Tag Archives: big six

Academic, Check this out:, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Just How Big Are the Big Six?

MoneyLeave it to James LaRue to put things in perspective for us regarding the monetary power of the big publishers. In the past couple of years with pricing struggles with the Big Six (Five now), is it possible that in our minds they have gotten bigger than they really are? Very possibly. When we consider that Amazon alone has more capital than the Big Six combined, we have reason to take pause.

See LaRue’s post to view a table of annual sales of first the top five US publishers, then the annual revenues of the Big Six. The data was extracted from the following report that LaRue endorses for every library Board packet.

The report is Exploring Connections: Independent Publishers and Research Libraries,’ by Amy Ballmer, Albert Municino, Judith Schwartz, and Robert Weiss for the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

This idea of working more closely with independent publishers and research libraries for eContent was a topic of conversation recently at the Explore eBooks MN Summit event. No time to attend? Hear the speakers and view the results of facilitated conversations here.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/q6a6gz8, licensed under CC BY 2.0

 

Academic, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Macmillan Confirms E-book Pilot for Libraries

Take heart, it appears the big six publishers are hearing the outcry from libraries about their e-book policies and are making an effort to produce a workable model specifically for libraries. Although the details of Macmillan’s prototype are not yet being shared, this article does a nice job of summing up the state of affairs with the “big six” at this point in time. Go to the Digital Shift for your cliff notes on this subject….