Cheers & Jeers 2025

The holiday season has rolled round in earth’s diurnal course once more, and that means it’s once again time for the ReadersFirst Working Group’s Annual Cheers & Jeers, wherein we celebrate positive developments in library digital content and blow well-deserved raspberries at the toad-spotted who have complicated the library mission.

Many, many cheers are due in the most significant development in library digital content this year: the (re)emergence of state library ebooks laws.

• Cheers to Rep. Matt Blumenthal (the special champion), Governor Ned Lamont, and RF friend Ellen Paul (ED of the Connecticut Library Consortium for passing Connecticut’s ebook bill into law. Revamped to avoid the legal challenges facing earlier bills/laws, this law invites negotiations with publishers whose license terms may be unreasonable for libraries (looking at you, Big 5).

  • The bill faced some challenges in legislature, including the usual nonsense about libraries pushing pornography; however, in the spirit of the holidays, we withhold any jeers for that. All’s well that ends well. We cheer the fact that publisher lobbying efforts against the bill were all-but-non-existent. Whether because they feared passage was likely and so not worth fighting or because they invariably get roasted like so many holiday chestnuts when showing up to oppose library legislation in CT, the purveyors of all the usual lies about library digital content were missing.

• Cheers for special champion Sen. Andrew Zwicker of New Jersey for introducing ebook legislation in New Jersey and to RF friend Michael Maziekien of NJ State Library for careful and thoughtful advocacy. If passed—and for now, it very well could—it would trigger Connecticut's law and two states would have laws in place to ensure ensure reasonable terms. Two is a start!

• Cheers for Massachusetts’ S.2710 to appoint a commission to investigate the library ebook market. We hope it becomes law. If so, it will follow the usual pattern: once legislators see how badly libraries (and the taxpayer!) are getting the shaft, they understand why we want action.

• Cheers for the other states in which librarians are working with legislators to advance fair ebook bills. At least 8 others are at some point in the process. Even investigations such as that proposed in Massachusetts would be helpful

• Related cheers for their great support of legislative efforts:

  • A huge cheer for the work of Kyle Courtney and Juliya Ziskina of the ebook study group. They continue to advise states on consumer protection and state procurement laws to promote fair library digital content, including CT and NJ. Visit the site to join and get draft legislation for your state and to get powerful and intelligent voices in support.

  • A huge cheer for the work of Jennie Rose Halperin, Michelle Reed, and now Layla Maurer of Library Futures for their ongoing advocacy on fair library ebook terms (among many important issues), including starting regional ebook summits.

In the most important issue for librarianship overall—book banning—resounding jeers must ring out. But first let us celebrate a trend:

• Cheers for even more states passing Freedom to Read legislation this year—Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont—with Massachusetts soon to follow. These especially laws matter for digital. Ebook collections are a bluenose censors’ dream. Imagine banning thousands of books at once—oh, what joy to the censor’s heart to axe entire library collections. Cheers as well for every state that had previously passed laws protecting our Freedom to Read: California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington.

• A HUGE jeer to New York Governor Cathy Hochul for vetoing New York’s Freedom to Read Act. What’s that all about? Looks like you’ll cruise to re-election. You’re helping book banners in a time when Freedom to Read laws have never been more needed, witness:

• Jeers to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for their most recent decision in Little vs. Llano. Let’s see. They overturn another court’s preliminary injunction, and then overturn a ruling by their own members, not to mention going against a 1995 ruling by the self-same court in order to say that local and state official are free to pull whatever books they don’t like out of libraries on purely political and religious grounds. Hey, no need to put a thumb on the scales of justice when you can just throw the scales aside.

• Jeers to the Supreme Court of the United States for not hearing Little vs. Llano, thus effectively making government censorship of library materials in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas lawful. It has been pointed out that other cases are pending, including some debunking the fallacy that library collections are simply government speech. Perhaps, it is suggested, the Court will rule to support the freedom to read in a case directly resting on the First Amendment. But why wait? What about library readers in those three states? Let ‘em eat cake? This delay suggests a worst case: an ultra-conservative court majority refusing to hear cases that codify censorship and taking up a case supporting the freedom to read in order to strike precedent down and declare open season of library shelves. Rule they will eventually have to. Should anyone expect the court that brought us Trump vs. United States to strike a blow for libraries against government overreach? We can hope. But states with Freedom to Read laws, get your defenses ready against a hostile ruling that the book banning crowd will crow is a precedent for all fifty states.

