Building a Sustainable Digital Reading Library Ecosystem

When the publishing and library communities gather in Chicago for the ALA Annual Conference, June 25–29, one of the most urgent conversations will not be about whether readers want digital books. That ship has sailed. In 2025, readers borrowed 820.5 million digital titles through Libby and Sora, including 379.4 million ebooks and 315.9 million audiobooks. Public library checkouts alone reached 737.6 million. Digital reading is here to stay and is a core part of how communities discover, access, and engage with books.

The Core Tension: Preserve or Protect

However, the digital lending model puts libraries and publishers under competing pressures.

Libraries want digital lending to work more like print: buy a copy, lend it broadly, preserve access, and serve the public mission.

Publishers want to protect the commercial market. Licenses should be limited, priced for repeated use, and structured so they are compensated for high-circulation access.

Why the Library Call Matters Now

That is why a recent letter from five North American library organizations to the Big Five publishers merits attention. The letter, described in Publishers Weekly (June 1 Edition), asks publishers and digital platforms to come to the table around ebook and audiobook licensing models. The signatories include the Urban Libraries Council, Public Library Association, Canadian Urban Libraries Council, Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, and Association for Rural & Small Libraries. Their core message is simple: digital access must become more sustainable for everybody: libraries, publishers, authors, and readers alike.

Libraries and Publishers Share the Same Ecosystem

Libraries are part of the publishing ecosystem, and one of its most important public-facing channels. They introduce readers to authors, provide and preserve community access, support literacy, and help books find audiences far beyond the first wave of retail buyers. Research from the Panorama Project has argued that libraries, bookstores, and online channels often reinforce one another in discovery, engagement, and sales, rather than operating as simple substitutes.

Publishers, for their part, have legitimate responsibilities. They must protect copyright, sustain revenue, invest in and support authors, manage rights, and make sure that digital growth does not erode the economic foundation that makes professional publishing possible. Authors must be paid, publishers must be compensated, and libraries should be able to serve their communities. These goals are not mutually exclusive.

Digital Models Have Outgrown Legacy Workflows

The real problem is not that libraries and publishers have different missions. The problem is that digital content has outgrown many of the models, workflows, and systems built around it.

In print, the rules are familiar. A library purchases a book and lends it over time. In digital, access is typically licensed for a limited period, a limited number of circulations, or both. According to the ALA release, while consumers pay $13 on average for an ebook, libraries may pay $55 or more for a two-year license. For smaller and rural libraries, the pressure can be especially difficult. For larger systems, Publishers Weekly reported that some high-circulation libraries now spend more than 50% of their collections budgets on licensing.

That level of friction should concern everyone in publishing. If libraries cannot afford broad digital collections, readers wait longer, discover less, and eventually may turn to other forms of entertainment, not to mention less legitimate forms of access. If publishers can’t monetize digital use fairly, investment in authors and content suffers. If authors don’t trust the model, the ecosystem loses creative energy. Sustainability requires more than advocacy; it requires better business architecture.

A Better Model Requires Better Data

This is where publishers have an opportunity to lead. The next phase of digital library access should be built around transparency and data. Different content types will need different licensing models. Frontlist bestsellers, backlist titles, religious content, children’s books, and high-demand genre fiction, for example, do not all behave the same way. A one-size-fits-all model is unlikely to satisfy libraries, publishers, or authors.

Better models require better operational control. Publishers need systems that can manage rights, royalties, pricing, contracts, metadata, sales channels, and usage data across both print and digital formats. They need to understand which rights are available, which license terms apply, how revenue is recognized, how royalties are paid, and how institutional demand differs from consumer demand. That is an end-to-end publishing process issue.

Where knk Fits

At knk, this is central to our mission. The knkMedia solution was designed to support modern publishers across the full publishing lifecycle: from concept, through editorial and production, marketing and sales, rights, royalties, and licenses across different publishing verticals, formats, and channels.

Our position is that technology should not replace the hard conversation between libraries and publishers. It should make that conversation more productive. When publishers can see their data clearly, model scenarios, manage rights accurately, and connect licensing activity to royalties and financial outcomes, they are better equipped to negotiate sustainable models. When libraries can articulate demand, budget pressure, and community impact with credible data, publishers can respond with more than defensive assumptions.

ALA 2026: A Chance to Reset the Conversation

ALA 2026 should be the moment to reset the tone. The question should not be whether libraries are paying too much, or publishers are protecting too much. The better question is more like, what business models allow readers to access books, libraries to fulfill their mission, authors to be appropriately compensated, and publishers to keep investing in the next generation of content?

The future of reading depends on publishers and libraries seeing each other not as opponents, but as partners in sustainably promoting the reading habit. The organizations calling for dialogue are right to ask for a new conversation. The publishing industry should meet them there, with data and the operational tools to turn good-faith discussion into workable models.