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For the past five years, Kyle K. Courtney, who directs copyright and information policy for Harvard’s libraries, has fought to make e-books more accessible to public libraries across the United States.

Most e-books have digital rights management software that means, like print books, they can only be checked out by one person at a time. But unlike print books, which can sit on library shelves for decades, e-books are often sold on time-limited contracts — meaning public libraries must buy them again after several years or, in some cases, several months. The costs can add up quickly.

Courtney, a lawyer by trade, believes that the strict contract terms are “undermining every library’s mission across the United States.”

“We can’t own our books. We can’t preserve them. We can’t keep them. We can’t check them out without having to pay for the same book over and over and over,” Courtney said. “And that’s problematic for collection development, for access, for budget, for all sorts of things.”

Courtney leads a nonprofit called the eBook Study Group that lobbies state governments to adapt e-book contract regulations to reflect existing consumer and contract law. Since its 2020 inception, it has successfully lobbied the Connecticut state legislature to prohibit libraries from buying e-books whose contracts limit both time and number of checkouts. The goal is to drive down demand for short-term e-book contracts and force publishers to offer e-books to libraries on better terms.

The Connecticut law won’t take effect until at least one other state passes a similar law. Related bills are now under consideration in Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey legislatures.

Courtney’s efforts have gained some traction in several other states as well — and drawn coverage in both the Boston Globe and the New York Times. But changing the law may not be easy. Some publishers and authors say that if it’s too easy to check out e-books from libraries, individual consumers will stop buying e-books for themselves. That could cut into publishers’ bottom lines and authors’ pay, according to industry groups.

Many librarians, though, think e-book contracts have become exploitative.

The “Big Five” publishers — a group whose titles account for around 60 percent of book sales in the United States — frequently sell their books to libraries on two-year leases that must be re-bought at the end of the term. The leases, according to Courtney, can cost up to $100 per term, while the same book might cost a consumer only $10 to own in perpetuity.

Moreover, wait times for popular e-books can last up to two to six months. This means that under the current lease model, only a few patrons can access the book before the library must renew the lease, according to Michael L. Blackwell, who directs St. Mary’s County Library in Maryland and heads the ReadersFirst working group, another e-book advocacy group that collaborates with the eBook Study Group.

Blackwell said the costs can make his library system reluctant to take chances on e-books by newer authors and independent publishers, even though those publishers typically sell e-books under more generous contracts.

“Unlike in print, where we can have a really broad and a very diverse collection, in e-books, it’s kind of remaining more a boutique collection of just primarily well-known and best-selling titles,” Blackwell said.

David Leonard, the president of the Boston Public Library, said regulation of e-book contracts is necessary because publishers currently hold a “monopoly” on distribution rights, making it difficult for libraries to secure fair deals.

“In many cases, they hold many of the cards, and I think with the backing of consumer protection legislation — after all, libraries are consumers — we do buy and we will continue to buy from publishers,” he said. “But equally, we are protecting our patrons, who are the ultimate consumers of these works.”

Ellen Paul — the executive director of the Connecticut Public Library Consortium, which helped adapt the language of the eBook Study Group’s proposed bill to Connecticut’s legal system — said she hopes taking the libraries’ cause to the legislature will succeed where informal efforts have foundered.

“We were forced to because libraries have been buying e-books for over 20 years, and the terms, the conditions, the pricing, got worse every year, and these vendors, these publishers, wouldn't come to the negotiating table,” she said.

Courtney said his group is not seeking to take money away from publishers.

“If a library has $500,000 to spend on e-books, they will spend $500,000 on e-books,” he said. “It’s just the difference — instead of just getting fifty books, maybe we could get a thousand books for the same.”

“So that’s the hope, that the publishers will stop resisting this,” Courtney added. “Their mission is different than that of libraries. They care about the next fiscal quarter. Libraries care about the next 100 years.”

—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.

—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.