• After this abomination, cheers to Leila Green Little for her courageous fight to Let the People Read.

• Cheers to EveryLibrary for their Freedom to Read and legislative advocacy (with my colleague Carmi citing their annual roundup as very helpful), Pen America, the American Library Association, Freedom to Read Foundation, Unite Against Book Bans, Authors Against Book Bans, the many, many publishers, and perhaps most important of al, the parents and school children fighting locally and in courts to makes sure all may be represented on library shelves.

• Cheers, too, to the expansion of Books Unbanned (thanks, Long Beach,, for joining!), and the continuation of the Banned Book Club. Thanks to these efforts, people in every state can read interesting and award-winning books, even if their local officials demand their removal from local libraries. Banning Ebook collections may be a censor’s dream, but they are also the worst nightmare for those who would undermine democratic norms to foster a view that America only belongs to some, not all.

My colleague Micah sends hearty cheers to Abdo Publishing, Books in Motion, Ebound and Dreamscape Media for beginning to offer libraries the ability to purchase and OWN their titles. Cheers, too, to the Palace Project for offering a sire to host what we can own, this making ownership easier and more sustainable. I add cheers to all medium-sized, smaller, and Indie publishers who offer libraries licenses that approximate or sometimes even surpass the deals we get on print books. Meet many of them at IndieLIb 2026 (thanks, Independent Publishers Caucus!) These cheers must inevitably be followed by jeers to the Big 5 and big academic presses who price ebooks in increasingly unsustainable ways. As we document in our Publishers Price Watch, Penguin Random House and Macmillan at least held the line this year—thanks, but no cheers—and Simon & Schuster weren’t too bad, but Hachette and Harper Collins, boo on you! Why can’t you all be like Scholastic, offering good content at fair library digital prices? RF encourages all libraries to reward those who offer use fair terms and cut back on books from those who don’t, while letting the public know why and joining state efforts for fair library digital laws. We’ve helped to build the confining edifice that hurts us. Let’s start breaking it down even more in 2026.

He adds jeers to B&T (not the unfortunate front line, but corporate management) for driving their business into bankruptcy, leaving many libraries stranded and scrambling to try and continue serving books they thought they had perpetually purchased; however, since they did not own the titles, many may be lost.

Cheers to Andrew Albanese for starting up Words & Money, a fair and very much informed look at the intersection of libraries and publishing with great coverage of digital developments. I urge subscriptions (and have no connection and receive no benefit other than having a good site continue.)

My colleague Lisa adds many cheers and jeers:

• Cheers to OverDrive for supporting libraries to get more reads to readers by reducing hold delays.

• Cheers to all the Internet Archive signatories https://ourfuturememory.org/, aiming “to safeguard the essential digital activities of libraries, archives, and museums (collectively referred to as ‘memory institutions), while ensuing “these institutions retain the same rights and responsibilities online that they have historically held offline.”

• Cheers to Brooklyn PL for creating a library materials reading app to show private equity ereaders an integrated reader is what library's need https://www.bklynlibrary.org/bpl-mobile-app

• Cheers to NYPL and Brian Bannon for highlighting that e-content access is about accessibility, preference and READING! https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/audiobooks-books-print-reading.html [Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and audiobooks do count as reading. While we’re at it, then, two-cheers to Audible for making content available through Palace. Do you want the full three? Of course you do! Pick up the pace at which they are offered and give us some better terms.]

• Jeers to those who continue to block access to content for public library users, including [perhaps especially?] Netflix and Prime.

• Jeers to AI content published without clear transparency. [Let’s add jeers to ebook platforms that add A.I. slop to their offerings without marking it, expecting us to curate their mess. Clean it up! Get rid of it, preferably, or at least provide identifiers.]

