Online E-books and Audiobooks

The library would love to buy every digital book available to us, but the problem comes down to cost. When the library buys a digital book, what we actually purchase is often a 1-year (or 26 checkout) license to share the digital book. The library never owns a permanent copy of a digital book, unlike when the library buys a physical book, and has to repurchase the license when it either A) reaches the 1-year expiry date or B) has been borrowed 26 times. When you buy a digital book, you have the license to own that copy of the book forever.

The library has no negotiating power when it comes to the costs we pay for digital books. All of these costs are decided by the publishers.

Some examples of prices include:

*Digital prices for consumers are pulled from the Kobo store. Canadian Libraries cannot provide access to Kindle-formatted books through Amazon.

Prices are current as of January 2022.

Because the cost of purchasing digital audiobooks is so high for libraries, Kawartha Lakes Public Library has turned on a system called Pay-Per-Use books. The library sets aside a monthly budgeted amount that activates on the 1st of every month. This budget fills digital audiobook holds that are Pay-Per-Use titles until the budget is empty.

Through this service, the library delivers roughly 110 - 130 digital audiobooks loans per month with the current budget depending on the "usage fee" per audiobook. The highest usage fee per book that we currently allow is $5.00 per book.

While raising our total budget would help resolve some backlog of holds on digital audiobooks that are Pay-Per-Use, it is not a sustainable budgeting option for us at this time.

Not every digital audiobook in the collection is a Pay-Per-Use book and the library does the best we can to continuously grow our digital audiobook collection through purchases.

If you want to help make digital books more affordable for libraries, you can contact the main five publishers of books to let them know that their prices and pricing models are inadequate.

Visit #eContentForLibraries to learn more about digital books and libraries, see more pricing comparisons, and find contact information for publishers.

Check out the following news articles and advocacy statements for more information about digital books and libraries.

Statement on eBook Pricing Models from the Canadian Urban Libraries Council (March 2011)

"Cost of ebooks, audiobooks ‘not a sustainable model’ for Canadian libraries, council says" by Amy Smart, The Canadian Press (December 17, 2018)

"Libraries welcome temporary e-book pricing, licensing changes from publishers" by Maryse Zeidler, CBC News (June 6, 2020)

"Libraries demand a new deal on ebooks" by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe (December 31, 2021)