PW Reports on the Potential Amazon/DPLA Content Sharing

Andrew Albanese of PW has further investigated Amazon Publishing possibly sharing its content with public libraries through the DPLA Content Exchange and SimplyE.

The article is well-wroth a read for providing more details, but here are some excerpts.

And in a call with PW, DPLA officials confirmed that a deal could be done soon.

"I don’t want to get too far out over my skis," said Michele Kimpton, director of business development and senior strategist for the Digital Public Library of America, when asked to characterize how close a potential deal was to completion. Kimpton told PW that talks with Amazon have been ongoing since spring, adding that the discussions have gone well and that the parties were making "good progress.” And while she expressed hope that Amazon titles could be available to libraries on the DPLA Exchange sometime in early 2021, she also tempered expectations, stressing there were still details to be worked out.

Such an agreement would be a major breakthrough in the library e-book market. Amazon currently does not make its digital content available to libraries under any terms—an exclusion that librarians have loudly criticized for years, and brought to the attention of lawmakers in an ALA report last year.

Speaking with PW this week, Kimpton further clarified the scope of the potential agreement. First and foremost, the discussion covers Amazon Publishing titles only (not titles from Amazon’s KDP program). The current talks also do not include Audible, Amazon's digital audio service, which does not make its exclusive content available to libraries. And while Amazon is heavily invested in a subscription model for books and reading (Audible, Kindle Unlimited) a subscription model for libraries has not been part of the talks. All titles under the potential deal would be licensed ePub editions managed by the DPLA and its partner libraries and made accessible to patrons via the DPLA’s SimplyE platform—meaning library users would not have to go through Amazon to access the titles.

If completed, a deal would be a major coup for SimplyE and the Digital Public Library of America’s growing e-book platform, the DPLA Exchange. After all, to license Amazon Publishing titles libraries would need to use the DPLA exchange, and patrons would need to deploy the SimplyE app to access them. Meanwhile, commercial vendors in the library e-book market contacted by PW declined to comment on the development, or whether they too were in talks with Amazon.

“We have been doing a lot of work around new licensing models that provide libraries with choice and provide patrons more reading material,” Kimpton says. “We have to get away from this process of hold queue after hold queue for e-books. We hope libraries will embrace these models, and we hope we can keep exploring new ways to get more books in the hands of patrons and off of this holds queue model, which is a waste of taxpayer dollars and a waste of library resources because too much work goes into managing [digital lends] rather than doing what librarians do best, which is create collections and develop relationships with their communities to promote reading.”

While some details remain to be ironed out, Kimpton said Amazon was on board with offering multiple licensing models. And while she declined to characterize Amazon’s broader approach to the digital library market, she stressed that as a library-based and library-centric nonprofit, any deal DPLA struck, with Amazon or any publisher, would necessarily align with core library values, including equitable access, and patron privacy.

ReadersFirst is greatly encouraged by these developments and by DPLA’s work to ensure content is shared according to best library principles. While we support the adoption of SimplyE, Amazon extending its content through all vendors is not unwelcome. Audible content eventually being added would be most welcome. Thank you to Amazon for considering working with libraries! If this were to result in terms that shared ebooks as DPLA has with some other publishers, this content could perhaps be one of the best deals for libraries.