The Digital Shelf: A New Free Webinar on More Sustainable Ebook Ordering

The Digital Shelf Publishing & Library Forum: Hacking the Holds List: How Library Market Makers Can Incentivize Fair Licensing Through Strategic Holds Ratios

Webinar Description

How Library Market Makers Can Incentivize Fair Licensing Through Strategic Holds Ratios

In an era of rising costs and restrictive licensing, libraries must move beyond being passive consumers of digital content. Your collection budget is more than just a line item—it is a powerful tool for advocacy and influence.

This webinar explores how libraries can leverage "the power of the purse" to reshape the digital lending landscape. Leading selectors will dive into tactical collection development strategies that maximize patron access to titles with limited collection budgets and reward the publishers who support that access with fair-minded terms. Attendees will learn how to implement differential holds ratios that prioritize fair and reasonable license terms and how to align purchasing power with the long-term sustainability of library ecosystems.

Publishers, join us to learn how library leaders are buying books; librarians, join us and take the first step toward transforming your procurement process into a proactive tool to promote library access and digital equity. Free continuing education credit is available to librarian attendees.

Learning Outcomes

• Execute Strategic Resource Allocation: Apply "power of the purse" principles to maximize access and visibility for publishers and authors who offer fair pricing and sustainable library licensing terms.

• Optimize Access through Differential Holds: Design and implement variable holds-to-copy ratios that reward favorable license models, ensuring a higher return on investment for library-friendly digital content.

• Advocate for Market Equity: Understand various ways to communicate these collection development policies so they can join the library in advocating for more equitable digital lending standards for libraries.

Intended Audience

Librarians and publishers

Please join us May 7 at 1:00 PM EDT for another free Digital Shelf webinar – Hacking the Holds List: How Library Market Makers Can Incentivize Fair Licensing Through Strategic Holds Ratios.   Hear how leading librarians at Case Memorial Library, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Columbus Metropolitan Library, Whatcom County Library System, and Sno-Isle Libraries are rewarding publishers who offer reasonable acquisition options and optimizing their collections budgets to provide users with the most robust access possible. My co-organizers of The Digital Shelf are CCed.

You can see the full listing here or register directly with Zoom, which does not require a Lyrasis login. Librarians attending can receive free continuing education credit from Lyrasis Learning.

Hope to see you there!

IA: A New Book, A Growing Crisis: Vanishing Culture

Thanks to the Internet Archive’s Chris Freeland for sharing news of an important work, available for free digitally or at a small cost in print. Thanks Chris!

We tend to think of the internet as permanent, but the past few weeks have been a stark reminder of how fragile our digital record really is. As the Internet Archive releases its new book, Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record, the headlines tell a parallel story: legal challenges, platform restrictions, and growing pressure on tools like the Wayback Machine are actively limiting what can be preserved and accessed. This isn’t a future problem... it’s unfolding right now.

Drawing on examples from film, music, journalism, software, and the web, the report shows how access to digital materials is increasingly temporary and controlled, rather than durable and owned. For libraries, it offers both a warning and a call to action: without intentional preservation, vast swaths of today’s culture risk disappearing entirely.

• DOWNLOAD & READ Vanishing Culture for free at the Internet Archive. 

• PURCHASE A PRINT COPY from Better World Books, or your local bookstore.

Ebook Friday Is Returning

Ebook Friday is once again back at ALA Annual, this year led by Micah May and Ellen Paul.

It will be June 24 from 9 am to 3 pm.

Here’s a (for now, very!) tentative agenda. Lots of news and advocacy of interest. Coffee and pastries will be provided in the morning, and we will have a lunch break.

Hope to see you there!

Presentations and discussions:

9 - 9:10 Welcome

9:10 - 9:50 (Kyle Courtney) Legislative & Policy efforts / updates (Ebook study group, updates from states pursuing legislation)

CT- Ellen Paul

NJ - Jennie Pu

IL - Monica Harris or Kate Hall

MN - Sherry Wichitchu

RI - Julie from Cranston

9:50-10:10 Briefing: (Michael and Carmi) ReadersFirst (Michael on lead)

Updated pricing research

What is “reasonable”?

