If anyone can spot how different national library services promote ebooks it is Steve Potash, CEO of OverDrive. Here he discusses how the UK looks among other nations and shares some best practice from other territories.

PHYSICAL book lending – everything physical – suffered during lockdown. High inflation could cause more problems for physical books, with implications for public libraries. Ebooks are a remedy – they might work in situations where physical books don’t. Steve Potash, CEO of OverDrive – which he founded in 1986, and which now serves 76,000 libraries and schools in 94 countries – makes a diplomatic defence of why that remedy wasn’t as effective as it could have been in the UK during the pandemic.

Research by the University of Strathclyde shows that massive drops in physical lending were not replaced by digital lending, and one interpretation has been that library users were given the choice of borrowing ebooks, but chose not to. Steve doesn’t challenge the data but only “a false premise” that there is “a physical book and an ebook equivalency. It’s not accurate to say that during lockdown the gap in physical book circulation would be replicated through a digital book.” Instead, he says, “I would venture that a significant majority of those who were unable to borrow a physical book during lockdown were totally unaware of the ebook or digital audio option. So, to say we lost hundreds of thousands of checkouts that weren’t replaced by ebooks isn’t a true statement if 90 percent of those folks were unaware of, or had no ability to discover their options during lockdown.”

Not universal

Steve says the scenario in the UK may not be unique, but it isn’t universal either. “The reality is that experiences are different across hundreds of major metropolitan areas and dozens of national markets. Take Toronto Public Library which is only for the city of Toronto. It doesn’t serve the metropolitan suburbs. Last year they circulated over eight million digital books through OverDrive. That’s eight million for one city library. Or look at the per capita engagement for the national library of Singapore. Whether it’s Los Angeles Public Library, or King County (Seattle), or many of the other markets, they’ve had success in educating their service areas about the opportunity to benefit from their library, 24/7 from anywhere. The UK has not evolved to that level of performance when it comes to leveraging the value of the digital book – not like we’ve seen in some of the other more proactive markets.”

Waiting lists worse in UK?

Exploring factors that may impact the take up ebooks Steve was asked why some publishers, like Hachette, are not selling ebooks to public libraries in UK and Ireland. He said that Hachette did so in most parts of the world and suggested the situation in UK might be “indicative” of the relationship between “the London publishing community, the UK libraries, where there is a more traditional perspective than many of the libraries that have seen ebooks take larger shares of lending.”

When asked if waiting list management might have been a factor in the performance of the UK, Steve said: “I don’t have an overall scorecard about queue performance in the UK versus other markets” but said he would ask his team to check. The reply from OverDrive was that “there are very big variances in how holds are managed by libraries regardless of location,” adding that “the three main factors that influence wait times are budget, staffing and how comfortable the librarians are in using the tools and insights OverDrive offers for them to manage wait lists. A library that manages waiting times well is one that has a well-defined policy and process.” It added that: “Based on best practice in libraries around the world, UK public libraries have room to grow in this regard, as well as in staff training and outreach. These activities directly impact wait times, turnover, patron sign-up and overall awareness of their local library’s digital collection.”

Steve also pointed out that waiting lists can provide an opportunity: “We want to delight readers, we don’t want them to be frustrated so yes, while they are searching for that new bestseller, they are also passing the rows of merchandise they could put in their basket right now – so they might leave with four other works, either by the same author or a read-alike for another author in a similar genre. We’ve given the librarians the tools, and Libby helps surface what’s available now.”

Anti-library bias

“From the earliest days of being an advocate for public libraries we’ve been consistent that it’s in the publishers’ and authors’ best economic interest to have all of their works discoverable in public library digital collections and available to borrow by a card holder. We’ve overcome many of the challenges of the anti-library bias. Some publishers still have it, and we’re still evangelising, but the vast majority are active in public library channels with OverDrive. We have demonstrated this with our data and growing sales revenue – and there are studies that show rising retail sales as well. We have many authors and publishers clamouring to have their digital books highly featured by our public libraries, because when a library promotes availability of an ebook, it provides a lift for retail, lift for print sales, and just a lift for the author’s brand and earnings.”

