Hachette did so in most parts of the world and suggested the situation in UK might be “indicative” of the relationship between “the London publishing community, the UK libraries, where there is a more traditional perspective than many of the libraries that have seen ebooks take larger shares of lending.”
When asked if waiting list management might have been a factor in the perfor- mance of the UK, Steve said: “I don’t have an overall scorecard about queue performance in the UK versus other markets” but said he would ask his team to check. The reply from OverDrive was that “there are very big variances in how holds are managed by libraries regard- less of location,” adding that “the three main factors that influence wait times are budget, staffing and how comfortable the librarians are in using the tools and insights OverDrive offers for them to manage wait lists. A library that man- ages waiting times well is one that has a well-defined policy and process.” It added that: “Based on best practice in libraries around the world, UK public libraries have room to grow in this regard, as well as in staff training and outreach. These activities directly impact wait times, turnover, patron sign-up and overall awareness of their local library’s digital collection.”
Steve also pointed out that waiting lists can provide an opportunity: “We want to delight readers, we don’t want them to be frustrated so yes, while they are searching for that new bestseller, they are also passing the rows of merchan- dise they could put in their basket right now – so they might leave with four other works, either by the same author or a read-alike for another author in a similar genre. We’ve given the librarians the tools, and Libby helps surface what’s available now.”
Anti-library bias
“From the earliest days of being an advocate for public libraries we’ve been consistent that it’s in the publishers’ and authors’ best economic interest to have all of their works discoverable in public library digital collections and available to borrow by a card holder. We’ve overcome many of the challenges of the anti-library bias. Some publishers still have it, and we’re still evangelis- ing, but the vast majority are active in public library channels with OverDrive. We have demonstrated this with our data and growing sales revenue – and there are studies that show rising retail sales as well. We have many authors and publishers clamouring to have their digital books highly featured by our public libraries, because when a library promotes availability of an ebook, it pro- vides a lift for retail, lift for print sales, and just a lift for the author’s brand and earnings.”
June 2022 Steve Potash.
Author education “Education and advocacy, I think will go on for some time, but it’s a smaller and smaller universe of publishers that are holding the less enlightened view. Our biggest challenge is authors who believe that if someone can borrow an ebook from a public library, then it must be for free. They don’t realise that the library paid for each unit or access. Their view is reinforced because their publishing and royalty statements don’t articulate revenue in unit sales sold to institutions. If you don’t see the word ‘library’ on your statements, and then hear that people can borrow your book for free from the library, you can understand why they would have a negative opinion. But that’s simply a lack of awareness.”
Fear in libraries
Alongside the publisher concern about digital lending, there is also a fear in the UK public library sector that a success- ful digital library service may give local authorities an excuse to shut down more physical libraries. Asked if ebooks pose a threat to physical libraries, Steve said: “We have the data that ebooks have opened up large segments of communities that had no thought process about their local public library. Ebooks have opened up the relevance and value proposition to large under-served areas in every community that public librar-
ies exist in. What I hear from many of the best practice seminars I’ve attended is for librarians to look at ebooks and Libby as “the candy” to attract the customer to walk over to your stand. Once they are at that library front door, the question is how to get them educated and excited about all the other services throughout the library, both digital and offline. And many libraries have had great success doing that.”
Covid effect
“The biggest impact of Covid during the first three to four months when libraries shut their doors was an elevated awareness of the ebook value proposition to large groups of the public. There was a massive surge. But it meant we were challenged as a trusted partner because we knew budgets hadn’t surged. The challenge was to prioritise bringing down the cost to serve a reader as dramatically and as effectively as we could. We asked for permissions for simultaneous access for collections and for discounts so that OverDrive could purchase and donate millions of digital books to all public libraries. In the first year, we purchased and donated the equivalent of about six million units at no cost to our library partners. We also got agreement for many titles to be offered at very low cost via the cost per checkout model (CPC) so if there was a title in demand, or if you needed to support a
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