Ebook collections offer titles that are (1) available in electronic format and (2) licensed to public and academic libraries as theme-based sets. Many libraries subscribe to ProQuest’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ebooks (over 21,300 titles) or some of the over 100 subject sets offered through EBSCO, which cover everything from career success to medicine and from religion to data science. 

A growing number of academic and scholarly publishers have launched their own independent platforms for libraries and patrons to acquire and access ebooks. These platforms allow smaller and independent publishers to embrace innovation, control costs, and boost library sales. Ultimately, publisher-controlled ebook platforms can help libraries foster a more inclusive, innovative, and sustainable ebook economy.

Benefits and Trade-offs of Publisher Platforms

Small scholarly publishers commonly sell to libraries through third parties. These third-party distributors include aggregators such as Baker & Taylor, EBSCO, Gale, ProQuest, JSTOR, OverDrive, Project MUSE, Torrossa, and many others. They are paid on commission, with rates reaching 30 percent of sales. That is money that publishers cannot reinvest in new research, underrepresented authors, or affordable pricing. Larger publishers such as Bloomsbury, Elsevier, Routledge, and Oxford University Press have long hosted their own ebooks.

Direct distribution—a system in which publishers sell and provide access to library ebooks directly through their own platforms—can benefit publishers. Distributing directly to libraries gives publishers end-to-end control of the workflow from authors to libraries to readers, providing insight into user behaviors and preferences and enabling publishers to make more evidence-based business decisions. Publishers can deliver content in reader-friendly formats such as HTML and EPUB, which are unsupported by some third-party distributors. Having a stand-alone platform means “having a say in the digital destiny of our university press,” Charles Watkinson, director of the University of Michigan Press (UMP), which is an integral part of the University of Michigan Library, told LJ. “We still value and participate in all the aggregations,” Watkinson continues, “But the version of record and the most comprehensive and liberally licensed collection is owned and managed by UMP and hosted on infrastructure that is library-owned.” Michigan develops and runs a powerful ebooks platform called Fulcrum (fulcrum.org).

A goal of Fulcrum is to meet “an increasing demand from scholars to create book-length works that take more advantage of digital affordances to offer interactivity and multimedia,” Watkinson says. For example, i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson (doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11738372), published by the University of Michigan Press in 2020, blends poetry, essays, and hip-hop music in a genre-bending multidimensional work. These innovative digital works are impossible to make available through most third-party aggregators.

Direct distribution requires investment in sales and technology, putting it beyond the reach of publishers with smaller catalogues or lesser prestige. Some publishers have responded by pooling their resources into community-governed platforms. These include African Books Collective and academy-owned platforms such as Fulcrum, on which Michigan Publishing hosts ebooks on behalf of small independent partner presses, including the American Council of Learned Societies and Lever Press. Publishing services generate revenue that supports Michigan Publishing’s activity and helps other mission-aligned publishers thrive. Controlling their infrastructure and thus directly managing their overhead costs gives Michigan and other publishers leeway to experiment with open access and other transformational business models. Direct distribution also helps publishers earn revenue by selling collections of important but little-read older titles or backlists. Most small publishers have lean margins, so every sale helps sustain them.

MIT Press, Manchester University Press, and Bristol University Press all launched their own digital platforms between 2018 and 2022. Small independent publishers such as Punctum Books and Schlager Group have similarly embraced direct distribution. More than 20 university presses have distributed their complete or nearly complete corpora to academic libraries using Germany-based publisher De Gruyter’s ebook platform. These publishers rarely stop working with aggregators altogether, but they usually incentivize libraries to purchase publisher-direct by offering special features, discounts, or exclusive content.

There are trade-offs for libraries purchasing ebooks directly from publishers. On the one hand, libraries benefit when publishers can afford steeper discounts because they do not have to pay aggregators. Many academic libraries also appreciate the option to buy collections of ebooks instead of purchasing one title at a time. Buying collections enables libraries to bring economies of scale to collection development work. High-quality metadata and interoperable web infrastructure make it easier for patrons to discover ebooks regardless of where the files are hosted. On the other hand, licensing ebooks directly from publishers means that library staff must maintain access to yet another platform, while readers must familiarize themselves with an additional web interface.

To explore the possibilities, scope, creativity, and mission of independent publishers/distributors of ebook platforms, a look at three presses is instructive.

Lived Places Publishing

Lived Places Publishing (livedplaces publishing.com) is a relatively new independent press cofounded by Chris McAuley, associate professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, and publishing executive David Parker. Lived Places Publishing (LPP) published its first books in 2022. The LPP catalogue lists about 40 titles, with another 25 slated to be published by the end of 2024. According to the publisher’s website, these books are “applied, concise course readings that help faculty illuminate the experience of social identity and the lived places we share.” They are intended for use in college classes.