Lisa adds one more cheer to bring us to a close: Cheers to all the libraries working to manage shrinking buying power and reducing hold limits. That would be every library (no, not that EveryLibrary). The fight against book banning is the story of the year—again, alas, but we have scored many victories this year, including court wins and Freedom to Read legislation (did we send a jeer to New York’s Governor?). The return of ebook legislation must rank second. In a time when Big 5 practices make our collection nearly impossible to sustain, with licenses on popular works expiring even as we see increased digital demand for new ones. The STUPID publisher rejoinder that we just need to fund libraries better—great idea, but will you do it with your corporate $$$ when local governments are often struggling with revenue cuts due to job loss in a difficult economy?— is even more unwelcome in a time when political opposition threatens library funding in many places. To librarians everywhere, let us make 2026 a great year for the Freedom to Read and fair ebook terms. There are Grinches out there—Grinches whose hearts will never grow three sizes. But welcome, new year, bring your cheer. Cheers to librarians far and near. Better days just might be, just long as we have we.

IA Offering Excellent Free [But Small Donations Accepted] Webinars

In addition to celebrating 1 trillion web pages being saved through the Wayback Machine, with some nice coverage by CNN, the Internet Archive is offering some very interesting webinars soon, likely to be of interest to those who care about library digital content. They are offered at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

On November 21, join a book talk with the always provocative Cory Doctorow. He will discuss his book Enshitfication: What Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What We Can About It. Anyone interested in the lamentable state of the internet and information sharing in general will want to sign up. Register Here

On December 4, join author Samuel Moore in conversation with Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, as they reimagine open access through collective, scholar-led publishing in a Book Talk: Publishing Beyond the Market. Register Here

On December 18, another Book Talk: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. They will discuss why protecting cultural commons is essential for ensuring creativity, innovation, and freedom of speech. Register Here

Legislative Action in Massachusetts

Massachusetts’ S.2710 has been passed 37-0 to move into the House of Representatives, adding to the growing number of states taking action to provide more reasonable access to digital content for libraries. It differs from the recently passed Connecticut law and the introduced New Jersey legislation, which directly set practice for how libraries can enter into contracts to get digital content. Instead, as noted in press release from the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the bill if passed would create a commission “tasked with examining the evolving landscape of digital resources in public libraries, focusing on costs, access, privacy, and policy implications.”

Sen. Paul Feeney is cited, saying “Yet when it comes to providing access to e-books and audiobooks, an increasingly demanded resource used by library patrons, libraries are forced to pay disproportionately high costs and deal with unreasonable lending restrictions to provide these services, adding an extra burden onto already strained public libraries and reducing the accessibility of these materials for the public. This current reality is unsustainable for our libraries. With the passage of this bill, we are one step closer towards solving this issue in Massachusetts in a way that is fair, enforceable, and worthy of the Commonwealth's invaluable public libraries.”

The commission would investigate the licensing terms, including cost, that tend to limit library readers access to digital, get legal expert opinion on the differences between print and digital library lending that lead to unsustainable costs for ebooks, what is happening in this area in other states, to determine why “Over the past decade, Massachusetts libraries have spent more than $50 million in local, state, and federal tax dollars to provide access to digital resources. Yet due to the high recurring cost of renting these materials, most libraries’ electronic resources collections are relatively small, with the average patron having to wait over two months for access to popular titles.”

While not as robust as some other legislation action, then, this bill is another important step in official government explorations of the library digital content market and very welcome. RF encourages the Massachusetts House of Representatives to pass the legislation for signature. The questions posed in 2021 by Sen. Wyden and Rep. Eschoo to publishers and library vendors about ebooks might be a useful start for the commission. The response to those questions has never been released but would make for most interesting reading.

As always, RF thanks those publishers that do offer fair terms to libraries. You are not the problem. Big 5, yet another state is taking action. More are on the way. Wouldn’t it be better for business, and your authors, if you negotiated with us now?

Introducing the Digital Shelf Publishing & Library Forum--First Event, December 9

Introducing a new free webinar series, The Digital Shelf Publishing & Library Forum, a collaborative webinar series from Lyrasis, ReadersFirst, and COSLA, that will provide a platform for open discussion about the evolving digital content ecosystem. Our goal is to foster honest, practical conversations between  libraries, publishers, and others in the book industry on complex topics like sustainable ebook pricing, AI in libraries, censorship and equitable access.

