solves that problem also, but much furt her upstream and with libraries actively engaged in the process. Library Journal (and eventually librarians themselves) can sit on this wellspring of self-published content and start having a formative voice in how books reach readers. It is not outlandish to think that if we create the right user-experience that in five years a massive number of people (think: Amazon or Instagram type numbers) will think of the local library first when they want to discover a new author digitally.REEDSYReedsy is all about providing author publishers with the same level of quality they’d get through a big 5 publisher, and, in a way, raising the standard of self-publishing. So we are definitely chasing this future. How do you see both our startups integrating or collaborating in the next few years?MITCHELL DAVISI think our partnership will help authors get the help they need to go from being writers to being authors. If an author has already published their book, then that is pretty straightfo rward, but we are working with library writers programs and many other library-connected services that will generate first time manuscripts. Reedsy can provide a place for them to find the professional services they need to succeed. I am excited to see what develops between us as time goes forward.REEDSYAn easy one to finish: what’s the next big thing/milestone for Biblioboard?MITCHELL DAVISOur â€Å"next big thing† is a new user interface that will roll out in mid 2015. We have learned a lot over the past two years from library patrons and library partners; and, of course, technology stacks improve over a two-year period.Individual libraries will be branded on the new interface and we have incorporated a more visual and social way for libraries to â€Å"desk curate† the experience for their own patrons in a super simple way. We have added a whole set of tools for patrons to build their own lists and boards to help them easily organize books, videos, images, his torical documents, audio- anything their library makes available to them digitally- in one simple place.BiblioBoard will ultimately succeed by word-of-mouth and return users. We know this is what it takes for platforms to succeed today- just look at Uber, AirBnB and Evernote. Libraries live in the same world as these companies, and to be digitally relevant they have to deliver equally compelling user experiences.REEDSYThanks for your time Mitchell.What do you think about this innovative way of getting indie authors into libraries? We (Reedsy and Biblioboard) would love to hear your comments, so do join the conversation below!