10:10-10:30 Briefing: ULC eAction team (Angela) - Publisher Advocacy

Usage-base metered teams instead of time-based metered terms

Perpetual access option

10:30 - 10:40 Break

10:40-11:00 Briefing: Digital ownership

11:00 - 12:00 Rapid Briefings Lighting round [can accommodate 8-9 slots]

ARSL - Invitation/potential speaker topic to be determined.

Benetech / National Library for the Blind - Joint update on accessibility initiatives.

Boston Library Consortium / ReShare - Collaboration and resource sharing update.

Canadian Urban Library Council (CULC)

COSLA (?) - eBook Community of Practice update.

Internet Archive / Our Future Memory - Archive and digital preservation update.

Library Futures - Update on current contract work and advocacy.

Palace Project - Updates, new features, and innovation opportunities.

RAILS Transition - (Monica Harris).

12:00 - 1:00 Break for Lunch

1:00 - 1:30 Lisa Varga, ALA (Time may vary, and we hope Ms. Varga can attend)

1:30 - 2:15 Empowering libraries through the power of the purse – Collection development best practices. By creating differential holds ratios, rewarding publishers and authors offering reasonable library terms, and creating better incentives to offer fair library pricing

*10 min presentations* from three libraries who have well thought out practices,

(Amy) NYS eBook Working Group: collection development best practices

Nicole Allen, Acquisitions Librarian, Greenwich Library, CT

Jessica Russell, Assistant Director, Collectio Services, Sno-Isle Libraries, WA

15 min Discussion about how libraries can introduce this. Challenges to implementation? Patron pushback?

2:15 - 2:20 wrap up / close

2:15 - 3:00 facilitated small group “conversation”

Protect the Rights of Memory Institutions

Do we really live in an information age? It might be easy to answer “of course,” but let’s think about it for a minute. Is it an information age or, increasingly, a misinformation age or even a disinformation age? With quality information often increasingly locked behind paywalls, as Sarah Lamdan has memorably documented in Data Cartels, can we reliably say that resources, especially if they are older but still important, will be available to all, regardless of ability to pay? How are the “memory institutions”—libraries, archives, and museums—supposed to perform their vital roles of collecting, preserving, and sharing information when the rights they have with physical materials are often challenged with digital information?

This last question is daunting. Ensuring the continuation of this mission may well require changes to law and copyright. But one good way to start is by joining the Our Future Memory coalition and signing onto their "Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online."  You would be joining a community dedicated to ensuring access “to the cultural, artistic, and scientific knowledge that make up our collective intellectual heritage,” keeping “resources available without regard to commercial viability.”

 This community works to protect 4 Rights:  

1. COLLECT MATERIALS IN DIGITAL FORM, whether through digitization of physical collections, purchase on the open market, or other legal means.

2. PRESERVE DIGITAL MATERIALS, and where necessary repair, back up, or reformat them, to ensure their long-term existence and availability.

3. PROVIDE CONTROLLED ACCESS TO DIGITAL MATERIALS  to enable advanced research techniques and to meet patrons where they are—online.

4. COOPERATE WITH OTHER MEMORY INSTITUTIONS by sharing or transferring digital collections, so as to aid preservation and access.

 Visit here to sign a statement in support of these fundamental rights. Your organization might be a government, library, archive, museum, or simply a concerned entity. If you are concerned about the preservation of and access to our past and present, your support is important.

RF PPW and ULC Ebook Pricing Crisis

Rf’s Carmi Parker has updated our Publisher Price Watch, which you may find here. Do check out the full report. Here, to start us for now, is Carmi’s summary

2026 Summary:

Since our first posting almost four years ago in May 2022:

• HarperCollins library eBook license prices have increased at an annualized rate of 17.3% per year.

