Eoin Purcell
Bloomsbury’s launched a new e-lending service
The details are interesting:
How will it work?
• The Bloomsbury Library Online will be sold on subscription – libraries will subscribe to a bookshelf for a year at a time and will pay according to the size of population served.
• New titles will be added on a continuous basis – free of charge within the subscription year.
• Users will click through from the Library terminals or through an online portal accessible via any web browser (including those found on iPhone and Blackberry) anytime, anywhere in the UK.
• Text accessible through screen readers and therefore available to blind and partially-sighted users.
The system is being run in association with the wonderful exact editions. Bloomsbury claim that it will:
transform the relationship between publishers and libraries, and between libraries and readers
PaidContent have pointed out one possible problem:
If there’s a problem, it’s that the ebook platform market is fragmented – Bloomsbury’s library includes only Bloomsbury’s titles while Exact Editions rival Overdrive carries Penguin, Random House, Hachette Livre and HarperCollins – and, though text can be printed, the experience of reading a book in a web browser is pretty unsatisfying if it’s a novel you’re reading.
I’m not sure that the fragmentation matters all that much. What does matter is that Bloomsbury are there first with a clever system that works well and is based on a tried and tested platform.
In fact
I think the existing notes miss three angles on this launch. One, if Bloomsbury can lock in a good number of libraries to their platform, they will have an advantage over their competitor publishers, how many e-platforms will libraries want to use after all?
Two, the installed base of libraries will help Bloomsbury research how readers use e-platforms, the quirks of reading online.
Three, given that Richard Charkin has had extensive experience of building e-platforms or at least of overseeing divisions of a publisher that were building them (I thinking of Nature specifically here but he was a strong proponent of blogging aswell!) I’d bet on this succeeding. It also fits well into the strategy I’ve considered for Bloomsbury previously
Eoin Purcell's Blog 
I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder if, with regard to your first point, libraries will be wary that it’s just Bloomsbury’s content. I’m sorry I missed the Overdrive seminar at the LBF, as I don’t know much about them, but it sounds, from my limited knowledge like they might have a better offering.
If the books aren’t downloadable though, only viewable, will it really work for book groups and fiction?
-Laina
I suspect that it will work so long as people are willing to adapt their reading style.
I suspect that they may well be willing to do that! But I’m also happy to say that I don’t know.
My gut feeling is that the combined offering from Overdrive will be a good one and a challenge to Bloomsbury but they will need to act quickly to lock in libraries.
Eoin