ACPL offers multiple options for e-books, demand increases

The Allen County Public Library app.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – The Allen County Public Library (ACPL) discussed Friday the process of buying and rebuying e-books, and the growing demand for e-books.

OverDrive and Midwest Tape are vendors for the ACPL, those companies have platforms one the ACPL uses is Hoopla. Another platform is Libby, on both, people can use them for reading and listening to audiobooks. Hoopla offers music and movies.

Matthew Etzel, the collections services manager at the ACPL, explained how repurchasing e-books works.

“Unlike a print book, which we buy, and keep until it wears, or loses popularity, e-books usually gets returned within two years of us buying it,” said Etzel. “We would then have to repurchase that book for the same price that we bought it before, to meet the demand.”

Etzel added around 30% of everything the library purchases on e-books is rebuying it. For the ACPL, depending on the popularity of an e-book, purchasing one can be expensive.

“If you went on Amazon to buy a Kindle book, you would pay generally anywhere between $10 $20 for rent,” Etzel said. “For us, it’s about $15 to vary for the average book, and more popular authors tend to have higher wages you pay upwards of $60.” “Some e-books, audiobooks in particular are very expensive, we can pay as much as $150 for a single copy,” said Etzel.

The ACPL is always watching ahead of time to see what new releases will be coming out to fulfill the demand of popular titles.

The demand for e-books grows everyday, around 25% of all checkouts at the library are e-books, according to the ACPL.

If you don’t already have one, the ACPL encourages the community to get a library card so you can use all of the resources they offer.