reading

Book sales, both digital and physical, increased in 2020. Book borrowing did too, with OverDrive reporting 430 million ebooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines browsed in 2020. This is a 33% increase over 2019.

The most significant genre growth in 2020 was children’s and YA fiction and nonfiction because of remote and hybrid learning. In addition, more than 2 million checkouts occurred through Public Library CONNECT partnerships and the Sora student reading app. More public library and school partnerships than ever enabled students to use their school credentials to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from both their school and local public library.

As of March 24 the Internet Archive suspended wait lists for its collection of books by creating a National Emergency Library.

This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.

During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar, and that people who cannot physically access their local libraries because of closure or self-quarantine can continue to read and thrive during this time of crisis, keeping themselves and others safe.

The Big Five book publishers had a plan to hurt consumers by imposing limitations on eBook licensing to libraries. One of them—Macmillan—is backing out.

There are times in life when differences should be put aside,” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a memo to librarians obtained by Publishers Weekly. “Effective on Friday (or whenever thereafter our wholesalers can effect the change), Macmillan will return to the library e-book pricing model that was in effect on Oct. 31, 2019. In addition, we will be lowering some ebook prices on a short term basis to help expand libraries collections in these difficult times. Stay safe.

You have literally no “differences” with libraries other than money. And implying that you’re doing this because of the coronavirus is, to put it politely, shady. Not to mention all the libraries boycotting Macmillan. No, this is entirely a gesture of good will because of “these difficult times.”

For several years now I’ve been using a wonderful service called BookBub. It sends you alerts when ebooks go on sale. You pick the genres you’re interested in and you’ll get an email or notification every day. Literally about five minutes ago I got an email from them about another service they have called Chirp. It gives you the same deals except for audiobooks.

To thank you for being a BookBub member, I want to invite you to be one of the first to access our new platform for audiobook deals, Chirp! Chirp offers audiobooks selected by the same BookBub editors you trust at up to 95% off.

I love listening to audiobooks on my daily commute, while cleaning up around the house, and even while exercising. With Chirp I can binge audiobooks and discover new authors without breaking the bank.

The best part is that there’s no subscription fee or commitment, and new deals are added daily!

Right now, books published in the U.S. before 1924 are in the public domain. This means they are publicly owned and everyone can use and copy them. But there’s a loophole in copyright law which gives up to 75% of books published between 1923 and 1964 secret public domain status. It’s hard to figure out which ones they are, so a group of libraries, archivists, and volunteers are finding these public domain books, scanning them, and uploading them to the internet.

Richardson notes that much of that heavy lifting is being done by volunteers at organizations like Project Gutenberg, a nonprofit effort to digitize and archive cultural works. These volunteers are tasked with locating a copy of the book in question, scanning it, proofing it, then putting out HTML and plain-text editions.