Don't miss our first event, the Ebook Advocacy Action Round Up, a fast-paced "lightning round" featuring updates from the leaders of key advocacy groups including Library Futures, ReadersFirst, Urban Libraries Council Action Team, Ebook Study Group, Boston Library Consortia, NY State Ebook Working Group, and CULC. Join us to hear the latest strategies for ensuring equitable access and sustainable ebook pricing, co-sponsored by ReadersFirst, COSLA, and the ALA Ebook Interest Group. It is December 9, from 1-2:30 PM Eastern

Register here. Librarians who attend can sign up here to receive free continuing education credits.

Presenters:

Michelle Reed, Library Futures: Michelle Reed is the Director of Programs for Library Futures, an organization that advocates for digital rights and equitable access to knowledge. She leads research and community initiatives aimed at driving the legal, political, and technological changes necessary to achieve open access for digital works and educational resources.

Lisa Wells, Urban Libraries Council Action Team: Lisa Wells is the Executive Director of the Pioneer Library System and a leader in the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) Action Team focused on digital content. She is a strong voice for political and community advocacy, working to secure equitable access and sustainable licensing terms for public library e-book collections.

Kyle Courtney, Ebook Study Group: Kyle Courtney is the Director of Copyright and Information Policy for Harvard Library and a co-founder of the Ebook Study Group. His work focuses on providing the legal research and multi-state coordination needed to address restrictive e-book licensing models, championing state-level legislation to ensure libraries can meet their public access missions.

Charlie Barlow, Boston Library Consortia: Charlie Barlow serves as the Executive Director of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), a highly collaborative alliance of libraries across New England. He focuses on strengthening library collective action, advancing resource sharing, and establishing regional strategies to meet the evolving challenges of digital content distribution and licensing.

Amy Mikel, NY State Ebook Working Group: Amy Mikel is the Director of Customer Experience at Brooklyn Public Library and a key contributor to the NY State Ebook Working Group. She is instrumental in initiatives related to digital content accessibility and addressing censorship, particularly through her involvement with BPL's nationally recognized Books Unbanned project.

Vicky Varga, Canadian Urban Library Council (CULC): Vicky Varga is the Executive Director of Collections, Marketing, and Technology at the Edmonton Public Library and a leader within the Canadian Urban Libraries Council (CULC) Digital Content Working Group. She advocates for sustainable digital solutions for Canadian public libraries and oversees the national digital book club, One eRead Canada.

Micah May, Lyrasis: Micah May is the Director of Business Development for the Ebooks and Community Engagement (EBCE) division at Lyrasis, where he builds partnerships to support The Palace Project. With over 15 years of experience, Micah is a leader in technology and library innovation. He previously served as Director of Ebooks at the Digital Public Library of America, where he spearheaded the Palace Marketplace and Palace Bookshelf. He also directed technology for Library for All, launching ebook apps in developing nations. As a Senior Director at the New York Public Library, he led strategy and innovation, conceiving and directing SimplyE, an open-source platform that simplifies ebook access. He also secured over $250 million in ebook donations from publishers to create Open Ebooks, an app-based library for children in low-income communities. Micah holds a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He began his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he helped create a new research and development group.

Two Important Wins

RF has—rightly!—pointed to the threat that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling in the Llano Case poses for libraries. Utterly contemptuous of just precedent, based on an intellectually bankrupt concept of library collections as “government speech,” and reeking of political partisanship, it is never the less but a small step from a Supreme Court of dubious judicial independence. It is difficult to celebrate against such a dubious backdrop, and yet two recent decisions give cause for dancing in the stacks and in the cyberspace of library library digital collections.

As noted by Andrew Albanese in Words & Money (well worth a look and even a subscription, and we at RF get not benefit from saying so), Judge Patricia Giles in the Eastern District Court of Virginia issued a preliminary injunction against book removals at school libraries on military bases. The reason for the injunction upholds precedent and undercuts the whole government speech claim.

Defendants attempt to circumvent the First Amendment entirely by asserting that the removal of books from DoDEA libraries constitutes government speech. On Defendants’ theory, “the inclusion, or exclusion, of certain materials reflects DoDEA’s expressive act of speech that it wishes to convey to its audience—here, schoolchildren.” Therefore, Defendants contend that as DoDEA’s speech, library curation is exempt from the First Amendment. The Court is unpersuaded.