• Hachette library eAudio licenses increased 36% year over year. Hachette also has the highest average annualized rate of increase at 13.1% every year in the last four years, followed closely by HarperColllins (11.5%) and Macmillan (11.6%).

• On eBooks, license prices on books from Macmillan and Simon and Schuster are steady.

• Library license prices on both formats from Penguin Random House are steady.

If libraries are seeing eBook circulation decrease and eAudio circulation increase, then the relatively flat prices on eBooks and the rising prices on eAudio may disproportionally impact their budgets.

Some good news here: ebook prices from three of the Big 5 have remained steady, while PRH has generally held the line on audio. For this, thank you! There have been no changes to speak of in Big 5 license terms, and PRH has kept their most recent terms, originally rolled out in the Pandemic, that allow some flexibility to libraries. Two cheers! (PRH, 2.5 cheers if you offer perpetual and metered in ebooks as well as audio. Three if we could talk price just a wee bit.)

That brings us to today’s topic. The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has released a statement, “The E-Book Pricing Crisis.” It cites a study that Carmi and I published in 2024. We are pleased to see our work used. Please do read the full ULC statement—it’s well-worth a look. For now, let’s take a look at the conclusion, calling in part for what we just requested above to PRH:

1. Time-metered e-book licenses (e.g. 1- 2 year licenses) are rarely a responsible use of taxpayer funds – library licenses should be based on usage.

2. An option of perpetual licenses for mid- and backlist titles would work better for public libraries – and many libraries are willing to pay a premium for such access.

Note, please, that price is not discussed. The aim is not to do down publishers. It is to open a dialogue on two very basic points. As always, RF points with gratitude to the many, many Indie Publishers who already meet both terms or even provide perpetual access as prices that beat every Big 5 metered deal. But Big 5, how about this: In both ebook and digital audiobook, we get both metered licenses based on circulation (and not time) and also (perhaps more expensive) perpetual licenses. It isn’t everything libraries want but isn’t it a reasonable start? PRH, you are already a lot of the way there. There are many who say that the Big 5 will never change their library terms unless they are forced by law and/or changes in library purchasing. I’ve been one of them. How about this time, if only in this relatively small way, you prove that view wrong?

Words&Money: An Ongoing LIbrary Ebook Conversation

Andrew Albanese is kicking off an ongoing conversation about the library ebook market, as noted here:

This article is the first in a new twice-monthly series on the digital library market. Having covered the market since 2000 (when I wrote a cover story for Library Journal on NetLibrary) I've had a front row seat as the digital library market has evolved. And with digital lending now a core service for libraries, and after numerous conversations with librarians, publishers, vendors, and technologists since the launch of Words & Money, I believe that the time is right for an ongoing conversation. The series will include features, interviews, opinion pieces, and contributed essays on a wide array of topics, and from all corners of the industry: libraries, publishers, vendors, technologists, and educators. We look forward to your feedback. -Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor.

The first article, Librarians Say the Library Ebook Market Needs Another Breakthrough Moment,” is well-worth a read, and I don’t say that because I was interviewed for it. Far more interesting content is here than what I had to say. It provides an interesting and cogent overview of developments in the last decade and half—no mean feat in light of how very much has happened. Rather than comment here, I invite all interested in the library digital content to read it and get involved in the conversation. Note, too, however, that in the same weekly edition, one can also be informed about Illinois’ ebook bill, Iowa legislation problematic for libraries dying (mercifully and deservedly!) the death, much news about book banning and the fight against it in many places, Good news for a change from Texas, and School Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year, Alexandra Cornejo. You can read all this for free, but please consider becoming a subscriber to help this important forum keep going. It isn’t expensive and is a great place to follow all library news. (Disclosure = nothing to disclose. Neither I nor ReadersFirst benefits in any way from subscriptions.)

2026 update to Publisher Price Watch

Greetings library colleagues!

