Simon & Schuster, one of the last holdouts among the big New York trade houses that did not offer e-books for library lending, has announced a one-year pilot e-book lending program with New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Library. Under the pilot program, S&S will make its complete catalogue available to libraries for unlimited checkout for a period of one year—after which, the e-books much be repurchased—while also making all titles also available for retail purchase via the library web site.
 
Under the new pilot program—scheduled to launch April 30 for NYPL and Brooklyn, and mid-May for Queens—library patrons can borrow an e-book, or they may purchase a copy of an S&S e-book from library Web sites and the libraries will receive a share of the proceeds from each sale. Libraries can purchase any S&S e-book title—frontlist or backlist—for lending for a year from the date of purchase. Each title can still only be checked out one users at a time—despite the ability to offer an unlimited number of digital copies. But unlike the HarperCollins model—which limited library checkouts to 26 per title—during the year of purchase, there is no limit on the number of checkouts for any title.
 
Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of S&S, said, “We are delighted to partner with these libraries, which have shown an extraordinary willingness to try innovative models with the potential to be a longterm solution for all involved.”
Asked about pricing, both for library circulation and retail purchase, a spokesperson for S&S said pricing will be 'quite competitive" but declined to give specific pricing information and referred PW to 3M, BiblioCommons and B&T.

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