The policies of the major publishers concerning selling eBooks to libraries are all different. Your library has to deal with policies like:
• Publishers who refuse to sell eBooks and/or eAudiobooks to libraries;
• Publishers who charge libraries as much as 5 times more than consumers for the same digital content;
• Publishers who embargo their content and will not sell to libraries any newly published digital content;
• Publishers who make digital content available in only some formats (ePub but not Kindle for example).
If you would like to let your favorite author and their publisher know that you want to be able to continue to read favorite authors and discover new authors at the library, click here to find a sample letter you can send to them.
POLICIES OF MAJOR PUBLISHERS:
MacMillan Publishing refuses to sell eBooks to libraries. Some of its authors are Keith Ablow, Barbara Ehrenreich, Steve Hamilton, Orson Scott Card, Lisa Lillien, and Tatiana de Rosnay.
Hachette Book Group will only sell some eBooks to libraries. Some that are not available include James Patterson, Don Winslow, and Pseudonymous Bosch.
Simon and Schuster refuses to sell eBooks to libraries. Some of their authors include Jodi Picoult, Mary Higgins Clark, Vince Flynn, Stephen King, Mark R. Levin, Jeffery Deaver, Brad Thor, and Glenn Beck. The new Steve Jobs biography is also one of its titles.
Penguin Group formerly sold to the library community and now will only sell us some titles in some formats. In November 2011, Penguin decided to stop selling new titles to libraries, but agreed to continue selling copies of titles libraries already owned. It revised that decision in early February and gave libraries across the country until the end of the day to order titles before it would stop selling to libraries altogether. Many authors have books under the Penguin imprint ,including John Green, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, J.R. Ward, Anne Lamott, Clive Cussler, Kathryn Stockett, Robert B. Parker, Stephen King, W.E.B. Griffin, Catherine Coulter, Jodi Picoult, Nevada Barr, Patricia Cornwell, Charlaine Harris and Julie Garwood.
Random House recently more than tripled the prices for its eBook titles. Random House authors include John Grisham, Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, Danielle Steel, Jeff Lindsay, E L James, Suze Orman, Linda Howard, Kay Hooper, James Ellroy, Amitav Ghosh, and Karen Robards. Most eBooks from Random House now cost libraries from $45 to $75 per title.
HarperCollins Publishers began licensing use of each eBook copy for a maximum of 26 loans in March of 2011. Authors include Meg Cabot, Sara Shepard, Tim Tebow, Diane Mott Davidson, S.J. Watson, Lauren Oliver, C.S. Lewis, and L.J. Smith.
If you would like to let your favorite author and their publisher know that you want to be able to continue to read favorite authors and discover new authors at the library, click here to find a sample letter you can send to them.