How to donate an ebook to a library

[ngrant]

It looks like a library may join the Overdrive system but must choose from the OD collection. However, they seem to add new releases quite regularly judging from my library's offerings. See details here:
http://www.overdrive.com/
Overdrive does audiobooks, ebooks, music and video.

[SensualPoet]

Thanks for that. I hope there is some way, over time, to get regional interests into Overdrive. A political rant book by Dick Morris ahead of the US 2008 elections, for example, could squeeze out something of local appeal in Canada like Isobel and Emile by Alan Reed or Page Fright by Harry Bruce.

[Xenophon]

I recently wrote to the folks at the Free Library of Philadelphia, suggesting that they ask Overdrive to enable a "donate this ebook to the library" button. The idea is that the book would be purchased for the library, added to their Overdrive collection, and then immediately made available for the purchasing patron to check out. And, of course, the library would generate a donation acknowledgement letter for US tax purposes.

The librarian in charge of digital acquisitions responded saying that he/she thought it was a "fantastic idea." The only downside mentioned is that "overdrive sells some books that are not appropriate for a public library collection", so they would need to do something about that. I presume these inappropriate books are porn, but that's purely a guess on my part.

The librarian expects to see the overdrive folks at a conference this week or next, and said that he/she would suggest it to Overdrive as a feature that would be "very important" to them.

A very pleasant interaction overall, with a strongly positive response from the Library!

Xenophon

[SameOldStory]

Maybe I'm missing something. Are there some MR members that are also authors?

I know that some of you will give away your first book or two. Some will "sell" it for less than the cost of a weekday newspaper.

So the big dumb question is "Are the big name publishers the ONLY ones that overdrive/libraries will accept ebooks from?"

I have ebooks from members that I have bought for only $6. Eating at McDonalds cost more that. Will I pay more to see the best of it in the ebook library? Yes.

I would benefit by seeing a good writer moving up. The library would benefit. The public would benefit.

I know. There are some works that are absolutely terrible, and the library staff can't read everything. But there has to be a way to get some of it in to the libraries.

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

I recently wrote to the folks at the Free Library of Philadelphia, suggesting that they ask Overdrive to enable a "donate this ebook to the library" button. The idea is that the book would be purchased for the library, added to their Overdrive collection, and then immediately made available for the purchasing patron to check out. And, of course, the library would generate a donation acknowledgement letter for US tax purposes.

The librarian in charge of digital acquisitions responded saying that he/she thought it was a "fantastic idea." The only downside mentioned is that "overdrive sells some books that are not appropriate for a public library collection", so they would need to do something about that. I presume these inappropriate books are porn, but that's purely a guess on my part.

The librarian expects to see the overdrive folks at a conference this week or next, and said that he/she would suggest it to Overdrive as a feature that would be "very important" to them.

A very pleasant interaction overall, with a strongly positive response from the Library!

Xenophon

I'm glad to hear you got such a positive response from your library system. The response I got from mine was lukewarm at best. I asked about the possibility of donating ebooks either by making a monetary donation to the library that is designated to purchase a specific ebook, or by contacting Overdrive as was mentioned at the beginning of this thread. I was told that I could recommend books to be purchased (it's only a request, no guarantees), and I could also make a donation, but they don't seem to have any way to connect the two actions to be sure the book I want is purchased. Definitely not the response I was hoping for. I have access to another library system that has just started carrying ebooks, so I think I'll contact them - hopefully they'll be more open to the idea.

[ImogenRose]

Thanks for the info!

Originally Posted by KarenH

I'm glad to hear you got such a positive response from your library system. The response I got from mine was lukewarm at best. I asked about the possibility of donating ebooks either by making a monetary donation to the library that is designated to purchase a specific ebook, or by contacting Overdrive as was mentioned at the beginning of this thread. I was told that I could recommend books to be purchased (it's only a request, no guarantees), and I could also make a donation, but they don't seem to have any way to connect the two actions to be sure the book I want is purchased. Definitely not the response I was hoping for. I have access to another library system that has just started carrying ebooks, so I think I'll contact them - hopefully they'll be more open to the idea.

That was pretty much the same as my experience. I contacted the people who run the Overdrive lending library in my state with the suggestion, and a few days later received a non-committal note to the effect that it was a generous offer but they would have to discuss it with the selection committee. Then, after hearing nothing more for a while, I emailed again suggesting a specific book, and never received any response. So though my preference would be to expand the collection at my local library system, expanding the Philadelphia Free Library collection would not be a bad second choice.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by KarenH

I'm glad to hear you got such a positive response from your library system. The response I got from mine was lukewarm at best. I asked about the possibility of donating ebooks either by making a monetary donation to the library that is designated to purchase a specific ebook, or by contacting Overdrive as was mentioned at the beginning of this thread. I was told that I could recommend books to be purchased (it's only a request, no guarantees), and I could also make a donation, but they don't seem to have any way to connect the two actions to be sure the book I want is purchased. Definitely not the response I was hoping for. I have access to another library system that has just started carrying ebooks, so I think I'll contact them - hopefully they'll be more open to the idea.

The Free Library of Philadelphia isn't my library system; they're actually at the far end of the state from me. My library system—the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh—doesn't yet support downloadable ebooks. They only do the kind that you have to read on-line at your computer -- complete with the truly disgusting "click-to-wait-to-download... the... next... p...a...g...e..." reading interface.

