Axis 360 supports EPUB and PDF files, but does not support Kindle e-readers. That means that libraries that work with Baker & Taylor to supply ebooks to their patrons do not offer ebooks that can be read on Kindle.

Baker & Taylor launched Axis 360 in 2011. It competes against the leading digital library distributor, Overdrive, which has about 35,000 clients worldwide and supports Kindle. Two of the Big Six publishers, however — Penguin and Simon & Schuster — only make their ebooks available through Baker & Taylor or through another library distributor, 3M, which means that Baker & Taylor and 3M could eventually have a competitive advantage over Overdrive.

A previous version of this story said that Macmillan does not make its ebooks available through Overdrive. The publisher does make ebooks available to libraries through Overdrive.

Sourcebooks and Overdrive are running a two-week pilot program called “Big Library Read.” From May 15 to June 1, Overdrive’s 35,000 library clients worldwide have the option to feature a Sourcebooks title, Michael Malone’s The Four Corners of the Sky, on their ebook lending homepage (at no charge to the library). As Library Journal reports:

“Sourcebooks, which has worldwide rights to the book, will chronicle the impact on sales not only for this particular title but also the effect on the other seven books that Malone has published with Sourcebooks. The Amazon rankings will also be monitored (as of today, Four Corners of the Sky had an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of 149,512).”

OverDrive will also track “how many patrons sampled the book, how many checked it out, how many pages were read, and will invite patrons to follow Malone on Facebook and Twitter in order to see how the pilot impacts the author’s social media presence.”

“It has always been an assumed ‘given’ that library support helped drive author success, both short- and long-term,” Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah tells Library Journal. “Seeing if we can provide data around that assumption is fascinating.” Many publishers fear that making ebooks available to libraries will cut into paid book sales, so if the experiment shows increased sales for Malone, publishers could find the result reassuring.

Sourcebooks and Overdrive will present their findings from the program at Book Expo America in June.

New ebooks will be available to libraries at the same time as the print edition. For new ebooks, Hachette is charging libraries three times the price of the “primary” print book. One year after publication, the price of an ebook will drop to 1.5 times the price of the print book. Hachette defines “primary” book price as “the highest-price edition then in print. The ebooks can be checked out an unlimited number of times (with each ebook only available to one patron at a time), and the library does not have to buy a new copy after a year. The publisher says it will review its pricing policy annually.

Hachette is working with all three major library distributors: Overdrive, Baker & Taylor and 3M. Because Hachette is working with Overdrive, this means that the ebooks will be available for Kindle.

The last couple of months have brought many changes to Big 6 publishers’ ebook lending policies, with Penguin and Simon & Schuster both announcing changes to their programs. Penguin announced in March that it would begin making new ebooks available to libraries again, a year after it had pulled them, though it is still only working with a limited number of libraries in a pilot program. Simon & Schuster is making its ebooks available to New York City public libraries in a trial.Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries, but at prices as much as three times higher than the retail price. HarperCollins allows its ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Macmillan is running a two-year trial that makes 1,200 older ebooks available to libraries.

Simon & Schuster had been the only remaining Big Six publisher that did not make its ebooks available to libraries at all.

According to the release:

“The participating libraries can acquire any Simon & Schuster ebook title at any time during the pilot’s one-year term, with each title usable for one year from the date of purchase. Each library can offer an unlimited number of checkouts during the one-year term for which it has purchased a copy; each copy may only be checked out by one user at a time. All of Simon & Schuster’s frontlist and backlist titles that are available as ebooks are eligible for the program, with new titles being made available simultaneous with their publication.”

“In making our full list available we think we will get a better sense of lending patterns and patron behavior,” Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said in a statement, “and I am particularly eager to start seeing the actual data so that we can better understand this still-new phenomenon.”

During the pilot, the libraries will also sell Simon & Schuster titles through their online portals, so that a patron who doesn’t want to wait on the hold list for a particular title can purchase it instead. The library gets a cut each time an ebook is sold through its platform.

