Random House is now the only big six publisher to allow unrestricted access to all of its e-books in libraries—and it said yesterday it will continue to do so, though it is raising prices.

Hoping to skirt Penguin’s library e-book restrictions by checking out a hot new title as a digital audiobook instead? Sorry, that strategy will no longer work as Penguin changed its library policies again today.

OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the current New York Times e-book bestseller lists. Here’s why, plus a few interesting tidbits.

Penguin is once again making its e-books available to libraries through Kindle, OverDrive reports. New Penguin e-books, however, remain unavailable to libraries on any platform. Update, 11/28/2011: Penguin has issued a statement and I have updated this post.

It’s no longer necessary to go to the library for a new book—you can just visit your local library’s website from home or from your mobile phone to check out an e-book. And that practice is taking off. OverDrive, the leading distributor of e-books and digital audiobooks to libraries, reports…

Nook, Kobo and *Sony* Reader users can borrow e-books from libraries, but Kindle has been a holdout. Now it appears that library lending for Kindle will launch next month.

The number of people that check out e-books from libraries is still relatively small—under 15 percent, according to a January Digital Book World survey. But as e-book sales surpass print sales and e-readers add support for lending books, libraries and publishers have to respond quickly. Now OverDrive, the leading distributor…

Romance is hot: It generated $1.36 billion in book sales in 2009, making up 13.2 percent of the consumer book market—the largest share of any genre. It is also the fastest-growing segment of the e-book market, comprising over 20 percent of all e-book purchases. Several publishers have even launched “digital-first”…

Ebooks distributor OverDrive is expanding its online catalog to include MP3 audiobooks, the company told us. Publishers who are participating in OverDrive’s audiobooks program include Random House Audio, Blackstone Audiobooks, Hachette Book Group and Books in Motion, among others. The MP3 titles, which naturally come without copy protection software, will…