It might seem like ebooks should be cheaper for libraries to provide than hard copies.
After all, it’s a digital file, requiring no shelf space. The ebook can never be on the bad end of a coffee spill or a negligent borrower who marks their place by folding down a corner, causing the book to be taken out of circulation or replaced.
When purchasing ebooks for your own personal library, they are often cheaper than a paper copy.
But when it comes to municipal public libraries, the electronic books are often more expensive.
Not just a bit more expensive, either. Heather Dolman, the public services manager at St. Albert Public Library, said an ebook can cost the library as much as three to five times the price of a paper book.
“I would say that it’s probably the publishers have felt that they were going to lose sales,” Dolman said of why there is such a stark difference in pricing.
When libraries initially started offering ebooks, the publishers offered several different models. Some would only license the books for a certain number of years, others a certain number of reads.
While there are still a couple different of platforms that libraries offer for users to access digital offerings like books, audiobooks, movies and even magazines, the pricing has gotten a bit better for ebooks in some cases.
Penguin Random House, for instance, has recently lowered its prices.
“Some of them have come a long way,” Dolman said. “It is getting better.”
But prices still aren’t in line with the price for a hard copy book, which means it is more expensive for the library to add digital books to its collection.
For example, Dolman looked up the price for the ebook version of Cross Justice by James Patterson.
“We pay $121 for it, to have it in our ebook collection. If you go and try and purchase that through the Kobo store for yourself personally, you pay $14.99,” Dolman said.
But there’s a growing demand for digital content through libraries.
In 2015, the library’s digital resource circulation was about 10 per cent of their total circulation for the year, up from eight per cent in 2014 and two to three per cent when they first started offering digital items, Dolman said.
There were 42,000 titles of ebooks and e-audiobooks circulated 71,000 times in 2015, Dolman said.
“Our customers are using them more and more,” she said.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) passed a resolution in March calling for action from the federal government on the topic of ebook pricing for libraries.
Coun. Tim Osborne is a director on the FCM board and also council’s representative on the library board.
He said the resolution showing up at FCM for endorsement shows that other Canadian libraries face the same issue.
“To me it’s just another example of where if we can speak as a common voice as municipalities we may be able to have a little more impact,” Osborne said.