Simon & Schuster would not comment on how much it will charge libraries for ebooks. (Random House, for instance, charges three times more than the retail price in some cases.)

Digital library distributor 3M is handling the trial for the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries, with BiblioCommons powering the purchase option. Distributor Baker & Taylor is handling the trial and purchase option for the Queens Library.

With Simon & Schuster’s announcement, all of the Big Six publishers are making at least some ebooks available to libraries, with various restrictions. Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries, but, as noted above, at prices as much as three times higher than the retail price. HarperCollins allows its ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette only makes new ebooks available to some libraries in a pilot program, and charges more than retail price. Macmillan is running a two-year trial that makes 1,200 older ebooks available to libraries.

Now that Penguin is running ebook trials with two new library distributors — Baker & Taylor and 3M — the publisher has decided it is safe to make new ebooks available for lending again, the AP reported Wednesday. Penguin has been tracking ebook checkouts at libraries to make sure they are not cutting into paid book sales, and found that “the effect of library downloads on commercial revenues has been acceptable.”

“Penguin is proud to make all of our eBooks available to library patrons,” Tim McCall, Penguin’s VP of online sales and marketing, said in a statement. “After careful examination of our pilot programs, we are ready to take the next step and offer what consumers and libraries have been asking for, thus fulfilling our mission to bring new writers to readers.”

In its library trials, Penguin allows an ebook to be lent to only one person at a time, and after a year the library has to buy a new copy of the ebook. The prices for libraries are the same as retail prices. Penguin’s library ebooks aren’t available to Kindle users, because Baker & Taylor and 3M do not yet support the format.

Other publishers also place restrictions on ebook library lending. Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries, but at prices as much as three times higher than the retail price. HarperCollins allows its ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette only makes new ebooks available to some libraries in a pilot program, and charges more than retail price. Macmillan is running a two-year trial that makes 1,200 older ebooks available to libraries. Simon & Schuster does not make its ebooks available to libraries.

The pilot is limited to 1,200 older titles from the Minotaur Books mystery and crime fiction imprint (part of Macmillan’s St. Martins division). Libraries will be able to lend out the ebooks for two years or 52 times, whichever comes first, before having to buy a new copy. According to Library Journal, each ebook will cost $25. The ebooks will be available through three different digital library distributors at launch: OverDrive, 3M Cloud Library and Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360.

Macmillan CEO John Sargent said in a statement, “Among the many titles we publish, mystery and crime fiction makes up one of the largest categories and Minotaur Books is the primary source. And, as the library market has always been one of Minotaur’s largest customers, we think that this pilot will provide books especially desired by library patrons.” Alison Lazarus, president of Macmillan’s sales division, told Library Journal that the company “will make assessments along the way as to whether to expand the title selection and whether to continue the program as launched beyond the two-year term.”

Publishers have been reluctant to offer ebooks to libraries in part because they fear that it will cut into sales. Sargent said “ we do not expect [the pilot] will heavily impact our retail sales over time.”

With Macmillan’s new offering, all the big-six publishers except for Simon & Schuster are making ebooks available to libraries in at least a limited way. Penguin is testing its own pilot with libraries in New York, Los Angeles and Cleveland (after previously pulling all its ebooks and digital audiobooks from libraries). Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries but sharply increased the prices last year. HarperCollins allows ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette does not make ebooks published after April 2010 available to libraries, and increased the prices of those that are available last year.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Eric Mueller 

Penguin’s terms with Baker & Taylor and 3M are the same: Ebooks are not available to libraries six months after they are published, an ebook can only be lent to one person at a time and after a year the library has to buy a new copy. 3M and Baker & Taylor don’t work with Kindle e-readers.

Penguin ended its partnership with OverDrive, the largest digital library distributor in the U.S., in February 2012. The publisher cited unspecified security concerns. A user who borrows a Kindle ebook through OverDrive is sent directly to Amazon’s website to download it, which might have been part of the problem.

