in June 2020, OverDrive was sold to private equity firm KKR
August 9, 2023 10:55 AM Subscribe
Karawynn Long on looking for the reason why the ability to recommend a book to your library’s buyers disappeared from all OverDrive web portals. On the KKR sale: the ones who (like me, usually) pay no particular attention to the world of “high finance”, don’t recognize the moniker, and so had zero reaction, and the ones like my friend, a NYT business journalist, whose reaction as soon as I said “KKR” was the aural equivalent of the Munch scream emoji. (SL Substack). Bonus: a librarian on their experience purchasing for a single branch library that is part of a state wide consortium.
Thanks for this. I’ve been wondering ever since I started using Libby why so many books I was interested in reading (including a few long time best sellers) aren’t available on the app. I never would have guessed this for the answer.
posted by Mchelly at 11:18 AM on August 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Mchelly at 11:18 AM on August 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I’m kind of over every little change in life being attributed to “enshitification”. It has become as cliched as “late stage capitalism.”
posted by interogative mood at 11:21 AM on August 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:21 AM on August 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
I was reading this last night and thinking about how to push our library system to take some eggs out of the Overdrive basket. If any Hawaii-fites are interested in working on that, memail me!
i fear that a decade from now, we'll be looking back on the library e-book era with nostalgia.
posted by DebetEsse at 11:22 AM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
i fear that a decade from now, we'll be looking back on the library e-book era with nostalgia.
posted by DebetEsse at 11:22 AM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was reading this last night and thinking about how to push our library system to take some eggs out of the Overdrive basket.
is there any alternative at all?
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:35 AM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
is there any alternative at all?
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:35 AM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
In Rhode Island, it's a statewide contract (AIUI), so local libraries are all in it together. Which kind of sucks, honestly, since we all get screwed at once by the e-book publishers.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:35 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 11:35 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
KKR just bought Simon and Schuster too. This is going to get worse, for readers and for authors.
posted by freelanceastro at 11:37 AM on August 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by freelanceastro at 11:37 AM on August 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
I’m kind of over every little change in life being attributed to “enshitification”.
I read it more as a description than a reason or attribution. You see it a lot because things rarely seem to change for the better.
posted by Dysk at 11:51 AM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I read it more as a description than a reason or attribution. You see it a lot because things rarely seem to change for the better.
posted by Dysk at 11:51 AM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hmmm. It appears OneDrive has also acquired Kanopy.
So, that's not great.
posted by chromecow at 11:52 AM on August 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
So, that's not great.
posted by chromecow at 11:52 AM on August 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
is there any alternative at all?
CloudLibrary is the major one that I know of. But they don't do consortia. They kind of act like one... sorta. But not really.
For the library system I work for, because we're small (with a budget to match) we rely on being part of a buying consortium in order to offer a decent sized ebook collection (our patrons can borrow titles from the consortium, and we purchase additional titles to supplement). So even though a lot of this is now causing me to warily eye up some of OverDrive's competitors, the bottom line is if we moved we'd never be able to replace what we have access to now, and we don't have enough budget to split between two services.
posted by eekernohan at 11:52 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
CloudLibrary is the major one that I know of. But they don't do consortia. They kind of act like one... sorta. But not really.
For the library system I work for, because we're small (with a budget to match) we rely on being part of a buying consortium in order to offer a decent sized ebook collection (our patrons can borrow titles from the consortium, and we purchase additional titles to supplement). So even though a lot of this is now causing me to warily eye up some of OverDrive's competitors, the bottom line is if we moved we'd never be able to replace what we have access to now, and we don't have enough budget to split between two services.
posted by eekernohan at 11:52 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
is there any alternative at all?
Palace, possibly, nascently?
(Man, I’d love to get this through Worldcat somehow.)
posted by clew at 11:53 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Palace, possibly, nascently?
