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Completing a deal originally announced in August, Douglas County Libraries last week acquired almost 10,000 ebooks from indie distributor Smashwords, using the company’s new Library Direct service. The transaction took much longer than initially expected, but it ultimately helped both parties discover ways to weed, filter, and tweak a list of independent titles to develop an optimal collection for DCL’s patrons.
Califa, Douglas County Libraries, and The Internet Archive’s Open Library have made purchase commitments to acquire variations of the top 10,000 best-selling ebooks from indie distributor Smashwords. All told, the three separate commitments total about $100,000. The sales will occur through Library Direct, a new service that Smashwords has launched to facilitate the transfer of large collections of ebooks to libraries.
