Book Distributor to Feature BN.com Link on Digital Lending Platform
Baker & Taylor, distributor of physical and digital books, said at last week’s American Library Association conference in New Orleans that it’s partnering with Barnes & Noble to build awareness among Nook e-reader customers that digital books are available for loan from local libraries. Nook owners who are members of libraries that are part of Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 nascent digital media circulation management platform will be able to “check out” e-books from their library website, on loan, for temporary download to their Nooks or other digital reading devices, Michael Bills, director of sales, digital products for Baker & Taylor, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The Axis service will also link customers directly to the BN.com website for e-book content, he said.
The companies did not elaborate on plans they have in the works to promote awareness of e-book lending via the Axis 360 platform. Neither company would comment on the business relationship regarding any fee Barnes & Noble would pay to Baker & Taylor to be featured on their cloud-based service platform or any share Baker & Taylor might receive in return for Nook or e-book sales conducted through the Baker & Taylor website. Mary Ellen Keating, spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, told us the arrangement only applies to books and that digital newsstand titles won’t be available through the Axis 360 platform.
Through the Axis 360 system, e-book owners will have access to cloud-based, DRM-protected books for a period of time determined by the library, Bills told us. When that time is up, the book will no longer be available for reading on the device, or through an app, and will go back into the library’s circulation, he said. Users will access the content online using a library-issued ID and password, he said.
Bills described Baker & Taylor’s goal with the Axis 360 as “very ambitious.” The company is the primary supplier of books, catalog systems and other services to 70 percent of the country’s 9,300 public libraries, he said. The company has been pre-selling the service to several libraries since a soft-launch earlier in the year and will roll out to “several hundred” libraries following the library show this week, he said. Baker & Taylor wouldn’t comment publicly on a timetable for the book industry’s full transition to digital. Company spokeswoman Amy Baldwin said “patron demand” will determine that timetable, “and we can help with that.” Baker & Taylor sells content to libraries in bundles combining physical and digital books, she said.
Baker & Taylor works with “thousands of publishers,” Baldwin told us, and the company plans to offer books from all publishers with digital editions through its platform. At launch, the cloud-based system will be available with the device-agnostic Blio e-reader from K-NFB, a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and National Federation of the Blind. Devices like the Nook and the Sony Reader that are ePub-compatible “will be served,” but Baldwin couldn’t say whether that would be at launch of the Axis 360 platform.
The Axis 360 system enables library patrons to search, browse and read recommendations of books, which they can check out without going to a physical library, the company said. The system will provide access to spoken word audio titles, too, it said. Baldwin wouldn’t say how many digital titles would be in the Axis collection.