(Man, I’d love to get this through Worldcat somehow.)
posted by clew at 11:53 AM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
KKR was the subject of the famous 1989 book (and subsequent movie) Barbarians at the GateAh, I thought I recognized that acronym from my '80s Guinness Book of World Records.
posted by clawsoon at 11:55 AM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
No public goods in private hands.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:58 AM on August 9, 2023 [34 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 11:58 AM on August 9, 2023 [34 favorites]
Rentiers must die.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:00 PM on August 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:00 PM on August 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
is there any alternative at all?
Both ProQuest and EBSCO have public library database products and title-by-title perpetual ebook purchase options for the public library market, although both of them are definitely more focused on the academic market. (OverDrive has recently launched its bid into the academic market and it's making everyone a little nervous. It's an already-crowded field.)
posted by odd ghost at 12:01 PM on August 9, 2023
Both ProQuest and EBSCO have public library database products and title-by-title perpetual ebook purchase options for the public library market, although both of them are definitely more focused on the academic market. (OverDrive has recently launched its bid into the academic market and it's making everyone a little nervous. It's an already-crowded field.)
posted by odd ghost at 12:01 PM on August 9, 2023
It seems like what's needed is an information consumers union, organizing across a range of issues related to information access as a public good. However, aside from the issue of net neutrality, I don't seem to encounter people organizing along these lines.
posted by washburn at 12:19 PM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by washburn at 12:19 PM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
is there any alternative at all?
Besides all of the above, Anna's Archive exists and intends to be a harder-to-squash replacement for Z-Library. No, I'm not linking it here.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:27 PM on August 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Besides all of the above, Anna's Archive exists and intends to be a harder-to-squash replacement for Z-Library. No, I'm not linking it here.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:27 PM on August 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
The KKR/OneDrive/S&S thing really bites because of how terrible e-book contracts already are for libraries.
But I got unreasonably excited for a half a second because I misread the bonus as "a librarian on their experience purchasing of a single branch library"
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:55 PM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
But I got unreasonably excited for a half a second because I misread the bonus as "a librarian on their experience purchasing of a single branch library"
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:55 PM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
In Rhode Island, it's a statewide contract
Same in Vermont.
And I don't want to negate her point which is quite good but there are some specific aspects of what she says, that aren't quite right. Her general point is good/right/accurate, some specifics are wrong in an "in the weeds" sort of way about hwo Overdrive works and how libraries interact with them. If you follow the comments when it's linked in librarian spaces you can sort of read along and see what they are. Currently the best discussion I've seen is on Bluesky, so apologies for vaguebooking.
Z-Library.
Which also still exists. And please folks, as much as I appreciate your enthusiasms and have used these sites myself, let's not turn this into a piracy tips thread.
“enshitification”
I can't tell if this is me being older and out of touch or if this term really does play entirely differently within discussion among the extremely online (where it has a meaning, and we mostly know/understand it) than among people who aren't very online (where you either have to explain it or it's seen as just meaning "something made this shitty"), so I mostly talk about late capitalism and go from there.
Palace is good, 3M has a product, some of the bigger library systems can use things like Simply-E if they own their own digital content or get favorable licensing. It's a whole THING. I helped someone get their Libby books onto their Kindle last week and boy howdy that was a journey. The Internet Archive still lends books, kind of. But honestly for most libraries in the US Overdrive is the only game in town.
This has been an issue for libraries since we started licensing and not purchasing content. Pulling out of these terrible relationships just means depriving patrons of books (to say nothing about accessible books, for many) literally not available anywhere else; libraries exist because of the support of the communities they serve, communities which can be as small as a town or as large as a state. I'm not here saying "Woe, nothing can be done!" just saying it's a complex fight where you have to really consider how to be tactical.
posted by jessamyn at 4:34 PM on August 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
Same in Vermont.
And I don't want to negate her point which is quite good but there are some specific aspects of what she says, that aren't quite right. Her general point is good/right/accurate, some specifics are wrong in an "in the weeds" sort of way about hwo Overdrive works and how libraries interact with them. If you follow the comments when it's linked in librarian spaces you can sort of read along and see what they are. Currently the best discussion I've seen is on Bluesky, so apologies for vaguebooking.
