I spent a morning last month talking with a public librarian in Portland who told me something that stuck with me. “Publishers think we are their competition,” she said. “We think we are their best customers.” Both sides have a point, and the fact that they cannot agree on something so basic tells you a lot about the state of this relationship.

Libraries and publishers need each other. This has always been true, but the digital era has strained the partnership in ways that neither side fully anticipated. Ebook lending policies, shrinking acquisition budgets, consolidation in the publishing industry, and the growing role of library systems as community hubs have all complicated what used to be a fairly straightforward transaction: publisher makes book, library buys book, patron reads book.

I want to look at this relationship honestly, from the perspective of a small independent publisher that works with libraries regularly and values them enormously, but also has to pay authors and keep the lights on. There are real tensions here. There are also real opportunities, and I think both sides are leaving value on the table by failing to communicate effectively.

The Ebook Licensing Mess

Let me start with the most contentious issue, because avoiding it would be dishonest. Ebook licensing for libraries is a disaster. The current system pleases almost nobody.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. When a library buys a physical book, it owns that copy. It can lend it as many times as it wants, for as long as the book holds together. First sale doctrine protects this. But ebooks do not work that way. Publishers license ebooks to libraries, and those licenses come with restrictions. Some expire after a set number of loans (typically 26). Some expire after a set time period (usually two years). Some cost two or three times what a consumer would pay for the same ebook.

From the library’s perspective, this is outrageous. They are paying premium prices for a product that disappears after a while, and they have to buy it again. Their budgets are already stretched thin. Many public libraries have seen their funding flatline or decline in real terms over the past decade. Spending $55 on a single ebook license that expires in two years means something else does not get purchased.

From the publisher’s perspective, the pricing reflects a genuine fear. A physical book can only be in one person’s hands at a time. An ebook, theoretically, could be in millions of hands simultaneously. If libraries could buy one copy and lend it unlimited times, why would anyone buy the ebook? Publishers worry that unlimited library lending would cannibalize retail sales, particularly in the first weeks after publication when most revenue is generated.

Both sides have legitimate concerns. The problem is that the current licensing models were designed by publishers without meaningful input from librarians, and they reflect publisher anxieties more than reader realities. The data on whether library lending actually reduces retail sales is mixed at best. Several studies, including one by OverDrive in partnership with publishers, have found that library borrowers are also heavy book buyers. They are not choosing between borrowing and buying. They are doing both.

What would a better system look like? I think it involves tiered pricing that accounts for library size and usage patterns, longer license terms, and genuine collaboration on data sharing so both sides can make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions. More on that later.

How Libraries Actually Sell Books

Here is something that publishers sometimes forget, or at least undervalue: libraries are discovery engines. For many readers, especially those who cannot afford to buy books regularly, the library is where they encounter new authors and new titles. A reader discovers a novelist through a library loan, falls in love with the writing, and then buys that author’s next book. Or buys a copy of the same book as a gift. Or recommends it to five friends who buy their own copies.

This discovery function is hard to quantify, which is why it gets undervalued. But think about it from a marketing standpoint. Libraries have staff who are, effectively, professional book recommenders. Librarians read widely, know their communities, and actively match books with readers. No algorithm does this as well as a good librarian. And they do it for free, from the publisher’s perspective.

I have seen this play out directly with our own titles at ScrollWorks Media. When Still Waters by Elena Marsh got picked up by several library systems in the Pacific Northwest, we saw a noticeable bump in retail sales in those same regions about two months later. Correlation is not causation, obviously. But the timing was suggestive, and it matched what librarians told us: people were borrowing the book, enjoying it, and then buying copies for themselves or others.

For midlist and debut authors, library support can make the difference between a book that finds an audience and one that vanishes without a trace. The big-name authors will sell regardless. But the books that need help, the ones by writers who do not yet have a built-in readership, benefit enormously from library circulation. Publishers who restrict library access to protect short-term revenue may be undermining long-term author development.

The Acquisition Budget Crisis

Library funding in the United States has been under pressure for years. According to the American Library Association, about 60% of public libraries reported flat or decreased operating budgets in recent years. Staff costs and facility maintenance eat up the majority of those budgets, leaving acquisition funds, the money used to buy books and other materials, as one of the few flexible line items.

