Welcome Audible!

Director of Ebook Services at DPLA Micah May has shared the following announcement:

As part of our efforts to expand access to ebooks and audiobooks, we are currently in talks with Audible about making audiobooks available to libraries through Palace Marketplace (formerly the DPLA Exchange).

We are in the process of working through details about exactly which titles will be available and when, but we can share that we are working toward titles being available in Palace Marketplace in the first quarter of next year, with titles added on a rolling basis. We expect that titles will be available via a variety of licensing models, similar to the deal we announced with Amazon Publishing earlier this year.

At DPLA our mission is to maximize access to information and to ensure that in the digital age knowledge becomes more, not less, accessible. Any agreement we develop with Audible will, like our previous publisher agreements, be embedded in library values: access, equity, and patron privacy. Any titles made available to us will be available to libraries through Palace Marketplace and served to patrons through the Palace app, which you can download now from the Google Play and Apple app stores.

We will share more information about this project when we have it. In the meantime, if you’d like more information about the DPLA Ebooks program or Palace Marketplace, please email me. You can find more information about the Palace app and The Palace Project here.

Lots of good news here. A hold-out from the library market is coming on board. One will be able to access the titles directly through a library app, without having to be kicked over to Audible for fulfillment. Multiple license choices are always welcome. It isn’t all titles available through all library vendors, as might be ideal, but this is an important step. Thank you to DPLA and Audible for working towards a deal for library users.