Z-Library.
Which also still exists. And please folks, as much as I appreciate your enthusiasms and have used these sites myself, let's not turn this into a piracy tips thread.
“enshitification”
I can't tell if this is me being older and out of touch or if this term really does play entirely differently within discussion among the extremely online (where it has a meaning, and we mostly know/understand it) than among people who aren't very online (where you either have to explain it or it's seen as just meaning "something made this shitty"), so I mostly talk about late capitalism and go from there.
Palace is good, 3M has a product, some of the bigger library systems can use things like Simply-E if they own their own digital content or get favorable licensing. It's a whole THING. I helped someone get their Libby books onto their Kindle last week and boy howdy that was a journey. The Internet Archive still lends books, kind of. But honestly for most libraries in the US Overdrive is the only game in town.
This has been an issue for libraries since we started licensing and not purchasing content. Pulling out of these terrible relationships just means depriving patrons of books (to say nothing about accessible books, for many) literally not available anywhere else; libraries exist because of the support of the communities they serve, communities which can be as small as a town or as large as a state. I'm not here saying "Woe, nothing can be done!" just saying it's a complex fight where you have to really consider how to be tactical.
posted by jessamyn at 4:34 PM on August 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
"Enshitification" is a reference to a Cory Doctorow article which discusses how platforms die. It's something that happens as platforms change how the platform allocates value and an ability to extract value from both users and business customers when the platform acts as a middleman between the endpoints of users and whatever the users are connecting to, be that videos on YouTube, books at libraries, or 280-character strings.
posted by caphector at 5:26 PM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by caphector at 5:26 PM on August 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Where does Hoopla fit in all of this? I‘ve been using it a fair amount, because it has a delightfully eclectic selection, but my sense is that it’s not ideal from the point of view of the libraries.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:30 PM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:30 PM on August 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Where does Hoopla fit in all of this?
Libraries pay per-checkout for Hoopla items, or at least they recently used to. So by all means PLEASE use Hoopla if it has the thing you want to watch or read, that's what the money is for, but if you're just kind of idly clicking around it's worth understanding that it's usually paid for differently (same with Kanopy though that may change). Here's a Reddit thread from a few years back with some good links about how libraries pay for this stuff.
posted by jessamyn at 6:07 PM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Libraries pay per-checkout for Hoopla items, or at least they recently used to. So by all means PLEASE use Hoopla if it has the thing you want to watch or read, that's what the money is for, but if you're just kind of idly clicking around it's worth understanding that it's usually paid for differently (same with Kanopy though that may change). Here's a Reddit thread from a few years back with some good links about how libraries pay for this stuff.
posted by jessamyn at 6:07 PM on August 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Besides all of the above, Anna's Archive exists and intends to be a harder-to-squash replacement for Z-Library.
Overdrive is increasingly enshittified and maddeningly rent-seeking... but it still offers some version of the traditional reader/library/author relationship, where libraries buy copies of books (helping support authors) and make them available to readers (allowing people to read more books than they would otherwise afford). I hate that KKR is sucking resources out of that process but at least there is some flow of money from the government to libraries to authors.
Anna's Archive, as far as I can tell, is just a piracy website with a shiny idealogical gloss. The front page says their piracy is "not at the expense of authors" but what they seem to mean is, "In a non-capitalist world, authors wouldn't need to charge for their work. We are going to imagine we are in that world so we don't feel guilty about screwing authors."
To be clear, If you as an individual genuinely can't afford a book and you can't get it out of a library, I'm not going to judge you for pirating it. But please don't pretend that websites like Anna's Archive are forces for good. KKR has a market cap of $69 billion. Authors earn, on the average, less than minimum wage. When books are pirated en masse, who do you think the lost income is going to hurt most?
DISCLAIMER: I am an author so I obviously have a personal stake in this.