This means collection development librarians are making increasingly difficult choices. Do they buy the new bestseller that twenty patrons have already requested, or do they take a chance on an unknown debut novelist? Do they renew an expensive ebook license or use that money for physical copies that will last longer? Do they prioritize adult fiction or children’s materials?

Publishers can help here, and some already do. Offering library-specific pricing that is closer to retail prices, providing longer lending windows, and creating bundling deals that let libraries get more for their acquisition dollars are all options. Independent publishers like us are generally more flexible on library pricing than the Big Five, partly because we understand that every library copy is a potential gateway to a paying reader.

We have also found that working directly with library wholesalers like Baker & Taylor and Ingram (rather than going through intermediaries) lets us offer better terms. The fewer hands the money passes through, the more of it reaches the people who make and buy books.

Programming and Partnership

Beyond lending, libraries have become community programming hubs in ways that publishers have been slow to appreciate. Author events, book clubs, reading challenges, writing workshops, literacy programs: libraries host all of these, and they represent enormous opportunities for publisher collaboration.

When a library invites an author to speak, it is not just hosting an event. It is creating a marketing moment for the publisher. The audience is pre-qualified; these are people who already read and who trust the library’s curatorial judgment. The conversion rate from “attended an author event at the library” to “bought a book” is remarkably high. I have heard estimates ranging from 30% to 60%, depending on the event and the author.

Yet many publishers do not have dedicated library marketing staff. They do not send advance copies to library systems for programming consideration. They do not coordinate with libraries on event scheduling or promotion. This is money and attention left on the ground.

At ScrollWorks, we have started building direct relationships with library systems in our key markets. When we publish a new title like The Cartographer’s Dilemma by David Okonkwo, we send copies to library programming coordinators along with a brief pitch for why the book would work well as a book club selection or author event. The response rate has been encouraging. Libraries want to partner with publishers. They just need publishers to meet them halfway.

Data Sharing (or the Lack Thereof)

One of the biggest missed opportunities in the library-publisher relationship is data sharing. Libraries collect enormous amounts of data about reading patterns: what gets borrowed, what gets waitlisted, what gets abandoned, which demographics favor which genres. This information would be extraordinarily valuable to publishers for acquisition decisions, marketing targeting, and print run planning.

But libraries are, rightly, protective of patron privacy. Librarian culture has a deep commitment to confidentiality that dates back decades, rooted in the very real history of government attempts to surveil reading habits. Many state laws explicitly protect library records from disclosure. This commitment is admirable and should not be compromised.

The challenge is finding ways to share aggregate, anonymized data that helps publishers without exposing individual patrons. This is technically feasible. A library system could report that a particular title was borrowed 340 times in six months, or that literary fiction borrowing in their system increased 12% year over year, without identifying any specific patron. Some library systems already share this kind of data through their annual reports, but the information is often delayed and not standardized in a way that publishers can easily use.

A standardized reporting framework, developed jointly by library and publisher associations, could change the game. If publishers could see, in near-real-time, how their titles were performing in library circulation, they could make better decisions about everything from marketing spend to reprint quantities. And libraries could use the data to demonstrate their value to funders and taxpayers, which helps with the budget problem I mentioned earlier.

The Consolidation Problem

The publishing industry has consolidated dramatically over the past two decades. The Big Five (soon to be Big Four, then possibly Big Three) control an increasingly large share of the market. This consolidation affects libraries in several ways, almost none of them positive.

Larger publishers have more negotiating leverage on licensing terms. They can set prices that libraries find punitive, and libraries have limited alternatives because they need those titles. When Macmillan implemented its controversial library ebook embargo in 2019 (limiting new ebook purchases to one copy per system for the first eight weeks), libraries pushed back hard, and eventually the policy was rescinded during the pandemic. But the episode revealed the power imbalance in the relationship.

Independent publishers, by contrast, tend to have more collaborative relationships with libraries. We are smaller, more flexible, and more willing to experiment with pricing and access models. When a library system tells us that a particular pricing structure does not work for them, we can adjust. We do not have layers of corporate bureaucracy between the conversation and the decision.

This is actually an argument for libraries to increase their investment in independent press titles. By diversifying their collections away from Big Five dominance, libraries can support a healthier publishing ecosystem while also offering their patrons a wider range of voices and perspectives. Some library systems have already started doing this, creating dedicated indie press collections or allocating a percentage of their acquisition budget specifically to independent publishers.

