Libraries buy self-published books through the same suppliers they use for every other book. Print goes through wholesale catalogs; ebooks go through lending platforms. Once a book is orderable in those systems, a librarian still has to choose it under the library’s selection policy. Getting listed is the easy half. Getting selected is the hard half.
- What Has to Happen Before a Library Buys Any Book?
- Where Do Libraries Buy Self-Published Books in Print?
- How Do Self-Published Ebooks Get Into Libby, hoopla, and cloudLibrary?
- How Much Do Libraries Pay, and What Does the Author Earn?
- Do You Need an ISBN, LCCN, or MARC Record?
- Patron Requests, Donations, and Local-Author Programs
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Has to Happen Before a Library Buys Any Book?
Every library purchase clears two separate gates. First, the book must be available through the library’s normal suppliers. Most libraries order from established vendors, not from authors directly. Second, a librarian must select the book under the library’s collection development policy. That policy is the written set of rules describing what the library collects and why.
Selection is a professional judgment, and it is where most self-published books stop. Acquisition or collection development librarians do the buying. They weigh reader demand, professional reviews, production quality, price, and local relevance. They also check whether the book is easy to order through an approved vendor. Denver Public Library’s purchasing guidelines say a positive review in a major journal is the best way to reach its selectors. The journals it names include Library Journal, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.
It helps to be realistic here. In a 2016 New Shelves Books survey, 92 percent of librarians reported buying from self-published authors and small presses. The door is open, then. However, librarians filter hard on editing, cover design, and interior quality, because they answer to their communities for every purchase. Distribution setup makes a book orderable; it cannot make a weak book selectable.
Binding and Durability
Format durability feeds the selection decision because library copies circulate through many hands. For example, some library submission policies explicitly reject spiral, stapled, or ring-bound formats. A professionally produced perfect-bound paperback (the standard glued-spine binding) is acceptable in most systems. A case laminate hardcover, with the artwork printed directly onto the rigid cover, survives circulation better.
Where Do Libraries Buy Self-Published Books in Print?
In print, libraries buy self-published books almost entirely through wholesalers. A wholesaler stocks a huge catalog of titles and delivers books to libraries shelf-ready, with catalog records and labels attached. In the US, that market changed sharply in late 2025. Baker & Taylor had been the largest library wholesaler for decades. In October 2025, the company announced it was winding down after a planned sale collapsed. Ingram is now the primary print route into US libraries. It expanded its processing capacity in early 2026 to absorb the extra demand. We covered the retail side of this same supply chain in our guide to getting a self-published book into bookstores. Libraries share the wholesale plumbing but make their buying decisions very differently.
From IngramSpark or Draft2Digital Into Ingram’s Catalog
A self-published book normally enters Ingram’s catalog through IngramSpark, Ingram’s self-publishing arm. The print service of Draft2Digital, an author distribution platform, feeds the same Ingram system. You enable wholesale distribution in your account, and the platform sends your book’s details into Ingram’s ordering network. The title typically becomes orderable within 2 to 6 weeks. IngramSpark lets you set a wholesale discount of between 40% and 55% in the US market. (The discount is the percentage off list price that the supply chain keeps.) One caution: give each edition exactly one route into Ingram’s system. IngramSpark and Draft2Digital’s print service both feed the same wholesale catalog, and that catalog identifies your book by its ISBN, the 13-digit number the book trade uses to order and track titles. If the same ISBN arrives through two routes, the result is duplicate records and confused orders.
The Amazon KDP Route and Its Limits
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offers a second route for paperbacks called Expanded Distribution. Enrolling is free, and it makes a paperback available to the wholesale suppliers that booksellers and libraries order from. The limits matter, though. Hardcovers are not eligible, and distributors do not have to accept the book. Availability can take up to eight weeks. The royalty is 40% of list price minus printing costs. Amazon also requires an ISBN that no other distribution service has handled. As a result, a book cannot sit in both Expanded Distribution and IngramSpark’s wholesale channel under one ISBN.
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How Do Self-Published Ebooks Get Into Libby, hoopla, and cloudLibrary?
Library ebooks flow through lending platforms, and the platforms libraries use most are OverDrive, hoopla, and cloudLibrary. Each one splits into a reader-facing side and a purchasing side. On OverDrive, patrons (library members) borrow through the Libby app, while their library buys licenses in OverDrive Marketplace behind the scenes. On hoopla, from Midwest Tape, patrons borrow instantly from the whole catalog, and the library pays a fee per checkout instead of licensing titles up front. cloudLibrary follows the same split, with its own borrowing app and its own purchasing system. In every case a library ebook works as a license, not an outright sale. The library buys the right to lend the file under set conditions.
