Not sure responding will make any difference but there seems to be some common themes about what I said…
Do I believe that employees of book and ILS vendors make millions of dollars. I do not and did not, in the slightest, imply such a thing. The discussion was about the vendors and their practices. I know YBP isn’t the biggest but, assuming the information I have is correct their annual revenue is around 75 million. I consider it no stretch to say that libraries are paying them and similar vendors “millions upon millions” of dollars to provide goods and services.
Does it take time and energy to develop such solutions? Sure it does. I’ve spent thousands of hours doing such stuff. Do corporations spend way more time and money than is necessary? Quite often so, such inefficiencies are in the very nature of large organizations. Does the question “How much can we charge without the customers revolting?” arise upon occasion for products and services? Undoubtedly.
Is it a tough market? Definitely.
Is there a situation where offering add-on services for a fee is appropriate. Sure. Just not convinced that a library should have to pay a few thousand dollars a year to be able to submit a batch of ISBNs rather than typing them in one-by-one for an order as B&T required at one time in the recent past. At least I think one can do that now without additional cost. I can provide numerous other illustrations of such things.
Am I picking on YPB? No. I was responding to the question that was raised in the post to which I responded.
Do I think the employees of all the Book and ILS vendors are evil? No.
Do vendors get it right? Sometimes. Do vendors fail their customers either by incompetence, greed, laziness, etc? Sometimes.
Do I think the latter happens often enough that someone should do something about it? Yes and I decided to be one of those that do my part.
Hope this clarifies some of what I said and meant J
Jim
From: acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 3:48 PM
To: acqnet-l
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] YBP Export service charge inquiry
Okay, I see now that I should have included my usual disclaimer: I worked for a subscription agent for 15 years, sandwiched in between 7 and 5 years (and counting) in academic libraries. So, that puts me in the position of seeing things from vendors’ perspectives, as well as from those of us who work in libraries.
Since I have no knowledge of the solutions you say you have created, I cannot speak about those. But I can tell you that at my particular former employer, many people (from sales reps and account managers who could send feedback about what customers want/need, to computer programmers and Web developers, to quality control folks, to training folks, to communications/marketing folks and more I’m probably forgetting) would spend many, many hours in creating online services for customers. That includes meetings, discussion, analysis, actual programming and development, testing, feedback, revisions, documentation, etc.
So, no, I don’t have a problem when vendors want to charge us for features or functions that go beyond the basic necessities of searching a catalog/database, sending orders, and so on. And to paraphrase what I heard from a publisher at a conference, the vendors (and publishers) are not bibliographic utilities. That any of them provide MARC records for free is a bonus, in my opinion.
I will echo Michael Zeoli when I say that the majority of those folks – 99%, or more! – were not making millions and millions, and that they were, all of them, dedicated to providing good service. In general, I find that people want to do a good job, and that includes people who work at for-profit companies.
Another good point Michael made is that book jobbers (and subscription agents) have a narrower margin of profit than some larger publishers. So when you add in the overhead involved in paying people to develop online services for customers, they have two choices: lower discount/higher service charge, or charge you for the additional services.
Cheers,
Katy G.
From: acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 10:09 AM
To: acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] YBP Export service charge inquiry (3 responses)
I’ve been following this discussion and debating whether to pull out my soap box or not…but my resistance has finally crumbled J
That is a good question…”Why should the advanced features be free?” Obviously everything costs someone something to produce it, money, time, resources, energy, etc. and there has to be some type of return to make it worth the person’s time. The question, in this context, is, is it necessary for a vendor to charge extra fees in order for them to do their very best for their customers? Would striving to make the acquisitions process as smooth and efficient as possible for their customers break the bank or is it simply something that they feel they can get away with charging for on top of the money they make from the book sales? I tend to think it is often the latter. You will have trouble convincing me that the extra fees are needed for a company to meet its obligations to its customers in this context and that by foregoing them it would necessitate noticeable, if any, increases in product prices. I’ve only worked in the library world for 17 years and I realize that isn’t much compared to many but early on I became annoyed with such “fees” and with vendors, ILS and book, failing to meet what I consider their ethical obligations to their customers (who they often like to call partners) and thereby costing libraries unnecessarily and/or leaving them vulnerable to others who come along selling services to fill these voids. My response to this annoyance was to produce solutions on a number of fronts, at no cost, for libraries to fill these voids. So the question I have to ask is, if I can do this at no cost, in various combinations of going to school, raising a family, working a job and all the other things going on in life throughout the years, why can’t a company who gets paid millions upon millions of dollars to provide these type of services not do the same? One of my solutions I am reasonably certain does everything all these “advanced” features do, and far more, and yet I don’t see the need to charge for it but, again, it is all about the type of return one is looking for….I like to believe that mine is the privilege of serving the library community and making your/our life a little easier…or at the very least, having the appearance of credibility in my rants about such things ;-)
Don’t get me wrong…I am all for companies and people making money, myself included and I do it where I can, but it is a sad and unfortunate thing when that becomes the goal rather than a by-product of one’s endeavors.
In any event, just my two cents worth on the subject provided at no cost…if you want the full rant it will cost you a nickel J
Jim Taylor
From: <mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org> acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org [ <mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org> mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of <mailto:acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org> acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 8:16 AM
To: 'acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org'
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] YBP Export service charge inquiry (3 responses)
I don’t mind it when vendors charge for advanced features. They have to pay developers to create, maintain, and enhance those features. Why should the advanced features (ones that are not critical to performing acquisitions or collection development work) be free?
Katy G.
Katy Ginanni, Collection Development Librarian
Hunter Library, Western Carolina University
176 Central Drive
Cullowhee, NC 28723
<mailto:ksginanni_at_email.wcu.edu> ksginanni_at_email.wcu.edu
828-227-3729 office
I’ll be going to the NASIG conference in Buffalo on June 6-9, 2013. Will you?
From: <mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org> acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org [ <mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org> mailto:acqnet-l-bounces_at_lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of <mailto:acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org> acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:04 PM
To: <mailto:acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org> acqnet-l_at_lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [ACQNET-L] YBP Export service charge inquiry (3 responses)
Hi. Yes, I can report that the main vendor we use, Coutts/Ingram, does indeed do the customizations that Mike described in his message (i.e. accurately encoded records, fund and location codes), and it's free. This is one of the reasons we have been reluctant to use YBP as our main vendor, because this charge exists, but we're unclear why it exists.
I'm also curious why YBP charges an annual fee for the advanced features of the GOBI platform. Again, our vendor charges no such fee at all for the use of their full platform, and we are unclear why YBP has such a fee.
Rich
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Received on Wed Apr 24 2013 - 19:24:34 EDT