Friday, March 29, 2013

Penguin to Allow Libraries to Lend New eBook Releases


PublishersLunch
Penguin will lift their six-month windowing on new hardcover releases for libraries, allowing libraries to purchase/license and lend those titles immediately upon publication. Director of online sales and marketing Tim McCall tells the AP it's an evolution of their lending experiments (under which they have been working with 3M and Baker & Taylor). "We feel that we're ready to take the next step and offer what consumers and libraries have been asking for."

Penguin sells ebooks to libraries at the consumer ebook price, for one-at-a-time lending for one year only. Their soon-to-be partners at Random House offer ebooks to a broader set of libraries, with "unrestricted and perpetual availability"--but at prices exponentially higher than ebook or even print list.

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