None of these platforms accepts uploads from individual authors. Self-published ebooks reach them through aggregators: distribution services that package your ebook and its details, then feed the lending platforms. Draft2Digital distributes to OverDrive, hoopla, cloudLibrary, BorrowBox, and other library channels. Kobo Writing Life supplies OverDrive directly. PublishDrive lists OverDrive, hoopla, and cloudLibrary among its destinations.
The technical gate sits in that supply chain, not at the local library. Aggregators check files before passing them on, and the lending platforms check them again on ingestion. A librarian never has to reject a broken file, because a broken file never reaches the catalog. Library channels are also stricter than retail stores; a file with technical errors can pass one retailer’s checks and still fall out of library distribution. That is why we build EPUBs to the current EPUB 3 standard, with the accessibility information library platforms increasingly expect.
Be careful with older advice, because this corner of publishing has reorganized since 2021. Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in 2022 and now runs it as a brand. The SELF-e library program became the Indie Author Project, a library-curated route we cover in the last section.
What About Audiobooks?
Audiobooks follow the same pattern: lending platforms on one side, a distributor on the other. Libby and hoopla both lend audiobooks alongside ebooks, under the same kinds of license. The indie route into them changed recently, so check the date on any guide you read. Findaway Voices, for years a widely used audiobook distributor to library platforms, wound down under Spotify’s ownership. On 1 August 2025 its non-Spotify distribution, including the library channels, transferred to a new company called Voices by INaudio, with existing accounts and terms carried over. Spotify for Authors now handles Spotify itself, which is a retail subscription channel rather than a library one.
Can a Kindle Unlimited Ebook Go to Libraries?
Can a library lend an ebook that also earns Kindle Unlimited page reads? That is the murkiest question in library distribution right now, and honest guides should say so. Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s ebook subscription for readers. An author’s book joins it through enrollment in KDP Select. That program keeps the ebook edition exclusive to Amazon in 90-day periods.
Amazon’s KDP Select enrollment page currently states that, during the 90-day enrollment period, “the Kindle eBook can only be distributed through KDP and public libraries.” That wording appeared in late 2025. Aggregators such as Draft2Digital read it as permission to send Kindle Unlimited ebooks to library platforms. However, Amazon’s KDP Terms and Conditions, last updated September 2024, still describe full digital exclusivity with no library exception.
When a help page and a contract disagree, caution wins. Check the current terms in your own KDP account and keep a copy of the help-page wording. Ask KDP support to confirm in writing before sending a Select-enrolled ebook to libraries. An ebook on KDP that is not enrolled in Select carries no exclusivity restriction at all. The rule never covered print or audiobook editions.
How Much Do Libraries Pay, and What Does the Author Earn?
The answer splits by format. A print book pays you once: the library’s wholesaler buys the copy at the wholesale price, and that is the whole transaction. An ebook or audiobook license can pay once per copy, or a small amount on every borrow, depending on the model the library buys. On top of either, a few countries run Public Lending Right, a separate government payment for library lending; it comes last in this section.
Library ebook licenses come in several models, and the model determines what you earn. OverDrive’s published lending models show the range:
- One Copy/One User: the library buys a license that lends to one patron at a time and never expires.
- Metered Access: the license expires after a set time or number of checkouts.
- Cost Per Circ: the library pays a small amount each time a patron borrows.
- Subscription: a flat fee covers a bundle of titles for a set term.
A Worked Example
A worked example makes the arithmetic concrete. Suppose you set a library price of $12.99 for your ebook in Kobo Writing Life. If a library buys a One Copy/One User license through OverDrive, Kobo pays you 50% of that price. That is $6.50 for the license. Under Kobo’s cost-per-checkout option, the per-borrow price is 10% of your library price. Here that means $1.30 per borrow, with a $0.99 minimum. Draft2Digital structures its version similarly. The library’s cost per checkout is one-tenth of the one-copy price. hoopla is the exception; it uses its own tiered pricing.
That example covers the two models with published author terms. Metered access and subscription pricing varies deal by deal, and aggregators do not publish flat author rates for those models. Treat the estimated payout in your distributor’s dashboard as the only reliable figure. Your controls as the author are limited but real. You set the library list price, and some aggregators let you choose which models to offer; Draft2Digital, for example, turns cost-per-checkout on by default but lets you switch it off. The library then chooses which offered model it buys.
You will often read that a library ebook should cost 2 to 4 times the consumer price. That figure is an industry convention that aggregators and author guides repeat, not a platform rule. Kobo’s own advice is milder: set the library price a few dollars above the retail ebook price.
Public Lending Right: Payment for Loans
Public Lending Right (PLR) is a government payment for library lending, separate from anything a library paid to acquire the book. It exists in the UK, Canada, and Australia, among other countries, but not in the US. In all three, you must register; nobody pays you automatically. In all three, print, ebook, and audiobook editions can qualify.