DISCLAIMER 2: The minimum wage link goes to UK data. Somebody with better search skills than I could probably find the equivalent for other countries.
posted by yankeefog at 1:22 AM on August 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Overdrive is increasingly enshittified and maddeningly rent-seeking... but it still offers some version of the traditional reader/library/author relationship, where libraries buy copies of books (helping support authors) and make them available to readers (allowing people to read more books than they would otherwise afford). I hate that KKR is sucking resources out of that process but at least there is some flow of money from the government to libraries to authors.
Anna's Archive, as far as I can tell, is just a piracy website with a shiny idealogical gloss. The front page says their piracy is "not at the expense of authors" but what they seem to mean is, "In a non-capitalist world, authors wouldn't need to charge for their work. We are going to imagine we are in that world so we don't feel guilty about screwing authors."
To be clear, If you as an individual genuinely can't afford a book and you can't get it out of a library, I'm not going to judge you for pirating it. But please don't pretend that websites like Anna's Archive are forces for good. KKR has a market cap of $69 billion. Authors earn, on the average, less than minimum wage. When books are pirated en masse, who do you think the lost income is going to hurt most?
DISCLAIMER: I am an author so I obviously have a personal stake in this.
DISCLAIMER 2: The minimum wage link goes to UK data. Somebody with better search skills than I could probably find the equivalent for other countries.
posted by yankeefog at 1:22 AM on August 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
> The front page says their piracy is "not at the expense of authors"
I see they have one of my books there. It's not at my expense, I suppose, but it's certainly not to my benefit.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:30 AM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I see they have one of my books there. It's not at my expense, I suppose, but it's certainly not to my benefit.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:30 AM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Gah! Another curtain drawn back on Yet Another Late Capitalist Scam. I've been wondering why the public library I use always has relatively few copies of ebooks, no matter the publication, and a startlingly higher ratio of waiting subscribers per copy on ebooks than paper copies. It just didn't make sense, in a world moving so completely, in every other arena, away from hardcopy. And then the other shoe drops. Of course. Sigh. Thanks.
posted by soulsailor at 8:25 AM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by soulsailor at 8:25 AM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
End the carried-interest loophole and raise capital gains taxes.
posted by rhizome at 4:17 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 4:17 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I feel like public libraries should’ve gone all in on open-source/free software thirty years ago (maybe the people with the vision weren’t at the table when decisions were being made, because there were definitely librarians saying this thirty years ago), and fought harder for first-sale for digital content twenty years ago (maybe we did the best we could but capital tends to win), but we are where we are.
Overpaying for software from mediocre companies in an industry where big fish swallow up smaller ones, circulating ebooks that cost us more than their print equivalents, and falling victim to enshittification or late-stage capitalism or whatever you want to call it just like everybody else is.
It’s not just would-be book banners that are coming for public libraries, it’s also the invisible hand. We need to be fighting ‘em both.
posted by box at 5:34 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Overpaying for software from mediocre companies in an industry where big fish swallow up smaller ones, circulating ebooks that cost us more than their print equivalents, and falling victim to enshittification or late-stage capitalism or whatever you want to call it just like everybody else is.
It’s not just would-be book banners that are coming for public libraries, it’s also the invisible hand. We need to be fighting ‘em both.
posted by box at 5:34 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just went to Overdrive.com to look for a book, and discovered you can no longer log into the main site. It used to be that if you had a lot of library cards, you could enter all of them into a general Overdrive account, and look for a book there instead of across a dozen individual accounts at libraries. Enshittification continues.
posted by tavella at 7:36 PM on August 10, 2023
posted by tavella at 7:36 PM on August 10, 2023
I can do that with Libby, tavella.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:56 AM on August 11, 2023
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:56 AM on August 11, 2023
The iOS version of Libby just notfied me that it will search my other libraries if it doesn't find any results in my current one. They are making the regular overdrive site harder to use all the time in order to force people to use Libby. I do use the Libby app, but I also like using both of the websites. Stop removing features, people.
