I feel I need to make a clarification on yesterday’s post title How to Talk to Your Patrons About Penguin & Other Publishers Not Loaning eBooks to Libraries - Penguin did NOT stop doing business with libraries. They stopped doing business with OverDrive. As Publisher’s Lunch Points out: As we have reported multiple times, but does not seem to have seeped out into general reports or public consciousness, multiple publishers have told us that Overdrive’s implementation of their Kindle library lending–in which library patrons are sent to a commercial, third-party retailer, in this case Amazon–is in their view a direct violation of Overdrive’s contracts. Remember that in November, Penguin said clearly it “informed suppliers to libraries that it expected them to abide by existing agreements to offer older digital titles to libraries only if those files were held behind the firewalls of the suppliers.” Not the firewalls of retailers. Also in November, Penguin said it had “subsequently been informed by Amazon that it had not been consulted by Overdrive about the terms of Penguin’s agreement with Overdrive,” which, you can reasonably infer, does not allow Kindle lending the way Overdrive was executing it. It just so happens that OverDrive is the
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