The King County Library System led the nation in ebook checkouts, with 1.3 million checkouts from Overdrive-powered catalogs in 2012. That made KCLS number one in the country. Close on King County’s heels was the Seattle Public Library system, which came in at number four with 850,000 checkouts.

— 

The good ole Seattle Times, via my friend Stephanie Chase (of the Seattle Public Library). 1.3 million checkouts is a lot of eyeballs on a lot of ebooks. Nice work, KCLS, Library Journal’s 2011 Library of the Year for good reason.

More:

Rounding out the top five were The New York Public Library System, which ranked number two  (1.1 million checkouts), the Toronto Public Library, number three (900,000 checkouts), and the Hennepin County Library in Minnesota. (750,000 checkouts) at number five.

(via cloudunbound)

ALA applauds Macmillan Publishers’ entry into library market | American Libraries Magazine →

booksyarnink:

On the eve of its national Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, the American Library Association (ALA) welcomed the announcement from Macmillan Publishers that it will enter the library e-book lending market by the end of March 2013. 

BIG NEWS.

In a single year eBook borrowing at Massachusetts public libraries has more than tripled. Yet some major publishers refuse to do business with libraries, set strict lending limitations, or sell eBooks to libraries at a price two to six times more than the eBooks offered for sale to consumers. These practices and the Massachusetts library community’s ongoing commitment to keep eContent free and accessible to all have led to the development of a Statewide Resource Sharing Plan…

— From LJ’s INFODocket, eBooks: Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners Endorses Statewide Resource Sharing Plan, Pilot Project Coming (via booksyarnink)

We decided that a daily campaign that spotlights a different eBook every day would effectively grab patrons’ attention and provide much –needed readers’ advisory; we dubbed our campaign, “eBook of the Day.

— A great post from Tumblrarian gobstacked on the Overdrive website!

The great beauty of e-books means that all this stuff is suddenly trackable—how much time people spend reading, how people engage with their books. Which means, finally, there might be a way to measure consumer tastes and habits like there is in most of the rest of the world of entertainment—and the publishing industry has a lot more information available to help them create more books that people want to read. On the down side, are books better, really, just because writers and publishers know more about what readers like? All good fodder for debate, but mostly, I’m glad e-books have helped us determine the perfect romantic hero: he “has a European accent and is in his 30s with black hair and green eyes.

— What Does Your E-Reader Know About You?; The Book That Disappears - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire (via infoneer-pulse)

Publishers know that they don’t have the money for a prolonged struggle with Amazon. John Sargent says, “These are huge companies, who are fighting a very large game. Whether it be for the sale of devices, or to own the shopper, or to own a particular set of tools that people use— they are fighting to get as big a piece of that as they can get.” Books, he says, are “in danger of becoming road-kill in that larger war.

— 

(via newyorker)

galleycat:

Net sales revenue from eBooks have surpassed hardcover books in the first quarter of 2012, according to an Association of American Publishers report. 

Agnostic, Maybe: How Oprah Might Help Out Libraries When It Comes To eBooks (Maybe) →

However, it was the discovery of Wild’s publisher that brought up a much more pertinent question in this whole deal as it relates to libraries: what happens when Oprah picks a book that is from one of the Big Six publishers but is not from Random House or HarperCollins? In the case of a book choice from Hachette, MacMillan, Penguin, or Simon & Schuster (all of the publishers that do not allow library eBook lending), what happens to libraries and the digital edition? Without a doubt, these publishers would love to get their book onto the Book Club 2.0 list. It’s a powerful Oprah-style publicity ride for their author and the book, capable of pushing books up the sales list as well as cementing an author onto the scene. It’s a prize to be won, for certain, since the rewards are quite lavish. It’s a no-brainer to say that the Oprah special digital edition will not be available for libraries if it is one of the four publishers mentioned.

When it comes to pass (and I will bet dollars to donuts that it will) that Oprah picks a book from a publisher that won’t allow library eBook lending, what will we do? We will have an excellent teachable moment and we can’t squander it.

Fewer shelves could open valuable space for other library programs, like computer centers, teen tutoring, and adult education classes. For customers, downloading e-books is just convenient. Gussie Young has been checking out books at the Queens Library since moving to New York in 1963. Now with e-readers, she doesn’t have to come here to check out books.

— The ups and bumps of ebook lending for libraries (NPR)

libraryadvocates:

The American Library Association (ALA) today released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through our nation’s libraries. In the report, titled “E-content: The Digital Dialogue,” authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell ebooks to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment our cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered.

Warning: You Are About to Enter the Ebook Zone →

libraryadvocates:

While there is no evidence that library lending negatively affects sales, we do know that book borrowers are also book buyers. An April study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Society Project (“The Rise of E-Reading”), ebook enthusiasts read more books than the average print-book reader and prefer to purchase what they want to read, although some start their search for reading material at their library. People discover books at the library. With the demise of the local bookstore, the library becomes a welcome spot where book borrowers and buyers can browse. They can also be a point of sale for borrowers who are also buyers. Libraries are starting to offer a purchase option right in their catalogs in return for a share of the revenue. And why not? It’s time for libraries to claim more credit for the work we do promoting books and authors.

Libraries Own Random House Ebooks

libraryadvocates:

At the Massachusetts Library Association annual conference in Worcester this morning, Ruth Liebmann, director of account marketing at Random House, stated emphatically that libraries own the ebooks they purchase from Random House.

Keep reading at American Libraries.

E-book borrowers: we want to hear from you →

pewinternet:

For our next report studying the changing role of public libraries in the digital age, we’re supplementing our usual nationally representative phone surveys with online surveys to draw out the deeper, richer stories behind the data. If you check out or download e-books from your local public library, please take the survey and tell us about your experiences!

http://libraries.pewinternet.org/participate/survey/e-book-borrowers

One-fifth of U.S. adults read e-books as market booms: survey →

infoneer-pulse:

One in five American adults read an electronic book in the last year, as gift-giving sped the shift away from the printed page, a Pew Research Center survey showed on Wednesday.

In a sweeping survey of e-books’ impact on reading habits, the Pew report said that four times more U.S. readers, or 15 percent, were reading e-books on a typical day now compared with less than two years ago.

But when it comes to reading in bed, the verdict is split. Forty-five percent of those surveyed preferred e-books and 43 percent gave the nod to old-fashioned print.

» via Yahoo! News

In an impassioned address at the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting, president and CEO of the New York Public Library Dr. Anthony Marx told publishers: “We’re eager to be promoting your books. We are trusted by our patrons to have views about quality. We help to sell your books.” He noted, “on the library site now, if you come in looking for a book and it’s out, the first thing we ask you is whether you want to buy a copy. Our patrons buy books and we buy books. We bring in speakers thorough NYPL live and we hope in the future one, two three or more authors a day…. We are your partners in encouraging reading. We are also deeply committed, pivotally committed to access.

— 

NYPL President Urges Publishers to Propose Pilot Models | Publishers Lunch

So badass.

(via rachelfershleiser)