Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury is starting a new ebook rental business that will let UK public library members “lend” titles from its database.
Going live May 4, Bloomsbury Library Online’s target customers are the libraries themselves – packages like kids, sports, fiction, reference and Shakespeare are sold an annual subscription charged at £100 per 100,000 customers and a minimum of £250. But it’s the libraries’ own users who will use their library card ID number to access the service from any web browser.
This is a partnership powered by digital book and magazine distributor Exact Editions‘ platform. Users would access the books at their screens through the vendor’s website. Bloomsbury says the offering can help the British library system, which is “under pressure to reach larger audiences with tighter budgets”. And it’s certainly aimed for a big client win by targeting the public lending system.
If there’s a problem, it’s that the ebook platform market is fragmented – Bloomsbury’s library includes only Bloomsbury’s titles while Exact Editions rival Overdrive carries Penguin, Random House, Hachette Livre and HarperCollins – and, though text can be printed, the experience of reading a book in a web browser is pretty unsatisfying if it’s a novel you’re reading. announcement