As Albanese explains, the judge continued with this statement about school libraries and their users:

[They] “have historically been loci of intellectual freedom. Viewing public school libraries as places of academic freedom and intellectual pursuit conflicts with the United States’ notion that school libraries represent government speech. It is furthermore doubtful that the public—or DoDEA students, for that matter—perceives the books in school libraries as conveying a government message.”

It isn’t difficult, even leaving aside students’ implied right to pursue knowledge free from government oversight:

• Does every book in the collection represent the government speaking, even those that contradict each other?

• Does removing a book constitute speech—isn’t it the opposite of speech, since it is only removing a voice and saying nothing?

• How does any one government agency, whether local, state, or federal, get to remove books based on its ideology without engaging in government censorship of ideas and so violating an oath to uphold the Constitution?

The other win is Judge Alan D. Albright’s ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas for a permanent injunction against Texas House Bill 900—a bill which would have had Texas State Library set up content standards and book ratings that all school vendors would have to use for all their materials. The judge ruled that 990 failed to “provide guidance on what community standard could apply to the whole state, ignored the three-part Miller test for obscenity, allowed too much power to the state to control speech, engaged in prior restraint of speech, and, in short, was too vague and in any case unconstitutional.

One can hope this is a stake through the heart of 990 and it does not rise again.

To state the obvious to anyone who is not blinded by disinformation or engaged in propaganda, we librarians don’t stock pornography. We are not anti-parent. We do want balanced collections that reflect everyone in our communities. Our collections don’t tell anyone what to think, but they may include facts, historic or current, that some don’t like. Don’t like it, don’t read it—but reading something one disagrees with is often the most active of readings. Instead of removing books, dear government officials, instead as individuals and not part of your official duties, recommend what you would like to see in libraries. Those titles will get a fair hearing The answer is more speech, not less. Be a library user, no more but no less. Your views are no more important than those of anyone else who walks through our doors, or checks out a digital title.

What's the Biggest Threat to Library Ebooks?

Maria Bustillos, whose work we at ReadersFirst have often celebrated, recently published an article in Columbia Journalism Review on “The Bigger Threat to Books Than Bans.” The piece is well-worth a read. Its point is that despite many bans on books at local and state levels, the attempt to take over the Library of Congress, efforts to censor books in military schools/universities, )and now the reduction of the IMLS to a front for puerile propagandistic “Freedom Trucks” unworthy the name “library collection,”) a still greater threat to reading exists: “The biggest threat to books may in fact be the least known: the oligopoly of intermediaries controlling their distribution.”

Ms. Bustillos states “US libraries, universities, and bookstores rely for the delivery of books on a small number of very big profit-driven companies, many of them privately held, whose commitment to freedom of expression is at best uncertain. Each of these companies represents a potential chokepoint for books and periodicals. They all exercise near-monopolistic control over a piece of the distribution chain, with the capacity to render whole catalogues of e-books inaccessible to library patrons, or to university students, or online book buyers, at the flick of a switch.”

“In the case of e-books,” she adds, “where these near monopolies have consolidated and solidified over the past decade, the danger of a sudden loss of access is particularly acute.”

She offers a solution—one which we at RF support: “What if writers could sell (really sell, not license) their e-books and newsletters straight to the library? This is the model that Brick House, the writers’ cooperative I belong to, is working to create. We’ve asked hundreds of small publishers to join us in developing a safe passage, free of intermediaries, between authors, publishers, libraries, and readers. Lots of publishers and authors have signed on. And many more would love to—but they can’t, because they’re bound by contracts with those intermediaries that demand exclusive rights for distributing their books. Publishers caught in that trap can only provide libraries with e-books to license temporarily—books for rent, books that can expire, books that can be shut off.”

Bustillos is correct in much of her argument. If the current administration were to pressure an Amazon or a KKR not to carry a certain book, who would bet on that book (or a whole class of books) staying available? The removal of certain content from the books, as has happened with so many government web pages since January, is more likely than total removal—but the point still stands. We can (and should) celebrate that a judge has thrown out an individual suit against a major newspaper and big publisher, and thank Penguin Random House and other publishers for fighting books bans, but they have not yet been subjected to the very instruments of government using federal threats—and power—to censor. Censorship of the sort she imagines is all too real a threat, with big distributors knuckling under to preserve the bottom line. A boycott like that which forced the reversal of the recent decision to fire a late night talk show host would, alas, be unlikely to materialize over a library ebook.

