Understand the eBook Pricing Issue and Then Advocate

My colleague and friend Jennie Rothschild at the Arlington [VA] Public Library has been on a crusade to educate the world about how outrageous ebook pricing is for libraries. You can access the full Twitter thread she has been doing for over a year here. [Scroll up to see more]

However, now that she has a year of data, she was able to crunch the numbers and make some solid statements about the issue. Her report entitled, "Hold On, eBooks Cost HOW Much? The Inconvenient Truth About Library eCollections" is now available on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website.

This was a complicated issue before Covid, and Jennie has been working to explain it so that the general public understands what we are up against. Now add in the fact that 2020 has brought even more patrons to our eCollections and her work is vital.

Read the report to understand the issue fully, but then please take the next step and communicate this issue to your communities. All over the country library budgets are being cut due to Covid closures and lost revenue. However,we have also seen a consistent rise in the use of our eCollections everywhere. Libraries are throwing money at these collections in order to satisfy demand, and yet, the public has no idea how much price gouging there is.

There are still patrons, regular library patrons, people who understand and appreciate the library, who think either eBooks cost for us the same as Kindle prices [under $5 a book] or even worse, that when we buy the print we get the digital download code for free [like you see with consumer music purchases]. In reality, the situation is so much different with prices averaging $50 a book and that is only for a certain amount of time or number of checkouts. We don't even own them!

Even I have had trouble communicating this complicated issue to patrons, but now, Jennie has created a report you can use to advocate for your own funding needs. It has graphs and easy to pull out soundbites. Please use it to create educational materials for your websites. Make sure to pass this report on to your funders...I mean it! Stop reading my post right now and forward it.

Our  patrons love and need access to digital materials, especially for their leisure needs. Let's make sure they know what our commitment to them and their needs looks like from the balance sheet perspective. Those are  their tax dollars. Libraries will be taken advantage of until the taxpayers join our ranks and begin revolting.

Finally, although I have thanked Jennie personally, I would also like to thank her publicly for her commitment to this issue, her advocacy, and for her data analysis. 

Click here or on the image below to read the full report.