How e-lending in public libraries affects the book market

Question 1: Is there a difference in the title-related usage intensity between print and e-loan copies?

The study initially comes to the conclusion that e-loans are used much more intensively per copy than print loans. While print books are borrowed 5.8 times per copy in the year of publication, e-books are borrowed 14.1 times. In the second and third years, the differences become more pronounced. Adjusted for the different loan periods, e-books are borrowed 70% more often than print books in the year of publication.

In e-lending, books with windowing, a blocking period for e-lending, are used more intensively after the windowing period has expired than books without windowing. However, this may also be because windowing is applied to more popular books.

Question 2: How does e-lending affect the purchasing market for e-books and print books? What is the effect of windowing?

The econometric analysis of the study has shown that windowing has a significant, positive effect on sales figures and sales revenue in the consumer market – both in the e-book and in the print market. According to estimates, windowing increases sales revenue for e-books by 9.9% and for print books by 3.5%. The effects are particularly strong for bestsellers and fiction.

Question 3: What are the economic impacts of e-lending or windowing on market participants?

Based on the results of questions 1 and 2, it is estimated that lifting windowing would reduce e-book sales in the current situation (as of 2022) by -4.6% to -9.2%, or -11.1 to -22.5 million euros, while sales in the higher-revenue print market would be estimated to fall by -0.7% to -3.5%, or -27.0 to -131.3 million euros.

According to the study, the abolition of windowing would result in the following changes in sales for market participants:

• Authors: -3.2 to -13.6 million
• Publishers: -17.6 to -76.2 million euros
• Book trade: -13.8 to -53.2 million euros
• Aggregators: +0.3 million euros

The additional revenue from the sale of additional e-book licenses would not be able to compensate for the losses overall. According to calculations, the abolition of windowing would result in a loss of sales of between -37 and 152.7 million euros per year for the book market.

In addition, future developments up to 2027 should be estimated in two scenarios – with constant and with increasing e-lending. In both scenarios, the revenue losses increase compared to the baseline scenario. If e-lending increases, the revenue losses could be estimated to be between -13.7 and -27.4 million euros in the e-book market and -33.6 to -161.7 million euros in the print market, which corresponds to an increase of around 23% compared to the baseline scenario in 2022.

Question 4: How do the socio-demographic backgrounds of e-lending users and print lending users differ from the general population and buyers on the book market?

The analysis shows that library users are more likely to have a higher income and higher level of education than the German population as a whole. This also applies to book buyers. Print lending and e-lending users also had an above-average income and higher level of education than buyers.

E-lending users and print lending users also buy books more often than the entire population in Germany. In addition, an analysis of changing purchasing behavior shows that readers spend less on the book market when they start using e-lending. However, due to the small sample size and the pandemic, these indications cannot be interpreted as causal effects, the study notes.