Her point that this threat is bigger than banning efforts, however, may not be completely correct. The biggest threat comes from a political movement, including a decades-long effort to pack the courts to undermine democratic norms—an effort that goes hand-in-hand with book banning and finds expression in Project 2025, where librarians are in effect criminalized on Page 5. It is exemplified recently in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that library collections are “government” speech, not protected by the First Amendment, and subject to gutting by local elected officials. The force behind the bans and potential shutting off of content via ebook distributors is the biggest threat to library content of all kinds, to library funding, and to the enlightened values girding libraries. Let’s by all means hold distributors accountable to library standards for safeguarding content. Let’s seek better terms for library ebooks, including purchase. Let’s promote the small publisher ecosystem and authors and find effective ways to distribute and discover content outside of KKR. But let’s not take our eyes off the biggest threat of all.

Long Beach Joins Books Unbanned

Natalie Canalis of the Long Beach Post News notes in this piece that “Free digital Long Beach Public Library cards will soon be available to teens across the nation in an effort to offset bookbanning in other parts of the country, thanks to a new partnership between Long Beach and the Brooklyn Public Library.”

RF has posted about Books Unbanned before. Brooklyn Public started the initiative and has been joined by Seattle, Boston Public, Los Angeles County, San Diego, and now Long Beach.

These libraries are able to provide access without public funds through generous donations. Even if carping critics in these areas want to object that their tax dollars are funding immortality, they can’t make a case.

Thanks to Long Beach for joining the cause. As noted by Fritzi Bodenheimer of Brooklyn Public Library in the article, there is need for even more library participation, awareness, and advocacy: “Since we launched in April of 2022, we’ve had about almost 10,000 young people sign up for a card, and they’re from all 50 states, and they’ve checked out … close to or maybe over 300,000 books. It’s incredibly exciting and heartwarming, and it’s also incredibly heartbreaking because it means there’s a need.”

RF encourages libraries—or at least those libraries that won’t punished politically for standing for the freedom to read—to join in or at least spread the news about Books Unbanned and the Palace Project’s Banned Book Club.

If you haven’t yet read the heartfelt testimonies from teens using Books Unbanned, you may read Brooklyn’s document here. RF commends brave librarians everywhere fighting for the freedom to read in time when narrow-minded, manacle souled, and authoritarian elements threaten not just books but our very democracy.

The Briet Dilemma

We at RF have written favorably about the Briet Project before. Nathalie op de Beeck wrote about it today in Publishers Weekly, and it is good to see progress on it.

The author notes “With publishers and libraries at odds over e-book licensing’s long-term expense, hold times, and ethical concerns, a new platform called Briet is pursuing an open-access approach. Briet invites publishers to sell their e-books to libraries outright, providing universal, perpetual access.”

All good so far—ownership of titles and simultaneous access are great.

“Briet is still getting off the ground, but thousands of e-books are already available, the inventory is growing, and a toolkit is readily accessible for libraries and patrons to explore.”

Do check out the title list—lots of very interesting books, and a very useful collection for diversity featuring authors other than the usual best sellers.

“[Maria] Bustillos expects to make the platform available on Thorium Reader, using the latest iteration of Readium software, which powers the web-based e-book windows already familiar from the IA Open Library. In the finished version of Briet, Bustillos said, ‘we can offer LCP [licensed content protection] encryption to people that need and want it. Mind you, if librarians are interested now, we can put the tech pieces together and it’s ready for prime time, completely. You can come and buy books there’.”

RF Greatly admires Bustillos’ work and agrees with her points:

“It’s a real five-alarm fire for libraries,” Bustillos said, because the revolving door of e-book licensing makes collection development expensive and impermanent. “A lot of writers don’t realize that their digital books cannot be sold” due to DRM agreements, she continued. “If authors who love libraries and who became writers in libraries, like me, come to understand that there are commercial constraints on the availability of their digital books, we should all demand that this be in our contracts,” she said. Briet’s goal, she concluded, is to ensure that its inventory of e-books remains perpetually “ownable and archivable” by libraries.

