The later it got in 2011, the more they showed up in the Cobb County Public Library System:
Electronic book fanciers. Checking out nearly 10 times as many titles in August as they had just six months earlier. By December, circulation had doubled again. And Jonathan McKeown almost certainly knew why.
“Christmas happened,” says McKeown, associate director of central and outreach services for Cobb’s libraries.
Sales of so-called “e-readers” exploded during this past holiday season, when dedicated devices for downloading electronic versions of books such as the Kindle and NOOK, along with tablet computers that can perform similar functions, were seen as a “must have” gift. Between mid-December and early January, the number of adults in the United States who owned e-readers and tablets nearly doubled, according to a Pew Research Center report.
The impact on area libraries was similarly dramatic. Cobb’s number of “unique library card users” checking out e-books jumped by 31 percent from November to December. Public demand was so great that the cash-strapped DeKalb County Public Library carved $10,000 out of its budget to begin lending e-books in December.
“No other [new] format has compared to e-books in terms of popularity and exponential growth,” said John Szabo, director of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, where e-book checkout numbers first surged noticeably during the 2010 holiday season and haven’t let up since.
“It’s a huge opportunity,” Szabo continued. “I worry about us not being able to take enough advantage of it.”
Indeed, it’s a plot line worthy of the best page turner: The public desperately wants access to e-books, which marry all the good things libraries have always offered — expertly curated reading selections, available to all at no cost — to more modern conveniences such as 24/7 virtual checkout from any branch and the end of overdue fines (the books simply disappear from the borrower’s computer or reading device when the loan period is up).
Libraries, sensing a golden opportunity for renewed relevance after years of slashed budgets and Internet encroachment on their turf, want to provide that access.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Libraries are having to dedicate staff to the “how-to’s” of checking out and downloading e-books. And they have to make case-by-case calls on stretching their already strained budgets to buy the more expensive e-book version of a popular title, along with print, large print and audiobook formats.
Still, the biggest stumbling block, surprisingly, turns out to be book publishers themselves. Libraries have always been their allies in the fight to keep America reading, but now it appears many publishers see them as one more competitor with the potential to put them out of business. Increasingly, they’re refusing to play nice with libraries, charging them much more for e-books than printed copies — or refusing to sell them e-books at all.
Can this story have a happy ending?
Muddled market
For all the excitement surrounding e-books, they’re still a small part of what libraries do. Atlanta-Fulton Library users checked out 3,863,558 items in 2011, of which 45,083 were e-books or e-audiobooks. Cobb’s 345,112 library card holders currently include 8,634 users of the digital download service.
It’s probably not surprising that the most checked out e-book in Cobb last year was “2nd Chance” by James Patterson. His mysteries and thrillers are perennial best sellers and dozens of them are in the Cobb e-catalogue — no small feat at a time when many of the biggest publishers severely limit circulation of e-books. Or, worse, won’t sell them to libraries at all.
“The market is very muddled right now,” said Scott Smith, acquisitions manager for the DeKalb library system. “If you look at the list of the Top 100 [ranked] books on Amazon, libraries may only have access to about 20 of them to buy.”
The publishers all have their different reasons for limiting access to libraries — although it can be hard to sort them out or remain entirely neutral in what sometimes feels like a Patterson-esque saga of good versus evil.
On one side, you have the heroic public libraries. They’ve been battered by the Great Recession — DeKalb’s annual acquisitions budget from the county is only $100,000 now, compared to $2 million four years ago. And they are dismissed as increasingly irrelevant at a time when everyone supposedly has access to as much information as they’d ever need, thanks to the Internet, smart phones, iPads and Kim Kardashian’s Twitter feed.
Even the promise of e-books carries a heavy dose of reality for libraries, which now have to devote significant staff time to troubleshooting patrons’ downloading issues and explaining why this new format isn’t the magic answer to having enough money to buy materials or keep branches open.