International Perspectives

It is worth noting that the library-publisher relationship works differently in other countries, and some of those models offer lessons for the U.S. market.

In several Scandinavian countries, authors receive payment every time their book is borrowed from a library, through a system called Public Lending Right (PLR). The payments come from government funds, not from library budgets, so they do not reduce acquisition capacity. This system aligns incentives beautifully: authors benefit from library circulation, libraries are not penalized for lending, and the government invests in literary culture. The U.K., Canada, and Australia have similar schemes.

The United States does not have a PLR system, and establishing one would require federal legislation and funding. But the concept is worth discussing because it addresses one of the core tensions: the fear that library lending reduces author income. If authors were compensated for library loans (even modestly), the argument for restrictive ebook licensing would lose much of its force.

In Germany, fixed book pricing laws (Buchpreisbindung) prevent discounting, which means libraries pay the same price as retail customers but are also guaranteed stable pricing. This system eliminates the adversarial pricing negotiation that characterizes the U.S. market and creates a more level playing field.

What Libraries Can Do Better

This is not a one-sided conversation. Libraries also have room to improve in how they work with publishers.

Communication is the biggest gap. Many publishers, especially smaller ones, have no idea how library acquisition decisions get made. The process is opaque. Who decides what gets purchased? What criteria do they use? How can a publisher get a title considered? For independent publishers without established distributor relationships, getting books into library systems can feel like shouting into a void.

Libraries could help by being more transparent about their acquisition processes and by creating clearer channels for publisher outreach. Some library systems have done this well, with dedicated pages on their websites explaining how publishers can submit titles for consideration. More should follow their lead.

Libraries could also do a better job of promoting the books they buy. It sounds basic, but a book sitting spine-out on a crowded shelf is essentially invisible. Face-out displays, staff picks, themed collections, and digital newsletters highlighting new acquisitions all help. They help patrons discover books, and they help publishers see a return on the library’s investment in their titles. When a library buys Echoes of Iron by James Whitfield and then buries it in the general fiction stacks, nobody wins.

What Publishers Can Do Better

Publishers need to start treating libraries as partners rather than as a necessary nuisance or, worse, as a threat to retail sales. Here are specific steps.

Ebook licensing terms need to improve. The current models are unsustainable for libraries and generate ill will that hurts publishers in the long run. A library system that feels exploited by a publisher’s licensing terms is not going to go out of its way to promote that publisher’s books.

Publisher catalogs and metadata need to be library-friendly. MARC records, which libraries use for cataloging, are often incomplete or inconsistent in what publishers provide. Making it easy for libraries to add your books to their systems is a basic courtesy that too many publishers neglect.

Author tours should include library stops. Not instead of bookstore events, but alongside them. The audiences are different and complementary. A bookstore event sells books that evening. A library event builds an audience that buys books for years.

Finally, publishers should actively advocate for library funding. When library budgets get cut, acquisition budgets get cut, and publishers lose customers. This is directly in our financial interest, yet the industry rarely mobilizes around library funding the way it mobilizes around, say, copyright legislation.

A Practical Proposal

I want to end with something concrete rather than just complaints and exhortations. Here is what I think a productive library-publisher partnership could look like in practice.

First, create regional library-publisher councils that meet quarterly. Include acquisition librarians, publisher marketing staff, and authors. Use these meetings to share data, coordinate programming, and address pricing concerns before they become adversarial.

Second, develop a shared ebook licensing framework with input from both sides. Base it on actual circulation data rather than worst-case publisher scenarios. Include provisions for small press titles that need library support to find their audience.

Third, create a national “Library Recommends” program, similar to how bookstores have staff picks. Library staff selections carry tremendous credibility with readers. Formalizing this into a recognized program with marketing support from publishers would benefit everyone.

Fourth, push for Public Lending Right legislation in the United States. This would require sustained lobbying from both library and publisher associations, but it would resolve the fundamental tension around library lending and author compensation.

None of this will happen quickly. But the alternative, continued mutual suspicion and incremental erosion of the relationship, benefits nobody. Readers lose access. Authors lose visibility. Publishers lose customers. Libraries lose relevance. We can do better, but only if we stop treating each other as adversaries and start building something together.

The ScrollWorks Media editorial team is committed to building strong library partnerships. If you are a librarian interested in our catalog, visit our books page or contact us directly.