Penguin is also making digital audiobooks available to libraries with Recorded Books’ OneClickdigital. Recorded Books is separately working on its own library ebook lending program, which will allow publishers a great deal of flexibility in how they make their ebooks available to libraries. The program is expected to launch in beta in early 2013.

Big-six publishers have varying policies for ebooks in libraries. Random House makes all of its ebooks available to libraries but sharply increased the prices this year. HarperCollins allows ebooks to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette does not make ebooks published after April 2010 available to libraries, and increased the prices of those that are available this year. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster do not allow library lending.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Eric Mueller

OverDrive and the ALA conducted the online survey at “thousands of U.S. public library websites powered by OverDrive. 75,384 people completed all or part of it. 78.4 percent of them were female, and the most common age group was 50- to 64-year-olds (34.9 percent), followed by 40- to 49-year-olds (20.1 percent). 40.9 percent had a 2- or 4-year college degree and 33.1 percent had a graduate degree.

Respondents were dedicated readers and library users and were familiar with ebook borrowing: More than half of them — 55.5 percent — had been borrowing ebooks from the library for over 6 months. On average, they visited a physical branch of a library 2.4 times a month, and they visited a digital library site 6.9 times a month.

To reiterate, these are very active library users — 60 percent of them said the library was their preferred place to get books — and big readers. The survey didn’t ask them how many books they read each month, but on average they bought one print book a month and 2.2 digital books (ebooks or digital audiobooks) a month.

An optional question asked respondents whether their book purchases had increased or decreased over the past 6 months. Here’s the breakdown between purchases of print books and ebooks:

We don’t know why many users’ book-buying habits changed and whether this had to do with increased library usage or other factors, but it seems that many of the same people who are borrowing ebooks are also buying more ebooks.

One finding that surprised me is this:

It’s pretty easy to answer “yes” on a question like this, so the fact that nearly half of respondents said no is surprising. It could suggest that users are primarily using library ebook collections to borrow titles they’re not super-passionate about. That wouldn’t be surprising, since digital editions of new titles and bestsellers tend to be scarce in library collections. And the answer could change if more publishers began making new titles available to libraries as ebooks.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / melanzane1013

Penguin removed all of its ebooks from libraries in February.

The latest Penguin library offerings come with a number of limitations. First of all, the very newest Penguin titles aren’t available: For the NYPL and BPL pilot program, Penguin is delaying the availability of new ebooks until six months after their publication, in an attempt to avoid cutting into paid digital and print sales.

3M Cloud Library also does not work with nearly as many client libraries as competitor OverDrive, although the company is expanding. 3M Cloud Library has over 70 client libraries in the U.S., while OverDrive works with 17,000 libraries (public, school, college and corporate) — so it is less likely that a library near you offers ebooks through 3M. Finally, 3M still does not support Kindle. It works with PCs, iOS, Nook and Android.

Hachette makes older ebooks available to libraries through digital distributor OverDrive. In an email obtained by Gary Price at Infodocket, Hachette tells libraries using OverDrive that it “will be raising its eBook prices on October 1, 2012 on [its] currently available eBook catalog (~3,500 eBook titles with release dates of April 2010 and earlier). On average prices will increase 220%.”

“We believe these terms fairly reflect the value to the library customer, that the ebooks will not need periodic replacement as do print copies, and there is no limit on amount of borrowing activity per ebook copy,” Hachette VP, communications Sophie Cottrell told me.

Separately, Hachette is testing a pilot program that makes new ebooks available to some libraries. That pilot program is presumably not run with OverDrive but with its competitors like 3M Cloud Library and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360.

Random House is the only big-six publisher to offer unrestricted access to its titles, despite the price increases this spring. Penguin recently ended its relationship with OverDrive and no longer distribute e-books and digital audiobooks to most libraries, though it is running a one-year pilot program with 3M with the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster do not make e-books available to libraries. HarperCollins allows e-books to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Ian Barbour