Borrowing Trouble? Selling Digitally-Published Books to Libraries

An author wants as many people to read her books as possible. But if you’re only published in digital, it can be difficult for people to find you-much less spend the money to read you-if they don’t know what they’re looking for already.

Libraries are one place that people can find new-to-them authors; borrowing a book doesn’t present a financial risk, and the library allows the borrower to search by genre or when it was released or if it is a popular title.

But how can an author get her digital book into a library’s digital collection?

Turns out it’s as difficult as the issue of discoverability is.

We spoke with Robin Bradford, Collection Development Librarian at Timberland Regional Library, who shared her experience of buying for her library system.

Discovery:

There are two ways libraries usually “discover” self-published authors of digital books. Traditionally published authors are probably going to come with a print backlist, or will be reviewed by journals/magazines marketed to libraries, so that’s where discoverability will happen. But that is not necessarily true with self-pub authors. So, how do you discover them?

If it’s primarily for the collection, and not your own personal reading, the main way you’re discovering titles is through your vendor. If your library has Overdrive as its digital products vendor, you’re searching and browsing Overdrive. If you have 3M Cloud Library, same thing. Axis360, same thing. Why? Because most libraries can only buy things that are on those platforms for your collection. You may discover titles/authors through the usual consumer ways (seeing authors or book chatter on social media, reading articles, etc.) and then you go to your vendor and see if it is available. If you’re searching for things you already know about, you’re not “discovering” anything new. But if you’re just saying “I’d love to buy some eBooks for the library today, I wonder what’s out there,” your first stop (and only stop, really) is your vendor platform because that’s what’s available for you to buy.

Vendor Platforms:

So my advice is for self-published authors to get on library vendor platforms. Contact Overdrive, or 3M Cloud Library, or Baker & Taylor/Axis 360 and ask what it takes to be included in their digital offerings to libraries. Start with the platform that your local library uses, and branch out from there. Before you talk to libraries about buying your digital book, you have to make sure your digital book is for sale to libraries.

What Doesn’t Work:

I had someone contact me about six months ago, and we had this conversation:

Author surrogate: I’m calling on behalf of ______ author to see if you’d be interested in ordering their book.

Me: asks details about the book (what age group is it geared toward, title, format)

AS: It’s digital only

Me: Is it available on Overdrive?

AS: I don’t know. We’re calling libraries across the country to gauge interest, and someone will follow up later.

I appreciate the outreach, but this is about the same as trying to sell me an idea. I’m in the book buying business. If you have a book to sell me, I need details so I can buy it. Libraries get a lot of unsolicited mail, email, phone calls about books. If the basic information isn’t available, it isn’t likely that libraries across the country are going to even remember this first phone call when the follow up call comes. If they DO remember it, it probably won’t be in a favorable light.

A lot of people believe because a book is available at consumer online vendors (Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc.) then they are also available to libraries. It’s an understandable assumption, but it isn’t correct. Many books for sale at these places are not available on library platforms. I might even go so far as to say MOST books, that aren’t from a trad pub, aren’t available. Authors have to reach out to library vendors to make their books available in that market.

The other thing authors CAN do, once they’ve made their book available to libraries, is watch how they’re pricing their book. I’ve seen some self-published authors jack the prices up on their book. Why? Why am I going to pay $30 for your book, random person I’ve never heard of, when your book is $1.99 on Amazon? This is the strategy that traditional publishing has used towards libraries, and libraries hate it. They. Hate. It. I’ll pay $78 dollars for a Grisham ebook because I have to. Some publishers include lending limits AND high prices, and, more and more, those books are not being purchased for collections. It isn’t sustainable for library budgets, even when it’s a big name author. But why would I pay 5x the going rate for a book I’ve never heard of by an author I’ve never heard of? Oh. Yeah. I won’t. We want to help patrons discover new authors and new titles. We also want, and expect, fair prices. Librarians pay attention to the consumer market, and if you don’t rate the huge increase in price, we don’t pay it. When I’m buying self-published digital titles, I check the cost for libraries against the consumer cost for every title. If it’s a dollar or two more, okay, I get that. I don’t like it, I might grumble, but I get it. If it’s $10, $20, $30, $70 dollars more (and yes, I’ve seen all of these) then your book won’t be discoverable to my patrons through our catalog.