“When we went through the budget process this year, there were a lot of questions about how e-books work,” said DeKalb library director Alison Weissinger. “The whole ‘one copy, one user’ thing was eye-opening to people. You have to pay for each [library copy of a particular e-book]” and can only check it out to one person at a time.
Continuing to adapt
But rather than give up, libraries have continued to adapt to the public’s needs. How could they even consider doing otherwise, Szabo said, when an astounding 3.7 million people found one reason or another to walk into a branch of the Atlanta-Fulton Library last year? Another 4.3 million visited its website, many of them surely attracted by the debut of eCampus, the library’s online “learning suite” featuring everything from GED prep and homework help to hundreds of continuing education classes in bookkeeping, photography, even horse care.
“People say to me, ‘You must hate e-books,’” chuckled Szabo, who views them as giving the reading public what it wants and as an entry point to the system’s other services. “I say, ‘We love ’em. And by the way, when you’re on our website downloading one, make sure and check out everything else the library has to offer.’”
On the other side you have, well, the bad guys. In some cases it’s the libraries themselves slowing down e-book growth. Partly it’s out of recognition that not everyone wants to read e-books or can afford a device for doing so. Partly it’s what the libraries themselves can afford: DeKalb’s acquisitions budget, which has to cover everything from large print and children’s book purchases to DVDs and magazine subscriptions, didn’t grow to accommodate the addition of e-books.
“We wiggled the money out of something else,” said Weissinger. “We’re buying fewer extra copies of things now and having to spread them across more formats than ever.”
Publishers a problem
Yet even when libraries want to buy e-books, increasingly it’s the major publishers who are throwing up the stop sign. Two of the so-called “big six” publishers, MacMillan and Simon & Schuster, don’t allow e-book versions of their titles to be circulated in libraries. In February, Penguin Press said it would stop offering e-books to libraries via Overdrive, the Ohio-based company that most library systems (including those in metro Atlanta) use to manage and download their digital content.
Any Penguin e-books already owned by libraries can continue to circulate. That includes “The Help,” written by Atlanta resident Kathryn Stockett and published by G.P. Putnam’s, a division of the Penguin Group. Cobb’s library owns 13 copies of “The Help” in e-book format, but can’t buy any additional copies. For the 98 people who were on Cobb’s waiting list for “The Help” last week, the wait just got a little bit longer.
The entire industry is evolving and in flux, in fact, and it’s all libraries can do to keep up with publishers’ changing demands.
Random House recently raised the purchase price for e-books to library wholesalers by as much as 300 percent — generally charging anywhere from $65 to $85 for a new hardcover title. Libraries say that will force them to make hard choices: Do they not buy e-copies of new books by hugely popular authors such as Danielle Steel? Or cut back on the number of print copies they buy, in order to buy the e-book?
Yet unlike some publishers, Random House points out, it hasn’t cut libraries off when it comes to e-books. And unlike print copies, the publisher says, e-books don’t fall apart or get dropped in somebody’s bathtub. Meaning less money going into its coffers as libraries buy fewer replacement copies down the road.
“We believe that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value of this institutional model, which permits e-books to be repeatedly circulated without limitation,” Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesperson, explained in an emailed statement.
Last year, Harper Collins came at the same problem from the other direction, imposing a 26-checkout limit on its e-books. After that, the library has to repurchase that copy of a Faye Kellerman or Joyce Carol Oates title before it can lend it out again.
The American Library Association has met separately with publishers, including Penguin and Random House, about finding “a mutually beneficial way forward for library e-book lending.” Meanwhile, down in the trenches, librarians can sympathize with authors’ and publishers’ desire not to be cheated out of their fair share.
On the other hand, they’re frustrated that the age-old formula whereby libraries provided access to materials many citizens couldn’t find or afford (encyclopedias, atlases, even the Internet more recently) now is being upended when it comes to e-books.