In the UK, registration runs through the British Library’s PLR service. The scheme paid 12.40 pence per recorded loan in the 2024/25 year, capped at £6,600 per author. It requires a proper ISBN and does not accept an ASIN, the product number Amazon assigns to listings. Canada’s PLR program pays according to a book’s presence in sampled library catalogs, with a C$50 minimum, and excludes how-to, cookbook, and reference genres. Australia’s lending right schemes cover public and educational libraries, with registration through Lending Rights Online. Claims are due within five years of publication, and payments start at A$100. US authors earn from libraries only through sales and licenses.
Do You Need an ISBN, LCCN, or MARC Record?
Identifiers decide whether the supply chain can see your book at all. They are worth getting right before publication. In practice, library distribution requires an ISBN. Wholesalers and lending platforms use it to order, catalog, and track your book. Each format (paperback, hardcover, ebook) needs its own. In the US, Bowker sells ISBNs at $125 for one or $295 for a block of ten as of 2026. Free platform-assigned ISBNs work within the issuing platform, but they record the platform, not you, as the publisher. Our guide to free ISBNs and their trade-offs walks through when that matters.
An LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) is a US catalog identifier that librarians can reference when creating records. Self-publishers can request one free through the Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number program before publication. The book must show a US place of publication, and the applicant needs a US address. The number prints on the copyright page, alongside the other elements we describe in our copyright page guide. An LCCN is purely an identifier. It is not an endorsement, and it does not mean the Library of Congress has acquired the book.
A MARC record is the machine-readable catalog entry a library’s system stores for each title. Authors almost never create these themselves. Wholesalers and lending platforms generate MARC records from the metadata you supply. The practical job is therefore clean data entry: exact title and author name, the right ISBN per format, accurate page count, price, publication date, and well-chosen subject categories. The same details need to match wherever they appear: in the platform’s metadata form, inside the ebook file itself, and on the print book’s copyright page. Mismatched records are a quiet way to become invisible in a catalog.
Patron Requests, Donations, and Local-Author Programs
Most public libraries run a “suggest a purchase” channel, and it is a real input into selection. A patron request moves an orderable title into consideration, but budget, policy, and the normal quality bar still apply. If readers want your book in their library, give them the ISBN of the exact format and your distributor’s name. Staff can then order it easily. Manufactured request campaigns are a bad idea. Librarians recognize them, and libraries state that requests feed the standard selection process rather than bypassing it.
Donating a copy is not a shortcut either. Donation policies vary widely. Many libraries reserve the right to add, sell, or pass on donated books at staff discretion. Even when a branch does add your donated copy, it usually serves that one branch. It does not enter the wholesale catalog other libraries buy from.
Local-Author Programs and Direct Pitching
Lower-barrier routes do exist. Many library systems run local-author showcases and collections that use regional relevance, not professional reviews, as the bar. The Indie Author Project is the successor to SELF-e. It runs library-curated indie ebook collections and regional contests across North America in partnership with Library Journal. For authors who want to pitch libraries directly, a one-page sell sheet is the standard tool. It lists the book’s details, formats, ISBNs, reviews, and distributor. Author Ilham Alam wrote an account of pitching Canadian libraries for Jane Friedman’s blog, complete with a sample librarian email. It shows how much research and persistence one placement can take. Direct pitching works for some authors. Treat it as outreach with uncertain odds, not a repeatable formula.
The picture is unglamorous but clear. Make the book orderable through the channels libraries already use. Meet the production standard librarians filter on. Then let reviews, local connections, and reader demand do the persuading. Libraries reward books that are easy to buy and worth buying. No distribution setup can substitute for the second half.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do libraries buy books that are only available on Amazon KDP?
Libraries rarely buy print books available only on Amazon. The exception is a paperback enrolled in KDP Expanded Distribution, which becomes orderable through the wholesale suppliers libraries use. Hardcovers are not eligible. A KDP ebook can reach library platforms only through an aggregator, and only if KDP Select exclusivity does not apply.
How much do libraries pay for books?
For print, libraries pay roughly the wholesale price: list price minus the discount the publisher set, often 40% to 55%. For ebooks, libraries buy licenses rather than copies, commonly at more than the consumer ebook price. Models range from one payment per copy to a small fee on every checkout.
Can readers request that their library buy my book?
Most public libraries accept purchase suggestions from their own cardholders, and patron demand is a recognized factor in selection. A request works best when the book is already orderable through the library’s usual wholesaler. It also helps when the requester supplies the ISBN of the exact format.
Do authors get paid when libraries lend their books?
Public Lending Right schemes in the UK, Canada, and Australia pay registered authors for loans or for catalog presence. The US has no such scheme. US authors earn from libraries through the original sale or license, and through cost-per-checkout ebook models.
What is an LCCN, and does a self-published book need one?
An LCCN is a Library of Congress catalog number that US self-publishers can request free before publication through the Preassigned Control Number program. It is optional and does not trigger a purchase. However, it costs nothing, prints on the copyright page, and gives catalogers a standard reference for the book.
