One of the developments that's been near and dear to the hearts of e-reader owners has been the increasing participation of public libraries in e-book lending programs. Libraries were becoming a great resource for borrowing e-books and not just out of print titles, but best sellers.
2010 Was A Banner Year For Library Adoption of E-Book Lending
OverDrive, the company that supplies e-book solutions to most public libraries in the US and Canada has been making steady progress in pushing adoption. While the lack of Kindle support remains a sore point, on February 15 the company introduced an iPad app that added support for Apple's uber-popular tablet and e-reading platform of choice for millions of people. The number of libraries offering e-books for borrowing through OverDrive has grown to 13,000 according to the company (click here to see if your library is one of them), and in a January press release, it was reported that e-book borrowing from libraries was up 200 percent in 2010, with a total of 15 million digital titles checked out for the year. So why are librarians and anti-DRM (digital rights management) folks so upset at the moment?
Publishers Killing The Momentum?
OverDrive sent this letter to libraries on February 24 and nestled among the good news items (like the introduction of 700 "always available" Disney interactive e-books and a new Help system designed to guide users through the sometimes complex borrowing process) were two new developments that are generally regarded as bad news for libraries and e-reader owners. Both are concessions demanded by the publishing industry, and history has proved (remember the hike to the standard $9.99 e-book price?) that these concessions seldom benefit consumers.
Checkout Limit For E-Books
Under the current e-book loan system, a single copy of an e-book at a library can be loaned to one person at a time. Some people had hoped that a digital copy meant that once a library purchased a copy of a book, unlimited people could access it at any given time. Treating a digital copy as physical copy makes sense in this case; while borrowers may not like it, doing so does preserve multiple copy sales for publishers. It seems like a reasonable compromise and more or less preserves the status quo. The latest amendment to the OverDrive agreement is more heavy handed. It states that a licensing change "will include a checkout limit for each e-book licensed." Harper Collins has since been identified as one publisher driving this change and they had reportedly set their checkout limit at 26. What this means is that a library that buys an e-book has the rights to lend that e-book out 26 times, then the copy will expire and require a new copy to be purchased if they want to retain it in their collection. In other words, the library doesn't really own the copy of the e-book they bought.
Geographic Limits For E-Book Lending
Currently, many libraries allow e-book lending even if you don't live in the city where the library is located, although it may only be through a temporary one-month membership. OverDrive's letter included notice that the new publisher terms will also require libraries to "honour geographic and territorial rights for digital book lending," meaning a library won't be able to lend e-books to people who wouldn't normally qualify for a membership because of their location.
Impact on E-Reader Owners?
The revised agreement between publishers and book lenders (OverDrive and public libraries) is bound to have an impact on the owners of e-readers, at least those who borrow e-books from their library. For one thing, this may slow the momentum of e-book adoption by libraries since it changes the economics of the equation significantly; having to replace the e-book copy after a set number of times being borrowed suddenly makes e-books seem rather expensive. The argument could be made that paper copies of books wear out, forcing libraries to buy replacement copies, but at least the libraries have some control over this -and they can choose to continue to lend a tattered book copy.
And as an e-reader owner, your borrowing options will be limited to your local library. If it doesn't happen to have an extensive e-book collection, you won't have the option of taking out a membership at another library instead for the purposes of borrowing e-books. The past few years have seen promising growth in the industry with e-books sales surpassing paper books at times and e-readers moving from novelty to mainstream. Here's hoping that common sense prevails and publishers back off before the nascent e-book lending programs at public libraries are damaged.