Libraries can't afford the high cost of e-books. D.C. lawmakers want to fight back.

If you want to read “Flesh” by David Szalay, good luck getting your hands on it. 

As of this writing there are some 53 physical copies of the award-winning book in the D.C. Public Library system, but also 413 holds on them. It’s even worse in e-book format: 620 holds for a some 60 copies — a 21-week wait. Your best bet may be the audiobook; there’s only 134 holds for 16 copies.

With such obvious demand, you may ask, why doesn’t DCPL just buy more copies? 

There’s a complicated and potentially costly answer bedeviling public librarians across the country who are facing fast-changing reading habits and a pricing model they say gets them fewer books for their buck.

In short, e-books — both the digital and audio versions — are more expensive than their physical counterparts. For “Flesh,” DCPL pays $28.99 for every physical copy. But each e-book version is more than twice that, at $59.99. (The audiobook is even more: $69.99.) And while DCPL owns the print copies it buys, the electronic and audio versions are essentially rented from the publisher for two years before they have to be repurchased. (In other cases, a license runs out after it has been lent out between 24 and 26 times.)

Details like these are top of mind for Richard Reyes-Gavilan, DCPL’s executive director, when he's deciding how to use their limited budget. For the price of a single e-book — which are in growing demand — he can often buy two or more physical copies. And if a book is popular enough, he has to keep repurchasing the licenses for the electronic and audio versions.

“A book we’re spending a ton of money on, think of Michelle Obama’s biography from a few years ago, it’s in perpetual demand,” he says. “I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to re-up on that, so we end up spending hundreds of dollars to license a single copy of that book. It’s kinda crazy.”

It’s a fiscal challenge public libraries across the country are facing, and one that has now attracted the attention of the D.C. Council. A bill being considered by lawmakers would broadly restrict DCPL from buying e-books from publishers that charge excessive prices or attach conditions on their use — like time limits before a book needs to be repurchased.

The bill wouldn’t leave D.C. on its own, though. It includes a provision saying it would only take effect if 10 other states with a combined population of 50 million people pass similar measures. Connecticut already has, and variations have been debated in New Jersey and Massachusetts. The logic is simple: Publishers would be more likely to negotiate better deals on e-books for public libraries if a bloc of states banded together. 

“In order to get to where there’s sufficient market power to bring the big players to the table, we need to get enough states on our side,” says Ward 3 Councilmember Matthew Frumin, who introduced the bill. “Libraries have no leverage to negotiate in a meaningful way. This is all intended to create leverage.” 

Reyes-Gavilan says the problem became more acute for DCPL around the time of the pandemic, when e-books exploded in popularity. In 2019, DCPL circulated 1.58 million digital items (32% of total circulation) and spent $655,000 on e-books — 11% of its overall collections budget. But by last year, 3.74 million digital items were circulated (54% of total circulation) and DCPL’s spending on e-books jumped to $1.6 million — 34% of its budget. All the while, wait times for e-books hardly budged, averaging 46 days. 

“The demand is so great that the price we’re paying is not sustainable,” says Reyes-Gavilan. And he worries that for every dollar more he spends on e-books to meet the demand, that’s one less dollar for physical books. “If we were to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take our measly $4.7 million and just go all in on e-books,” that will disenfranchise a lot of folks who don’t have other options.” (E-book usage is highest in wealthier parts of D.C.)

While the effort to force a collective negotiation with publishers in hopes of lowering e-books prices has drawn support from librarians and groups like the Urban Libraries Council and American Library Association, publishers are far more critical. In a letter to the council, the Association of American Publishers called D.C.’s bill “misguided.” 

“This legislation will likely have the opposite effect that lawmakers desire: when publishers aren't able to bend to the restrictive and extreme demands dictated by this legislation, libraries may lose access to new releases, experience higher costs, or be prohibited by the city from licensing e-books and audiobooks altogether,” wrote Shelley Husband, the group’s vice-president.

Steve Potash finds himself stuck somewhere in the middle. He’s the founder of OverDrive, the main distributor of e-books and audiobooks. (Its Libby app is what you’d use to read an e-book you check out from DCPL.) He agrees that some e-books are “too damn expensive,” but says those are often just the newest releases and bestsellers. Potash also says libraries can’t look at e-books the same way they do physical books.

“It's a different product. Yet they want the same price. They want the benefit of print. They want the benefit of when I buy it retail. But then they get 500% more value. Because they’re never lost, never late. No handling, no shipping, every time a user touches it, they're getting a brand new pristine experience,” he says.

In his testimony to the council, Potash said that because of e-books and audiobooks, DCPL’s average cost of circulating any item has decreased over the years. Digital items, he notes, don’t have to be handled by a human, re-shelved, or replaced when they inevitably break.

Still, Reyes-Gavilan — who has a good relationship with Potash — says there’s value in discussing alternative options.

“I don’t know who’s at fault here, but I know that consumers are losing out and the model we’re subjected to is a one-way model and there’s never been any negotiation around it and that’s what’s most dispiriting about the situation,” he says. “The current model is unfair and we can peel that back and make it more affordable for libraries.”

Frumin says he's still chewing on the issue, but hopes to move forward with a bill that gets the city's libraries the best workable deal. "I don't know exactly where it will land, but I want it to land in a way that's fair," he says. "What I want to set up is a real negotiation between the libraries and the publishers."