DZANC BOOKS: PARTNERING WITH LIBRARIES IN BOTH PRINT AND EBOOK PUBLICATIONS
Since the inception of Dzanc Books in 2006, Dzanc has established a strong partnering with libraries across North America. To date, Dzanc's print books appear in nearly 1000 libraries—each public, private and university—in both the United States and Canada. A total of over 3000 copies of Dzanc books and books by our imprints can currently be found in libraries from Alachua County to Vancouver Public and all points in between.
Dzanc has published in print form and in tandem with our imprints over 200 great works of literary fiction, nonfiction, short story collections and poetry. Our 2012-2014 list will include another 70 new books. Dzanc's authors have won and been the finalists for dozens of national and international awards. As noted, all of Dzanc's published books in print form are available for purchase by public, private and university libraries through both our distributor, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, LLC, as well as direct from Dzanc Books. Dzanc offers select deals as well for libraries who purchase our titles in volume. A look at our available and forthcoming titles can be found in our most recent catalog.
eBooks
With the advent of eBooks, Dzanc has become a leader in the electronic industry. Dzanc now publishes all of our print titles in eBook form. Dzanc has also created an eBook club and our seminal rEprint series, which converts to eBook great works of literary fiction that have not appeared in eBook before. A recent article at Publishing Perspectives focused on our work establish the rEprint series, noting that the response from the authors Dzanc contracted was "almost universally enthusiastic."
With award-winning authors such as Nadine Gordimer, Ellen Gilchrist, Percival Everett, Stephen Dixon, and dozens of others, Dzanc has over 300 titles available in eBook right now and the list is growing monthly.
a) The Quality of Dzanc's eBooks
Dzanc's eBooks offer a more sophisticated and state of the art quality for a fully dependable reading experience. While other publishers and converters simply take the print file and force feed it into an eBook conversion, Dzanc takes the time to make sure our eBooks read fluidly, individually coding and designing each work so that our eBooks are a perfect match for every available eBook reader. Machine conversions used by other publishers do not consistently provide accurate results, often producing a lesser version of the book; software often confuses hyphens for em-dashes, making mistakes with spacing and line breaks, etc. Dzanc, as noted, takes the time to individually code, convert and clean each eBook file so what the reader receives is entirely what they expect and deserve.
b) Purchasing eBooks
As with our print books, all of Dzanc's eBooks are available for purchase by public, private, and university libraries. Unlike other publishers who express concern about partnering with libraries, Dzanc is eager to make the commitment and understands the benefit of working with libraries as libraries continue to serve an invaluable role in getting worthy books into the hands of the public. Dzanc feels that eBooks should be treated similar to print books when it comes to libraries—each copy can be lent out as many times as patrons wish to continue checking them out, so long as it is to one patron at a time for each copy purchased. Unlike some publishers that have put limitations onto the number of times an eBook can be checked out before the library must purchase/license another copy, Dzanc believes that once you have purchased the eBook file from us, you may continue checking it out to patrons forever.
When libraries purchase directly from Dzanc our eBooks are DRM-free and provided in formats compatible with all currently used devices (ePub and MOBI). All of Dzanc's eBooks can be read on Kindles, Nooks, Sony eReaders, iPads, and any other eReading device you may own. While Dzanc encourages direct sales and finds this process much more efficient and economical for both the library and the publisher, we are also distributed by Constellation and remain receptive to working with any particular service a specific library or group of libraries may use.
At Dzanc our mission is to bring great authors to a wider audience and we firmly believe our partnering with libraries allows for this to happen. We currently have sold direct to Douglas County Libraries and are in discussions with many other individual libraries and consortiums. Our print and eBooks can be found across the United States and Canada in both public and university libraries such as the New York Public Library, the Cleveland Public Library, the University of Michigan Library and hundreds of others.
At the forefront of publisher/library relationships when it comes to eBooks, Dzanc participated in a panel at the PLA this spring and is in constant discussions with librarians across North America as we help determine the best means of eBook delivery to libraries.
For more information you can email Lisa Hickman, Sales Manager at Dzanc Books, at lisa@dzancbooks.org or call her directly at (734) 369-3514. We look forward to hearing from you.