So why, then, is the “dilemma” in our header? Once again, it is a question of patron access—specifically, how they access. Long experience has taught us that nearly all readers want one place to go to access their library ebooks. If there are multiple places, most tend to choose one favorite and go there, ignoring other options. That’s why Palace is so careful to be “the one app to rule them all.” It harvests content from many platforms. Even so, it’s a challenge to drive adoption. Readers—and, frankly, most library staff (and I’ve taught literally hundreds of them how to support digital library readers)—simply don’t want to learn something new and switch. Given the choice between what they already know that has the most popular content and a startup without it, I would bet a substantial sum that few will visit the new experience very often. Suddenly, the library is sinking money (even at VERY favorable costs—thanks very much, Briet!) into a collection that seldom gets hits.

Please, pretty please, with a bow around it and a side of sugar, find some way to make what we might buy accessible in one of our apps—preferably the non-profit Palace, but any of them. Thorium is an EPUB reader. Are these EPUB files? There is certainly a technical solution. These would be great additions to our other collections. Separate from the others ebooks in our collections, I worry they will languish unread. Most digital readers launch from our apps, not the library catalog. Let us put the content where most readers will find it.

There would be anther advantage. Suppose the Big Publishers decide to pull out of states that pass reasonable ebook laws. It could happen. Fine. We use this content, integrated with what we get from Indie publishers, drive readers to it, tout it, create exposure and demand for it, while we tell library readers and legislators from village to federal government how the big guys seem to think public funds are troughs for them to feed at, gobbling up at a rate far higher for digital than print, ripping off the public and unfairly restricting reading. We offer much new interesting content while we—by law—withhold funds from unfair contracts and advocate for change. It would give libraries a stronger hand while we hold out for necessary and fair change. And we can use all the help we can get in any upcoming difficulties.

In the meantime, RF encourages experimenting with Briet. If you are a library that could drive lots of use to these ebooks, go for it! Many of us will perforce wait until these wonderful titles aren’t separate from the rest of our collection.

Webinar of interest (It’s free!):

BIblitheca is offering a webinar that may be of interest to librarians and lovers of reading who live in areas undergoing book challenges. Register here:

August 6, 2025 (11AM CT)

Book challenges and other attempts to restrict or remove access to materials are making headlines and keeping librarians up at night. Get the facts and the tools to protect access in your library and support your community’s right to read.

In this webinar, Bibliotheca Solution Consultant Lisa Stamm, MLS, welcomes Tasslyn Magnusson and Sabrina Baeta from PEN America, along with Sanobar Wilkins from EveryLibrary’s Fight for the First initiative, for a straightforward, solutions-focused discussion on defending intellectual freedom in today’s highly charged climate.  

In this live session, you’ll learn how to:  

• Understand the current scope and tactics of book challenges  

• Respond calmly and confidently to patron concerns  

• Access ready-to-use resources for staff training and public communication  

• Leverage partners, talking points, and community supporters to strengthen your stance  

• Build a proactive strategy that aligns with your library’s policies and values  

Whether you’re preparing for potential censorship challenges or already facing them, this webinar will equip you with practical steps to “meet the moment” and keep your shelves open to everyone.

Article In Computers in Libraries and Some Unpublished Parts of the CiL article

The ReadersFirst Working Group has published an article in Computers in Libraries. We are happy that a long follow-up study to the Monash University/our 2018 study of the ebook book market in Canada and the USA was published in July of 2025.

You may read it here: https://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jul25/Blackwell-Halperin-Mason-Parker--Ebook-Availability-Licensing-and-Pricing-in-Canada-and-the-US-A-Follow-Up-Study.shtml

A number of paragraphs from the paper were omitted from the published version of our study to pare it down to meet journal length requirements, even though it was a double-article as published. For those who might be interested in seeing what was left out, please read here (sorry to point you to another link!) There is additional background on the study and—we think, at least—some interesting unpublished conclusions that do not reflect well on big publishers and further explore the plight of the digital library selector in 2025.

If you want to see the 200+ titles used in the study and various details about the vendor holdings, look here.

Hope you enjoy!