So I got a Philly library card specifically to get access to their Overdrive eBook collection. And I'm thrilled that the librarians there think that accepting donations from library patrons is a good idea.

Xenophon

[Tony30]

Update from OverDrive. FYI:

My name is Adam Sockel and I’m a Marketing & Outreach Associate here at OverDrive. Currently, patrons cannot purchase content and donate it to the library. They can make a monetary donation to the library and request that their donation is used to purchase a digital title, but they cannot buy titles (from Amazon.com or Borders for example) and have those added to the collection.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Tony30

Update from OverDrive. FYI:

My name is Adam Sockel and I’m a Marketing & Outreach Associate here at OverDrive. Currently, patrons cannot purchase content and donate it to the library. They can make a monetary donation to the library and request that their donation is used to purchase a digital title, but they cannot buy titles (from Amazon.com or Borders for example) and have those added to the collection.

Which is what we would all like to do, buy a book, read it, then send the file to the lightnet for everyone to read. Easier just to make everything available freely IMO.

[odiakkoh]

Thank you for sharing about this. I would definitely be interested in donating money to buy more ebooks for my library.

[Nawpkin]

wow thanks! As an author myself donating my book to libraries will be a big boost in sales...And I had absolutely no idea how to do it previously! =D

[SeaBookGuy]

Originally Posted by batgirl

That is a great idea! I don't deal with Overdrive directly but I will pass along your suggestion to the person on the Overdrive committee at my library.

In fact, I'm printing out your reply and putting it on her desk now.

In fact, I'd also add it would be great to see a button when a search doesn't turn up the title one is looking for that says something like "recommend your library purchase this title."

That would be better than my current procedure of using the online purchase suggestion form (for print books), putting "EBOOK" after the title, the ebook ISBN, and "Please consider adding this item to our library's ebook holdings - thanks!"

[Bklyn Brown]

I just wanted to thank you for posting your experience of donating a book to your local library. I am currently in a two-month-long wild goose chase, trying to donate a copy of my ebook to my local library. Unfortunately, it does not show up in Overdrive's "retail" list so I can't simply purchase it. At the advice of the library, I have tried contacting Overdrive and 3M (plus Smashbooks) to no avail. But I still haven't given up. Any other advice you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Originally Posted by spec

Hello,

Just wanted to share my experience of successfully donating an ebook to my local library. I'm not going to give any specifics like location, names, emails etc, as I didn't get a permission to do that and the process was very manual, therefore laborious, for the library staff. If they suddenly received a large volume of those requests (it would be great if they automated it) it might be problematic for them.

I thought I'd give it a try for 2 reasons: I check out ebooks from my local library quite frequently and I thought that instead of buying an ebook for myself (which I'd probably read only once), I should be able to buy the ebook for the library and check it out from the library whenever I want, but additionally library would share it with others. Meaning i should have the right to donate the written word in electronic form just as I do with paper form to my local library. (Hopefully one day we'll be able to do with ebooks all the things that we do with paper books today).

The library needs to be overdrive.com based - meaning your library should be on the list of libraries if you go to http://search.overdrive.com

First I located a book I wanted to check out via http://search.overdrive.com . The search result told me that it was available in other libraries, but not in my local library. On the bottom of the search page, there's "Contact us" link. I wrote Overdrive an email that I would like to donate this particular ebook to my local library. Overdrive forwarded my request to the contact at my local library. The contact person ordered the book and said I should expect an invoice from Overdrive. I got the invoice one day later and I could pay for it either by faxing (or sending a pdf) a credit card charge authorization, or mailing them a check. Same day the book appeared in http://search.overdrive.com as available in my local library and I was able to check it out.

The price of this particular book was actually twice as expensive compared to what it would cost me at bn.com (around $10 difference), but from what I gather it's not always the case. To find out how much would it cost you to donate a book, I would locate the book via http://search.overdrive.com/retail/ and look up what it says under SRP for that book. That should be the most you will have to pay for the book (Overdrive gave 20% from SRP for the book I donated, probably my library's discount). For other books I looked at, it seems they are about $1-$2 more expensive to donate via overdrive than to buy via bn.com (Example: Crichton "Lost World" ePub SRP 10.62 USD (minus library discount), bn.com ePub price $6.39)

And that's it.

I searched for similar topics before I posted it and it looks like nobody tried that before and some people said that it's not possible. Hopefully this is useful for other people with the same mindset as mine. I would encourage everyone with library access to consider donating an ebook rather than purchasing it for yourself (you cannot donate the ebook later on and most of the ebooks probably collect electronic dust inside your ereader now, so something to think about).

spec

[tracings]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The Free Library of Philadelphia isn't my library system; they're actually at the far end of the state from me. My library system—the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh—doesn't yet support downloadable ebooks. They only do the kind that you have to read on-line at your computer -- complete with the truly disgusting "click-to-wait-to-download... the... next... p...a...g...e..." reading interface.

So I got a Philly library card specifically to get access to their Overdrive eBook collection. And I'm thrilled that the librarians there think that accepting donations from library patrons is a good idea.

Xenophon

Xenophon, It sounds like you've been reading the Ebsco/NetLibrary ebooks from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, but they do also have OverDrive books that can be read on an e-reader. Here's a link to CLP's ebooks page. OverDrive is at the top of the list.

I've found the wait lists are often shorter than at the Free Library of Philadelphia, probably because they're not as liberal about issuing library cards to out-of-towners.