Author education

“Education and advocacy, I think will go on for some time, but it’s a smaller and smaller universe of publishers that are holding the less enlightened view. Our biggest challenge is authors who believe that if someone can borrow an ebook from a public library, then it must be for free. They don’t realise that the library paid for each unit or access. Their view is reinforced because their publishing and royalty statements don’t articulate revenue in unit sales sold to institutions. If you don’t see the word ‘library’ on your statements, and then hear that people can borrow your book for free from the library, you can understand why they would have a negative opinion. But that’s simply a lack of awareness.”

Fear in libraries

Alongside the publisher concern about digital lending, there is also a fear in the UK public library sector that a successful digital library service may give local authorities an excuse to shut down more physical libraries. Asked if ebooks pose a threat to physical libraries, Steve said: “We have the data that ebooks have opened up large segments of communities that had no thought process about their local public ­library. Ebooks have opened up the relevance and value proposition to large under-served areas in every community that public libraries exist in. What I hear from many of the best practice seminars I’ve attended is for librarians to look at ebooks and Libby as “the candy” to attract the customer to walk over to your stand. Once they are at that library front door, the question is how to get them educated and excited about all the other services throughout the library, both digital and offline. And many libraries have had great success doing that.”

Covid effect

“The biggest impact of Covid during the first three to four months when libraries shut their doors was an elevated awareness of the ebook value proposition to large groups of the public. There was a massive surge. But it meant we were challenged as a trusted partner because we knew budgets hadn’t surged. The challenge was to prioritise bringing down the cost to serve a reader as dramatically and as effectively as we could. We asked for permissions for simultaneous access for collections and for discounts so that OverDrive could purchase and donate millions of digital books to all public libraries. In the first year, we purchased and donated the equivalent of about six million units at no cost to our library partners. We also got agreement for many titles to be offered at very low cost via the cost per checkout model (CPC) so if there was a title in demand, or if you needed to support a community reading event, there would be a no waiting supply of titles.”

Analytics into action

Steve says many gaps in services “are not things that require expense, just analytics” adding that OverDrives’s diversity audits are an “extraordinarily popular service that we have been providing at no cost to institutions who want to know how their catalogues are addressing certain communities of interest.” He adds: “We also create what we call peer reports to see how a library is performing compared to libraries serving similar communities, based on the data. So, we do have the ability to help each library analyse where there might be some easy gaps to consider.

I’ll just give you a simple one. The frequency of purchasing new materials has an impact on the success of the library’s collection. I have some very extreme cases in the Asian market where they only buy once a year just because that’s the way the government procures. On the other end we have communities who buy their digital books every day. Who do you think is performing better? Even with the same budget, just breaking it up helps, so that when the same patron comes back every week they see a fresh set of new releases. That has such a material impact because if a patron comes back two three times in the first month and doesn’t see anything new, you may have lost them for years.”

How online is your online?

Another factor in the general success of ebooks is the online accessibility of library cards. “What percentage of library services offer a digital library card online?” Steve asks. “That’s becoming standard practice in many markets. If the process of getting a library card requires physically coming in during business hours with a variety of ID, versus a public library that allows you to complete a few fields of a form online, these are the kinds of differentiators that make a significant material impact. If it’s hard to get a card you’re going to frustrate a lot of potential patrons. And I think it’s another example of why making these comparisons by a territory, against other territories, is problematic because these policies and practices differ.”

Key public librarian skills

“Staff training is absolutely essential,” Steve says. “When OverDrive launched our partnership with public libraries, we were also the key technical partner for Waterstones and supplied all the ebooks and audiobooks from WH Smith, so we know from our high street book-selling experience days, it’s that last mile, that point of sale, that counts.

“It’s a problem if library staff are uncomfortable, unfamiliar, not able to demonstrate and explain how you can browse and borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the public library and enjoy it. Instead, if that library staff person is like what you see in a lot of the banks now, sitting out front and walking over to each visitor saying ‘let me help you, take out your phone… we’ll install the app …’, that mindset can make a huge impact on community awareness and interest in digital lending.”

Here to help

Because OverDrive sees a bigger picture than most of how libraries across the world are managing and promoting ebooks, it can see where they are not being fully leveraged. Steve said: “Ebooks and digital audiobooks are just an underutilised resource. There’s a variety of ways that we are helping libraries get the word out, where we are invited or permitted. For example, we have created regional and national reading programmes with a sought-after, bestselling author. These digital book clubs really work, enticing those folks that have yet to experience the convenience and the pleasure of having a book on a screen or in their earbuds.” IP