How increasing license costs may impact author representation in digital collections

On the theory that rising prices create narrower collections, Washington Digital Library Consortium* (WDLC) analyzed the unique author counts in OverDrive purchase orders from 2022 - 2024. It found that Big Five unique author counts fell 8.8% annually with eBooks and 5.7% with eAudio despite an increase in the collection budget of 4.4% for 2023 and 10% for 2024.

The drop in author counts may correlate with price increases.

  • eBooks: HarperCollins raised prices 12.9% annually. The number of unique authors in HarperCollins purchase orders fell from 1,385 in 2022 to 1,064 in 2024, an average annual decrease of 11.6%.

  • eAudio: Macmillan raised prices 12.5% each year on average. Between 2022 - 2024, the unique author count for eAudio fell from 277 to 221, an average annual decrease of 10.1%.

WDLC believes two factors are at play: 

  • Library selection procedures

  • Expiring licenses

Library selection procedures

Public libraries usually acquire new books on a cadence, often weekly, spending the appropriate portion of the annual budget for that week. The weekly allocation is usually spent in this order:

  1. Necessary titles: We acquire books that borrowers will request if we do not order them. These are bestsellers, award books, and new entries in popular series, titles exploding on TikTok, etc.

  2. Requested titles: Patrons send us specific requests and we acquire those titles that meet our collection parameters. These are lesser-known books readers have discovered, often via social media. We also see requests to fill in series.

  3. Discovery titles: If there is money left, we work on collection breadth, finding new authors and titles our patrons didn't know they needed. These are titles by emerging and midlist authors without major marketing support from their publishers.

These procedures hold for both print and digital collections. The difference between the two is the unit cost. As noted on Publisher Price Watch, library eBooks from the Big Five cost over three times the print equivalent. So, with digital books, a much larger proportion of the total budget goes to necessary titles and a much smaller proportion (sometimes 0%, depending on the week) is left for discovery titles.

Every time a publisher increases its prices, it shrinks the discovery budget still further, effectively transferring money we would spend on emerging or midlist authors to the pockets of the bestselling authors in the necessary budget.

Raising prices also undercuts the work the Big Five publishers have done since 2020 to make their author lists more diverse and representative since, with every price hike, the new authors are increasingly unlikely to be discovered by the millions of avid readers using digital libraries.

Libraries have attempted to preserve funding for discovery titles by licensing fewer copies of necessary titles, increasing patron wait times on popular books. (In almost every library across the country, you will find that the wait time for an eBook is longer than the wait time for the print format.) However, libraries can only negatively impact the patron experience so much before losing readers.

Expiring licenses

All eBooks from the Big Five expire after either 24 months or 26 circulations. If there are enough patron requests for expired titles, WDLC will renew their licenses. When the publishers increase prices on these legacy titles, they are again channeling funds away from discovery titles.

How this works in the collection

Necessary titles: Susan Mallery's latest HarperCollins ebook, Beach Vibes, is $33.87 for 26 checkouts. This popular title requires 6 copies to meet WDLC demand, costing a total of $203.22.

Expiring Licenses: The Happiness Plan by Susan Mallery cost $15.99 for 26 checkouts in December 2023. WDLC replaced it in June 2024 at a cost of $22.44, a price increase of 40%. With one checkout remaining, WDLC will shortly replace it again at a cost of $25.81, a price increase of 15% over 2024. Total spending on The Happiness Plan will be $64.24.

Discovery titles: The following are HarperCollins midlist eBooks published in the last year that WDLC does not offer, although they are popular in our print collection.

  • Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff (7 print copies)

  • Summer in the City by Alex Aster (3 print copies)

  • The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner (4 print copies)

  • The Oligarch's Daughter by Joseph Finder (5 print copies)

  • Better than Friends by Jill Shalvis (3 print copies)

To sum, when HarperCollins increased its prices on Susan Mallery titles, it gave Susan Mallery a raise at the expense of the authors above, who we would certainly license if we could afford it.

If HarperCollins offered libraries the same license terms for eBooks they offer at retail ($14.99 with no expiration), the amount we currently spend on two Mallery titles would allow us to offer:

  • Beach Vibes (6 copies)

  • The Happiness Plan (1 copy)

  • Last Twilight in Paris (2 copies)

  • Summer in the City (2 copies)

  • The Amalfi Curse (2 copies)

  • The Oligarch's Daughter (2 copies)

  • Better than Friends (2 copies)

*Washington Digital Library Consortium consists of 44 rural public libraries serving 860,000 residents of Washington State. By population, it is the 3rd largest OverDrive library in Washington after King County Library System and Sno-Isle Libraries. In 2024, it circulated 2.67 million items and spent approximately $1.3 million on digital books