[Updated: in Canada, too] OD Price Hikes Raise Questions

An update to this story: a RF partner from Canada reports a price increase of over 100%.

2020 Tantor 25 titles, $1875; 2021, $3787; increased by $1912

2020 Blackstone 25 titles, $2250; 2021, $4544; increased by $2294

Doubling the price without prior notice? That’s sure a great look during a pandemic.

OverDrive recently sent out an invitation to “Reach More Readers with Simultaneous Use.” ReadersFirst is certainly glad to see innovative license models allowing simultaneous use, but a number of librarians experienced sticker shock when they saw the details.

One shared the following with ReadersFirst, reporting an unannounced price hike on plans they previously had:

 “Our Simultaneous Use Pricing changed “quietly" as follows:

 Tantor 25 - was $1,500.  Became $2,500.  “Discounted" now at $2,250.

Blackstone - was $1,800.  Became $3,000.  “Discounted” now at $2,700.”

 Another confirmed the price hikes: we noticed a “substantial increase across the board in SU [Simultaneous Use] packages. [The jump] was 100% for us, then dropped to 60%.  I have had other libraries confirm various levels of change.  I have been doing some SU historical tracking for calculated cost per use trends over time, so the change was super noticeable to me.”

A third reported that her library doesn’t “buy any of these packages, but I am hearing from some other . . .  libraries that the prices increased by up to 60% between 2020 and 2021.”

 One more librarian reported that in 2020 she had licensed “Blackstone package with 50 titles for $4,500. Now it’s that price for 25 titles. So, a big increase from this time last year. I didn’t buy any SU packages April – December of 2020 because the circ on audio was disappointing.”

The overall dollar costs for these packages are not high, though librarians will need to monitor use carefully to see if they are worth any investment. 60% price jumps are never welcome, but they seem particularly ill-advised during a time of pandemic, when demand is likely to be high and libraries are struggling to provide enough resources to meet that demand.

The author’s request for comment on this post, made to an OverDrive representative for his library consortium, has gone unanswered.  Other OverDrive representatives have responded to requests from other members of the RF work to say that OverDrive charges according to library size, use IMLS data on population served to determine size, and had just after many years had indexed package prices to IMLS data, hence this necessary price increase. Another claimed that the change was due to refactored pricing based upon annual circulation. Both justifications are specious. Population served figures don’t officially change until the decennial census, figures for which are still being compiled as of writing.  Libraries which have seen no likely increase or even a decline in population size nor large increases in circulation have now seen price increases, while at least one library that has seen large circ increases has seen no increase.

 If OverDrive wishes to clarify the reasons for this increase, we will post it. For now, it looks like OverDrive, a company that has presumably seen its recent profits soar given increases in library digital demand for ebooks, is price-gouging during the pandemic, claiming that libraries are doing more business and so must pay more for products that aren’t necessarily increasing in use. Thanks for nothing.