Although some of the works are scholarly and historical, with their distinctive focus on the intersections of location and identity, most are meant to help students learn from the lived experiences of the authors, many of whom self-identify as Black, Asian American, queer, and more. Readers can immerse themselves in the stories of Korean gay men in Seattle, a Mexican American family in Texas, a woman who owns a small business in the U.S. rust belt, a woman with undiagnosed autism in New York, and members of the Buddhist minority in Bangladesh. Authors come from varied walks of life: scholars, teachers, activists, artists, therapists, and entrepreneurs. Theirs are personal stories coupled with conventional scholarship.

This distinctive approach to learning aligns with the goal of Lived Places Publishing, described on their website as “foster[ing] open access, affordability, and broad accessibility through our library-first collection publishing model.” Libraries purchasing ebooks directly from LPP can engage in interlibrary loan of whole ebooks, lending each ebook to one institution at a time in accordance with U.S. copyright law. LPP’s ebook files have no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, so end users can download and keep the files indefinitely, and entire college classes can access assigned course readings simultaneously. Ebooks come with perpetual access rights—libraries never need to buy a book twice—while five percent of all sales go toward publishing select titles on an open-access basis. Anyone can read and reuse open-access books for free. Libraries usually have to negotiate rigorously with publishers or pay a premium for rights this generous. Librarians will be delighted to see library-friendly license terms offered by default. So far, three titles are openly accessible.

• Getting Out of South Carolina’s Juvenile Justice System by Kimberly Nolan. Ebook freely accessible at doi.org /10.62859/9781916704435.

• Advocating for Queer and BIPOC Survivors of Rape at Public Universities by Taylor Waits, Kimiya Factory, and Coreen Hale. Ebook freely accessible at doi.org/10.62859/9781916704138. 

• Irish University Students with Mental Health Difficulties by Emma Farrell. Ebook freely accessible at livedplacespublishing.com/book/isbn/9781916704855.

The LPP ebook platform is simple and user-friendly. Tabs in the top navigation bar enable users to explore the full catalogue or browse by subject collection. The search functionality is basic—students can search for specific keywords, subjects, titles, authors, ISBNs, or years of publication—but a robust search tool is unnecessary given the relatively small number of titles. A page labeled “Librarian Resource Center” supplies downloadable catalogue records, a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), license terms of use, and other information helpful to librarians. To ensure preservation, the publisher backs up its books in the CLOCKSS digital archive. Usage reports conform to the latest release of the COUNTER Code of Practice.

Libraries must work directly with LPP to purchase DRM-free ebooks or ebook collections (individual titles, all with DRM, are available through EBSCO, ProQuest, and other aggregators). “We prioritize the complete collection sale to help fuel our path to sustainability as a small, mission-driven press,” Parker tells LJ. He notes that building a stand-alone ebook platform in conjunction with LPP’s service provider, Newgen, has enabled Lived Places to achieve “very manageable costs for the publisher, which translates to lower prices for our collection.”

Bristol University Press

Bristol University Press Digital (bristoluniversitypressdigital.com) has hosted nearly 2,000 scholarly ebooks published by Bristol University Press (BUP) and its imprint Policy Press since 1996. The University of Bristol in England owns the press and controls the platform. BUP Digital also hosts the press’s scholarly journals. A third party named Ingenta Connect hosted the journals until May 2022, when BUP partnered with KGL PubFactory to move all BUP content to its own newly launched platform. BUP made this change to integrate its ebook and ejournal content and to implement a unique thematic tagging system based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and its own Global Social Challenges index. This indexing is a unique feature of BUP Digital and reflects the press’s commitment to social good.

Ebook collections are available to purchase on BUP Digital as perpetual or subscription access. Wide-ranging subject collections cover business and economics, children and families, politics and international relations, public policy, social work, sociology, urban studies, and more. When a library purchases a collection, it receives 12 months of access to the entire subject backlist. Libraries have the option to “top up” their subject collections by buying content added to the platform on an annual basis. Ebooks are available for title-by-title purchase through third-party distributors, including JSTOR and EBSCO, but BUP Digital is the only platform on which all content is available DRM-free and is cross-searchable with BUP journals.

The BUP Digital platform is robust and visually appealing. The Advanced Search enables users to perform searches precisely limited to image captions and author affiliations, as well as publication years. Users can filter search results to exclude content not accessible to their library and limit by subject, Global Social Challenge, United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, book series, and imprint. Global readership is transparently reported, with tables and pie graphs showing the annual number of abstract views, full-text views, and downloads per chapter and title. Library patrons can download books one chapter at a time in PDF format, and full text is available in HTML and/or EPUB formats for more recent titles. Library staff can go to the website to download catalogue records and holdings reports, usage statistics that conform to the latest COUNTER standards, license terms of use, and promotional materials. The website is designed to comply with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.1. With robust searchability and flexible and library-friendly ways of selling and providing access to ebooks, BUP offers a model for other academic publishers to follow.