posted by soelo at 6:49 AM on August 11, 2023
posted by soelo at 6:49 AM on August 11, 2023
Today’s publisher’s weekly: ‘the sale of Simon &Schuster could be announced as soon as this week. Media reports say the private equity firm KKR, HarperCollins, and… are in contention to buy the publisher. ’
This can’t be good.
posted by bq at 3:39 PM on August 11, 2023
This can’t be good.
posted by bq at 3:39 PM on August 11, 2023
I don't see any way to do that in the Android version of Libby? I just downloaded it and added two of my libraries, and it would only search in the one I had currently chosen, as opposed to being able to search across all of them.
posted by tavella at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023
posted by tavella at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2023
Ah, you're right -- either I'm misremembering or Libby doesn't do that for iPhones any more, either. I get a message saying "Libby now automatically searches all your libraries if no results are found at your current library." When I place a hold it picks the library with the shortest waiting list out of the three I have cards at. (At least it did last time I placed a hold, and this is just for ebooks.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:19 PM on August 11, 2023
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:19 PM on August 11, 2023
In Libby, when searching for a book that doesn’t turn up a result in your currently selected library, click to filter results and scroll down to select “deep search” which will search across all your libraries. Also if a result turns up but isn’t available, click on the library card icon to the right of the title to see status of that tile across all your libraries. Finally, if you live anywhere in California you should know that you can get a card at any California public library by visiting it, you don’t have to live in town.
posted by cali at 11:43 AM on August 12, 2023
posted by cali at 11:43 AM on August 12, 2023
KKR had the winning bid. They will own the delivery method, the ifnroamtion about use, and now they will own the source of content. this is bad.
posted by bq at 3:01 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by bq at 3:01 PM on August 13, 2023
They're building a vertical monopoly? On the other hand, this article notes that KKR just sold an audiobook publisher (RBmedia) to another investment firm. That puzzles me. Maybe they were worried about regulatory vetoes of the S&S deal (The government blocked a purchase with penguin Random house)
posted by bq at 4:26 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by bq at 4:26 PM on August 13, 2023
Open source wasn’t going to solve the overdrive problem because the issue has always been licensing the content. Publishers want to figure out how to grab your whole local library budget and turn it into a subscription plan.
posted by interogative mood at 7:03 PM on August 13, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 7:03 PM on August 13, 2023
Forcing people off Overdrive and using Libby made me sad. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and in Overdrive you simply download the title and have access to the title for the duration of the loan, simple. With Libby it checks its backend (presumably) for access every time before the audio player starts, and if it can't connect to the server, it won't play -- hugely inconvenient on the plane and when one simply doesn't have internet access.
In Libby, syncing bookmarks between two devices is a very dicey affair and I've learned to try to avoid doing that if possible. I remember that working seamlessly in Overdrive before the syncing ability just went away.
Oh and also Libby's audio player has a bug of losing big chunks of my bookmarks once in a while.
posted by of strange foe at 9:01 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
In Libby, syncing bookmarks between two devices is a very dicey affair and I've learned to try to avoid doing that if possible. I remember that working seamlessly in Overdrive before the syncing ability just went away.
Oh and also Libby's audio player has a bug of losing big chunks of my bookmarks once in a while.
posted by of strange foe at 9:01 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here in Ireland all public libraries are one consortium and we use Belinda/BorrowBox for ebooks. But one of the items in the recent national strategy document was examining options to this as it is hugely expensive, with costs rising all the time.
Plus you get publishers who refuse to sell to libraries, Hachette from what I recall are one, although maybe just for audio... And others who have embargos so we can't buy ebooks for 3 or 6 months. Library users are unaware and so think it is just bad customer service
posted by Fence at 5:48 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Plus you get publishers who refuse to sell to libraries, Hachette from what I recall are one, although maybe just for audio... And others who have embargos so we can't buy ebooks for 3 or 6 months. Library users are unaware and so think it is just bad customer service
posted by Fence at 5:48 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
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