Waiting Longer than Usual for your Ebooks? Here’s Why
Multinational publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster) have recently made it much harder for public libraries to buy and lend ebooks.
Publishers set limits on how long we can keep copies of ebooks. Now we have to re-purchase them every two years and pay a very high price – generally four to six times higher than the print price. This means we will not be able to buy as many copies of ebooks, and you will have to wait longer.
Libraries strongly oppose these practices. It’s our job to offer you equitable access to content in the format you want. These publishers are jeopardizing our ability to do so.
While physical books are still popular, readers are borrowing more and more ebooks. We will not be able to keep up with demand if multinational publishers don’t change their business practices. The digital divide will widen because this will impact the people who rely on us the most – including people with limited incomes and people with disabilities.
In addition, Macmillan has just introduced a troubling new policy – an embargo. Effective Friday, November 1, 2019, public libraries will only be able to buy one copy of any new Macmillan ebook, and will have to wait eight weeks before we can buy additional copies. This means you’ll have to wait much longer for new ebooks, like Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen and The Russian Job by Douglas Smith, and by authors you love including Louise Penny and Jonathan Franzen.
In response, the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, Urban Libraries Council, American Library Association, public library leaders and other key stakeholders have joined together in opposition to this policy that will only make a bad situation worse.
Note: this blog post has been edited; two book titles have been changed, and an expired petition has been removed.
3 thoughts on “Waiting Longer than Usual for your Ebooks? Here’s Why”
The TPL is the best thing of all the City “Services”. I feel guilty electronically signing out a book as it seems to undermine the Staff.
However, does it follow that if I don’t “return” and eBook, immediately on finishing it, it is not available to another reader? That might be made clearer. Also please speak out against underlining in hard copy books. And keep supporting free yet contentious thought, it is even more important in the Brave New World with Newspeak ( see Orwell 1984) .
Keep up the great and important work.
FYI, an excellent long form in the LA Times today about these publisher moves and the (crazy} problems with e-lending to 30 public libraries in the County, e.g. citizens hoarding multiple cards to overcome publisher copy limits and loan metering. One takeaway for me is that publishers seem mainly bothered by the initial hit from libraries on the first few months of sales – most titles go into remainder bins after a few months of “must read hit title” status. Not being bothered myself about reading hit titles during their lucrative mass marketing window, I’d wonder if libraries could negotiate for later availability at a good discount with more copies available to borrowers, and I wonder if the larger reading community wouldn’t ultimately be better served if the “must read hit title” community is left to just go buy it. (Audiobook early return note: using OverDrive “transfer” to an MP3 player eliminates the DRM expiration, the audiobook can be returned immediately and kept on the player device as long as the borrower wants it.)
Greedy publishers! Shame on them. How much extra profit will these selfish e-publishing practices actually earn them? How much damage will they do to the publishers’ already tattered reputations?