BUP Digital is a sister platform of the Manchester Hive (manchesterhive.com), developed by Manchester University Press. Both platforms are owned by British university presses and are powered by PubFactory, sharing similar functionalities. In contrast to the contemporary social issues that predominate in materials published by Bristol University Press, Manchester is strongest in arts and culture, particularly in the subjects of Shakespeare, gothic literature, and film studies. Both presses also prioritize hosting hundreds of open-access books and journal articles.

African Books Collective

African Books Collective (ABC; ebooks.africanbookscollective.com) is an African-owned, UK-based nonprofit organization that distributes books published by independent African publishers and authored mostly by Africans. ABC is not a publisher, a key distinction in relation to Bristol University Press and Lived Places Publishing. Rather, it is a publisher-owned collective founded in 1985. Its founding publishers elect a management council to oversee strategy. Three UK directors are legally responsible for the company. According to its website, ABC remits 50 percent of net sales back to African publishers, in accordance with its mission to support a sustainable African publishing industry. ABC makes it possible for small, independent, under-resourced African publishers to distribute and promote books globally.

ABC distributes books from dozens of publishers based in more than 20 countries, concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa and Nigeria are especially well represented in the corpus. Most of the books are in English. Publishers include scholarly and university presses, research institutes, commercial publishers, nongovernmental organizations, and children’s book publishers. They include the University of Nairobi Press (Kenya), Ibadan University Press (Nigeria), Mkuki na Nyota (Tanzania), Dryad Press (South Africa), CODESRIA (Senegal), and FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers’ Association. Coverage spans the arts and humanities, sciences and social sciences, law and politics, literature and poetry, religion and theology, and other subjects. Most—but not all—of the scholarly ebooks are available through aggregators: JSTOR, ProQuest, and Project MUSE. Many of the literary and children’s ebooks are exclusive to the ABC platform.

In November 2022, African Books Collective launched a bespoke platform that enables ABC to distribute ebooks directly to libraries globally. “The ABC platform was launched within our broader ethos to enable African publishers to take control of their own distribution,” Executive Director Stephanie Kitchen tells LJ. The platform enables “direct working relationships between ABC and academic library customers, technology support for readers, lower prices for libraries than through aggregators, and higher returns to African publishers.” Developed in partnership with Baobab Ebook Services, the ABC platform hosts more than 2,000 ebooks spanning 30 years of output from over 75 independent African publishers, constituting what ABC calls one of the world’s largest digital collections of African-published books. New titles are added each year. Libraries can purchase these ebooks as a complete library or in collections by subject or publication year. Options include one-time purchases of perpetual rights and annual and multiyear subscriptions.

Despite its unique content, ABC’s platform falls short of some library technical standards, lacking usage data that conforms with the COUNTER Code of Practice or a VPAT to document accessibility compliance. However, catalogue records are available for all titles. The search tool uses open-source catalogue software and supports basic and advanced searching, including standard fields such as publication date range, language, subject, publisher and publisher location, author, title, keyword, and ISBN. Users can filter search results by topic or author and can browse the contents by subject. Ebooks are available in PDF and sometimes EPUB formats, and the vast majority of titles are DRM-free, facilitating broad dissemination and use.

Libraries seeking to decolonize collections and foster bibliodiversity by supporting small and independent publishers in the Global South may find African Books Collective a worthwhile investment.

Evaluating Publishers and Platforms

New ebook platforms raise questions for library workers evaluating ebook collections for potential purchase. Most traditional collection development criteria still apply in these situations. Libraries will want to consider whether the platform’s functionalities meet industry standards. Additionally, they should investigate whether the interface is user-friendly and accessible and whether the resource is cost-effective, with an easily managed subscription model and library-friendly license terms. Above all, libraries should ask whether the content is useful, in demand, and authoritative.

Sustainability is the outstanding consideration for new ebook platforms. When content is available via a widely known aggregator, library workers often assume—rightly or wrongly—that the platform meets minimum standards and that access is reliable long-term, but new ebook platforms are unproven and may fall short of performance standards, or the publisher’s financial stability may be in question. Libraries want to avoid purchasing content that may be unavailable if the platform shuts down or the publisher goes out of business.

Libraries must strive to be good stewards of tax and tuition dollars. They also must be willing to take smart risks on promising new initiatives and strategic partnerships. Libraries can advance their missions by acquiring ebooks hosted on publisher-owned infrastructure. These resources provide access to works from small and independent publishers lifting up culturally diverse voices and centering the experiences of marginalized communities and regions. Bibliodiversity helps ensure the sustainability of inclusive information ecosystems.

Michael Rodriguez is a senior strategist at Lyrasis. He previously oversaw library collection development at the University of Connecticut.