Kindle, Libby and What Else?

I'm a total e-book convert. It allows me access to a huge repository of books of which I'll otherwise never read. The budget and shelf space at home is finite, the books aren't. Sorry, bookstores. Physical books borrowed from the library work, but they can be so heavy. Borrowing digital books makes me jump for joy.

When I realized how some e-books only has one or two copies compared to another title which would have twenty or thirty copies even, I had to find out what was going on. There're plenty of issues with digital distribution rights, and first-sale doctrine, and also term licenses for multiple readers at any one time. A lot of it can be summed up in one word — Amazon. And its monopoly as a publisher. Amazon wouldn't sell its e-books to public libraries. 

Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work. With other big publishers, selling e-books and audiobooks to libraries is part of the mix — that’s why you’re able to digitally check out bestsellers like Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land.” Amazon is the only big publisher that flat-out blocks library digital collections. Search your local library’s website, and you won’t find recent e-books by Amazon authors Kaling, Dean Koontz or Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Nor will you find downloadable audiobooks for Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime,” Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Michael Pollan’s “Caffeine.”

Digital books is keeping many people sane through lockdowns in this global pandemic. We buy physical books, yes, but we also read a larger volume of books in its digital copies. 

In an article published in The New Yorker on September 2, 2021, Daniel A. Gross delved into the business of e-books, e-book vendors and libraries — 'An App Called Libby and the Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books'. 

The article noted that "Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do." It looks into OverDrive, which is an ideal competitor to Amazon, keeping it in check, and the business partnership models of libraries and e-book vendors. 

Libraries now pay OverDrive and its peers for a wide range of digital services, from negotiating prices with publishers to managing an increasingly complex system of digital rights. During our video call, Potash showed me OverDrive’s e-book marketplace for librarians, which can sort titles by price, popularity, release date, language, topic, license type, and more. About fifty librarians work for OverDrive, Potash said, and “each week they curate the best ways each community can maximize their taxpayers’ dollar.” The company offers rotating discounts and generates statistics that public libraries can use to project their future budgets. When I noted that OverDrive’s portal looked a bit like Amazon.com, Potash didn’t respond. Later, he said, with a touch of pride, “This is like coming into the front door of Costco.”

I use Kindle and Amazon library extensively, because my entire eco-system is about that. The Kindle library is rather amazing. I'm a consumer. I'll use whatever that benefits my choices and preferences. But the Kindle library's free content is very unimpressive and sometimes, they're downright rubbish. Instead of buying digital copies, I would also love to pay to borrow them, at a lower pricing than purchasing it for infinity in my Amazon cloud. This service doesn't exist just yet.

When I borrow books, I still look to our National Library, which has an excellent selection of digital books. Through the National Library's portal, I've been using Libby (owned by OverDrive). The National Library's digital lending services and Libby's contents sync up perfectly. I can search on Libby and borrow NLB's books once my membership is verified. 

I did more research beyond these articles and realized that libraries end up paying more to secure rights to digital copies of books. In the long run, this might be untenable. Libraries now need a much bigger digital budget, because of restricted business operations and human movement in lockdowns, and in these pandemic times, who would want to touch a book that would have retained stains and smells from the previous borrowers. Okay, maybe it's just me. Oof. 

To illustrate the economics of e-book lending, the N.Y.P.L. sent me its January, 2021, figures for “A Promised Land,” the memoir by Barack Obama that had been published a few months earlier by Penguin Random House. At that point, the library system had purchased three hundred and ten perpetual audiobook licenses at ninety-five dollars each, for a total of $29,450, and had bought six hundred and thirty-nine one- and two-year licenses for the e-book, for a total of $22,512. Taken together, these digital rights cost about as much as three thousand copies of the consumer e-book, which sells for about eighteen dollars per copy. As of August, 2021, the library has spent less than ten thousand dollars on two hundred and twenty-six copies of the hardcover edition, which has a list price of forty-five dollars but sells for $23.23 on Amazon. A few thousand people had checked out digital copies in the book’s first three months, and thousands more were on the waiting list. (Several librarians told me that they monitor hold requests, including for books that have not yet been released, to decide how many licenses to acquire.)

Our National Library Board has a huge budget. Our government fully backs this national reading program. We could take the lead in developing new models of partnership, and taking on a slightly greater responsibility when it comes to negotiating with publishers. If nothing else, our library could really "continue innovating—for example, by experimenting with new formats and license models in partnership with independent or international publishers."

Independent publishers and audiobook content creators should also grab a slice of the pie, by teaming up with their libraries in their respective cities. Besides Audible, we also have Google, Downpour, Librivox, Kobo, and Storytel. But yes, it is very hard to go up against a behemoth that has negotiated for exclusive term rights to audiobooks and digital distribution channels.