The cost to libraries for purchasing ebooks is climbing and access to new titles is being limited.
Publishers started to place an embargo on all of their new releases in Canada and the U.S., forcing readers to wait eight weeks before books become available at their local library.
Macmillian Publishers CEO John Sargent said the company has concerns about the use of ebooks rising in public libraries but declining with customers. The eight week embargo is meant to force readers to purchase digital copies instead of rent them.
“That’s quite a long time for people to wait,” said Fort Frances Public Library and Technology Centre CEO, Joan MacLean.
“What the consortium that we belong to does is they wait the eight weeks before they even put it on the site, making it available,” she added.
MacLean said despite the belief among publishers that libraries cut into their consumer book sales, statistics show there’s an opposite effect happening.
After borrowing a book from a public library, 60 percent of Millennials, 49 per cent of Gen Z, 46 per cent of Gen X and 31 per cent of Baby Boomers later purchased the same title, according to a 2019 study from the Library Journal.
“As you can see it’s not exactly cutting into sales when even Generation Z-almost half of them go and purchase the book themselves [after renting it],” MacLean said.
She added that after borrowing a book from a public library over 75 per cent of Gen Z, Gen X, and Millenials later purchased other books from the same author.
“So the publisher’s idea that we’re cutting into book sales doesn’t hold any water,” MacLean charged.
“Libraries are generators of reading activity regardless of what the publishers think, that we’re cutting into their sales.”
At the local library, 28 audiobooks and 52 ebooks were purchased for $7,000 last year, which was the entirety of its budget for electronic reading materials.
Ebooks have a growing cost and their digital rights are purchased by libraries on a limited basis.
Each ebook is different but generally digital rights are sold to libraries for a two year term or 52 rentals, whichever comes first, before they have to be purchased again.
MacLean notes that paperbacks are much more cost effective.
They are kept for as many years or uses as possible, until they deteriorate.
Although, the popularity of ebooks has greatly increased locally over the last seven years.
In 2012, the library only had 2,105 ebook checkouts. That number climbed each year, reaching 5,367 checkouts in 2016, and plateauing at 7,386 checkouts last year.
From 2012 to 2019 there was a 251 per cent increase in the number of checkouts, according to the local library’s statistics.
On average, there are 650 ebook checkouts a month, making the 52 ebooks that are available to library cardholders very popular.
“It’s quite amazing that there’s that many people sitting at home downloading something that they want to read onto whatever device they use,” MacLean enthused. “You don’t even realize it every month.”
Although, just under 69,000 physical books were checked out at the library in 2019, equating to about 6,000 checkouts a month.
But it does appear that as ebooks grow in popularity, physical titles are on the decline.
At the local library, just over 83,000 books were checked out in 2016. That number dropped to nearly 77,000 in 2017 and about 71,500 in 2018.
Meanwhile, new challenges for public libraries are Amazon’s exclusive books that they cannot access or lend out.
Increasing costs of older ebook titles and perennial favourites is another obstacle libraries face, according to MacLean.
“The price [for those] has gone up and sometimes from $30-which is what the usual price is-to $80 to renew the title.”
The jump in prices has been a recent change that went into effect at the same time as the eight week embargo, in Nov. of last year.
The library doesn’t have any control over the increasing costs of ebooks, so it will be assessing the needs of users and what’s popular to ensure collections remain balanced.
However, the increasing demand for ebooks will remain a challenge as the local library’s buying power is less and less each year, MacLean noted.
