As some states consider legislating how publishers negotiate with libraries over e-book agreements, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have released a report which found that increased e-book library lending is supplanting sales of print books.
Titled “An Empirical Study of the Impact of Library E-Lending on the Book Economy” and conducted by Secretariat Advisors, the report predicts that “decreases in library e-book prices or certain other changes to licensing terms, as required in recent state legislative initiatives, would cause further harm to commercial markets,” including publishers, authors, and booksellers.
The report’s authors emphasize the role of libraries as both public institutions and market participants, acknowledging that “collection budgets have not meaningfully increased even as states and localities expect libraries to offer both print and digital formats to their communities.”
However, the authors argue that the imposition of government controls on the distribution, purchase, and pricing of e-books and audiobooks in library channels “would effectively undermine the commercial marketplace by demanding more digital copies for libraries for less money immediately upon first publication with little regard for the larger ecosystem.”
In a joint prepared statement, AAP president and CEO Maria Pallante and Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said that “fully funding libraries should be an urgent priority for all lawmakers, and the Authors Guild and AAP stand firmly behind efforts that would increase taxpayer funding at every level of government and support new ideas for private sector support.” They continued, “It should be obvious to policymakers that both the mission of libraries and the intellectual property of authors and publishers are equally invaluable to the public interest, not a tradeoff.’
In an apparent reference to a 2022 Federal Court decision that blocked a Maryland library e-book law, Pallante and Rasenberger noted that “as a matter of law, it is incontrovertible that state governments lack constitutional authority to contradict our national copyright system for books or any other protected creative expression, which is the exclusive province of the U.S. Congress.”
“In short, the key to the future of books across all formats will not come from the statehouse but from ongoing private sector innovation and more numerous and varied business models that are the result of nimble and competitive marketplace negotiations,” the statement continued. “It is our view that debates in the states, frequently accompanied by misinformation about law and facts, have not assisted the discussions between licensors and licensees but rather polarized and confused them.”
The new state law in Connecticut and pending ones in New Jersey and Illinois have been drafted in such a way that they are unlikely to be overturned. The Connecticut law, for example, would bar Connecticut libraries from entering into contracts with terms that run counter to the library’s mission. By focusing on the library’s contracts, the bill avoids the copyright issues that saw Maryland’s effort overturned in court, according to Words and Money.
Troubleshooting
But changing the language of a bill would not change its potential effects on book sales, according to the study. In an executive summary penned by Jéssica Dutra and Robert Stoner, the authors write that “the research in this study, which focused on the impact of e-book lending, identified one recurring conclusion: increased digital library access to e-books is consistently associated with a statistically significant reduction in retail sales of books across formats.”
According to the study, public libraries had about 650 million printed materials and 1.5 billion electronic materials in 2023. Moreover, library expenditures on electronic materials in the U. S. increased sharply from $125 million in 2006 to $673 million in 2023. In contrast, library expenditures on printed materials fell from $900 million in 2006 to $751 million in 2023, with the sharpest year-to-year decline coinciding with the pandemic in 2020 (a 13.6% drop).
The study also questions to what extent libraries contribute to “discoverability,” citing a report based on usage at the Seattle Public Library that found that shifts favoring e-book lending are strongest earlier in a title’s lifecycle and when print usage is high.
“These patterns are consistent with genuine format substitution rather than library e-book share being associated with book discovery or market expansion,” the authors write.
The study claims that the ease of ordering e-books from home has been key to the growth of e-book lending, and suggests that one way to add "friction" to such lending is through "windowing," or the tactic of delaying the release of the e-book or requiring a delay in e-book lending.
The authors cited a 2025 European Commission report which acknowledged that e-book licensing models produce challenges for public libraries, but held that "windowing" practices "are necessary for rightholders to protect other streams of revenues and maintain the balance of rights.” The study suggests that windowing could be a potentially effective licensing option in the U.S.