“From a collection development viewpoint, just putting us on the same footing as consumers would help,” said the DeKalb library’s Smith. “Right now, a consumer in a bookstore or on Amazon has access to things that we’re shut out of.”
Cause for optimism
Still, there’s reason to think this particular page turner could have a happy ending where libraries are concerned. The evidence is still new and mostly anecdotal, area libraries say. Yet so far, the popularity of e-readers and e-books hasn’t cannibalized their cardholder ranks or reduced foot traffic in their branches.
Just the opposite, in fact. In Cobb, the number of people applying for or renewing library cards increased even before Amazon decided to let libraries start lending out books on Kindles back in September 2011. Since then, the trend has continued to grow, along with e-book circulation figures.
“We get it all the time, people calling to say, ‘I had a library card, it’s years since I used it, but now I want to check out e-books,’” said Julia Huprich, Cobb’s digital services librarian. Even more encouraging, many are in the 25-to-40 age range and have never had a library card there.
“We’re reaching a whole lot of people who are not traditional library users,” said Huprich, describing many of these new patrons as “tech savvy” types interested in saving money or checking out, say, a romance novel in the anonymity of the virtual library. “It’s a whole audience that we’d kind of missed out on before.”
That’s not just good for libraries, Szabo said. Ultimately, it’s good for communities as a whole.
“A lot of people have discovered reading via e-books and now they’re discovering libraries,” said Szabo, who envisions leveraging that curiosity into increased traffic on the Atlanta-Fulton Library website and inside its physical branches. “Maybe it’s bringing them in for an author talk, a book club meeting ...
“The technology might be changing,” Szabo concluded. “But we’re still the living room of the neighborhood.”
Using e-readers at area libraries
The following metro Atlanta library systems have joined with Overdrive to provide titles that can be transferred to portable e-readers and media players. You’ll need a valid library card from your county library system, as well as your card number and PIN to log in. In most cases you can apply for a library card online or at any branch, although you might need to complete certain parts of the application process in person. Some systems will issue library cards to out-of-county residents for a fee. Check with your county library system directly for all this information:
Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
www.afpls.org, 404-730-1700. Click on “Books & Materials” in the tab bar and go to eResources and click on the “Overdrive” tab on the side (for a shortcut, click on the “Download audiobooks and eBooks” icon located midway down the home page). Click on “Digital Help” or “Supported eBook Devices” for additional information.
Clayton County Library System
www.claytonpl.org, 770-473-3850. Click on the “Download audiobooks [and] eBooks” icon on the left-hand side of the library’s home page. Go to the “Getting Started” section or the following link for an explanation of Clayton’s requirements and recommendations for checking out e-books and audiobooks: www.claytonpl.org/help/faqs/files/OverdriveFAQforLibraryUsers.pdf.
Cobb County Library System
www.cobbcat.org, 770-528-2320. Click on E-Library in the tab bar and go to eBooks and click on “Downloads.” There’s a comprehensive FAQ section, guides to using different devices for downloading books and information about other sources of e-books. Cobb also will host an “Intro to eReaders and eBooks” session at 2 p.m. on April 9 at the Central Library, 266 Roswell St., Marietta. Space is limited and registration is required. To register on the website, click on “Programs” and look on the April calendar or go to this link (www.cobbcat.org/calendar/index.php?eID=944). Or call 770-528-7953.
DeKalb County Public Library
www.dekalblibrary.org, 404-370-8450. Click on eLibrary in the tab bar, go to “eBooks and downloadable audiobooks” and click on the “Overdrive” icon. The eLibrary also contains help sections, FAQs and information on other sources for free e-books and audiobooks such as Galileo and Project Gutenberg.
Gwinnett County Public Library
www.gwinnettpl.org, 770-822-4522. Click on “eBooks & More” in the tab bar and immediately be able to browse the full catalog of e-books and audiobooks, as well as “new” and “recently returned” titles. A bonus feature is a search function that allows users to look for titles by specific devices and/or immediate availability.
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