Just in time for PLA, we have updated Publisher Price Watch for 2026. We select 20 popular titles from each of the Big Five publishers and pull prices for each in various formats:

• Print retail (Amazon)

• Print list

• Kindle

• Audible

• OverDrive eBook

• OverDrive eAudio

For 2026, we observe:

• HarperCollins library eBook license prices have increased at an annualized rate of 17.3% per year since 2022.

• Hachette library eAudio licenses increased 36% between 2025 and 2026. Hachette also has the highest average rate of increase at 13.1% every year in the last four years, followed closely by HarperColllins (11.5%) and Macmillan (11.6%).

• On eBooks, license prices on books from Macmillan and Simon and Schuster are steady.

• Library license prices on both formats from Penguin Random House are steady.

You can view the details, read about the methodology, and more here. If you have questions about Publisher Price Watch, please contact us.

News From Library Futures

Our partners and friends at Library Futures have released their annual report for 2025. Check it out for a review of their important publications and research, book talks, and webinars. Their advocacy for the freedom to read and better library digital content terms is as inspiring as their work on the proliferation of A.I. slop into into publishing is chilling. Congrats to the Library Futures team on a great year.

Speaking of A.I., their A.I. policy survey is open till April 13. “All public library employees are invited to participate, regardless of whether they currently have an AI policy.” Anonymity is guaranteed.

Finally, their webinar on “How to Read a Contract Part 2 (Confidentiality Edition)” is coming up on April 2, 1 pm (Eastern). “What can you say? What can’t you say? Library Futures Staff Attorney Layla Maurer will tell all about confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements and give you the tools you need to understand these crucial parts of contracts. Join us Tuesday, April 7 1 pm ET/10 am PT.  (Miss Part 1? We’ve got a recording.) Part 1 remains our all-time most viewed webinar, so grab your spot for Part 2 while you can!”

Recording of The Digital Shelf: Sustainable Ebooks

A few weeks back, COSLA, Lyrasis, and ReadersFirst hosted a webinar about sustainable ebook terms. We at RF will be following up with our statement about reasonable ebook terms. Here is a link to a recording of the session:

RECORDING, February 24th: https://lyrasis.aviaryplatform.com/r/7659c6tx3q?access=2MDqUQZaILrEW12-Mcau5A==

Our presenters, Carmi Parker, Amy Mikel and Claire Kelley are available in case you have any additional questions or concerns.

If you would like to receive a Certificate of Participation, please complete the Lyrasis Evaluation Form located at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CLXDTN2. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for attending!

Free Webinar: What Do the Publishers Say?

Hey all—want to hear from Bookwire, Dreamscape, Macmillan and PRH about the library market? ‘Course ya do! (With apologies to a long ago version of Zork). Join us on March 26th at 1 pm Eastern Time.

To register for this session, click this link: The Digital Shelf Publishing & Library Forum: Publisher Lightning Round

The Digital Shelf Publishing & Library Forum: Publisher Lightning Round 

Description

This high-energy "lightning round" session will feature rapid-fire updates from 5-8 major publishers, including representatives from the Big 5 and other major publishers that have never before entered into dialogue with libraries. Each publisher will highlight their most exciting upcoming titles, digital content trends, and their feelings toward libraries in short, fast-paced segments. The session will conclude with a brief, moderated Q&A, providing libraries with critical, timely market intelligence for collection development.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify Key Titles: List major upcoming book and audiobook releases to prioritize for immediate collection development.

• Analyze Industry Trends: Describe current shifts in digital content and licensing strategies from "Big 5" and newly participating publishers.

• Evaluate Publisher Outlooks: Summarize the latest strategic attitudes major publishers hold toward public library partnerships.

• Inform Acquisition Strategy: Apply timely market intelligence to optimize local library digital spending and marketing.

• Clarify Access Terms: Use the Q&A segment to resolve specific questions regarding content availability and licensing terms.

Intended Audience

Librarians, especially selectors

Please join us!