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.

To start, the three library systems using the program are Colorado’s Douglas County libraries, California-based library network Califa and Internet Archive’s free online library Open Library. In order to work with Library Direct, the libraries have to operate their own ebook lending systems. (Smashwords works separately with digital library distributors Baker & Taylor and 3M Cloud.)

On its blog, Smashwords explains how Library Direct works:

Previously, most libraries relied upon published reviews to guide their acquisition decisions. Under the Smashwords model, the curation is crowdsourced based on aggregated retail sales data drawn from across the Smashwords distribution network which includes the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, the Diesel eBookstore and others.

Qualifying libraries can select from the top 10,000, 20,000 or any other large number of titles, and can custom-filter the titles by category and price range.

Douglas County, Califa and Open Library will each acquire “some variation” of Smashwords’ top-10,000 bestselling titles, with the three deals totaling around $100,000.

About 45,000 authors and indie publishers work with Smashwords. They can opt out of Library Direct, but they won’t know if their book has been included in the program until it shows up in their Sales and Payment report. “We don’t reveal sales rank on the site, though I suppose now might be a good time to reconsider that,” Smashwords founder and CEO Mark Coker acknowledged in the comments.

Separately, Smashwords officially launched a pricing tool that lets authors set custom pricing for libraries. (Coker told me this feature was coming at BEA.) Of 150 Smashwords authors who completed a survey, over half said they would make their books available to libraries either for free or for a price lower than retail.

3M doesn’t currently support Amazon’s Kindle, the most popular e-reader in the country.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the pilot, in an effort to protect paid e-book sales, “will delay the release of e-books to the libraries for six months after the titles go on sale in stores and online.” Christopher Platt, NYPL director of collections and circulation, tells the WSJ “he hopes Penguin might eventually agree to make some titles available immediately, while retaining the six-month delay for hot-selling titles.”

Each e-book will expire after a year and the library will have to buy it again.

Other big-six publishers also have restrictions on e-book library lending, or do not make e-books available at all. Random House is the only big-six publisher that makes all of its e-books available to libraries, but it sharply increased its prices in March. HarperCollins allows an e-book to be borrowed 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy. Hachette is offering new e-books to some libraries, also in a pilot program, but hasn’t confirmed which libraries or distributors it is working with. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan do not make e-books available to libraries at all.

Troubles with Kindle

When Penguin first removed its e-book titles from OverDrive in November 2011, it cited “concerns about the security of our digital editions” and also stopped lending e-books to libraries through Kindle. Specifically, Penguin might have been angry that when a library patron selects “Get for Kindle” on OverDrive, he or she is sent straight to Amazon’s website (rather than checking out the book from within the library site) and has to be logged into his or her Amazon account to get the book.

3M is in talks with Amazon to provide support for Kindle, but it doesn’t do so yet. The Kansas State Library, another library working with 3M, said recently that “Amazon had asked to postpone discussion with 3M until June (back in March) so we are hoping to receive more information soon.”

Related stories

Hachette is offering new e-books to some libraries

Random House sharply increases library e-book prices

Penguin ends e-book library lending and relationship with OverDrive

Why might a publisher pull its e-books from libraries?

Photo courtesy of Flickr / melanzane1013