From the research I've done in the last week, many cities are only signing two or three year contracts with their content providers. I expect more volatility in the future for other people too. I was also surprised to discover that ebooks make up less than 5% of the circulation rate for many libraries.
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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
As I understand it, there are two fees. There is a fee for the overdrive software/use/participating. Then there is a fee for each book. The number of times a book can be checked out varies as does the expiration of the license. Some books "expire" after 12 months and have to be repurchased/re-leased. The prices of books vary quite widely as well. From what I understand if a book is "shared" across a consortium, they pay for the book as if it is one library (but it can only be checked out by one patron at a time).
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I was able to find lots of info on the other city that dropped from the consortium and went on their own with Overdrive. They are paying $15k per year which includes a content credit of $5K towards digital purchases. By comparison, Baker & Taylor is charging them $4K per year. These fees are less than I expected.
The Overdrive proposal lists several lending methods.
- one title / one user
- simultaneous use on an annual subscription in bundles of 25, 50, 75 and 100
- metered access (circulation limits before the title must be repurchased)
- duration access (after a set time period the title must be repurchased)
It says that pricing is up to the publishers. It also says that Overdrive runs sales throughout the year for "various titles and formats in conjunction with the publishers."
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Originally Posted by Blossom
Exactly, specially all those expensive Random House and Harpercollins titles. Either the library only pays a fee to access it from another library who buys the books or they just wasted alot of money.  |
My library was part of a consortium. It's not like they purchased 70,000 titles on their own that they abandoned. Who knows how the costs were shared. I live in a suburb. The biggest city in the consortium has a number of cardholders and library budget about 5 times my city. I hope each member of the consortium wasn't paying an equal slice of the fees and it was proportional to use. I think it's highly likely that there was a financial benefit to my city and the other one that dropped out of the consortium to go solo.