"It has been hugely popular—we are having trouble keeping up with the demand," says Mary Knapp, Madison Public Library, WI. "We have several patrons who drove over 70 miles one way and paid the nonresident fee just so they could [acquire library cards to] use it," marvels Earlene Molker, Richland Public Library, WA. What high-demand library service could inspire public library patrons to drive nearly 150 miles and pay nonresident fees? Downloadable audiobooks.

First offered to public libraries in 2004, downloadable audiobooks have grown by leaps and bounds. According to the Audio Publishers Association, their sales today account for 21 percent of the spoken-word audio market. Leading downloadable audiobook provider OverDrive reported a whopping 70 percent increase in checkouts from 2008 to 2009. With EBSCO's recent acquisition and planned growth of NetLibrary's e-content and with Ingram Digital newly having jumped aboard with its MyiLibrary Audio platform, downloadable audiobooks have nowhere to go but up.

It hasn't been easy, however. WMA. DRM. MP3. AAC. File extensions small on letters but very big on consequences for librarians, consumers, and the audiobook industry at large. Public librarians across the country shared the issues they have with downloadable audiobook pricing, compatibility, and usability in an informal survey conducted via Publib. To see how the major downloadable audiobook distributors address those concerns, I also spoke with representatives from OverDrive, Ingram Digital, and NetLibrary. In some instances, progress has been made; in others, not, though the limitations don't always come from the distributors but from the publishers themselves.

Check out, download—in some cases, transfer—then play. Nothing to it, right? Wrong! Certainly, the advantages for libraries of the downloadable format over the physical one are numerous: 24/7 service to patrons, speedy turnaround on orders, no physical media to break, no wasted time spent on the holds shelf, no overdue or billed items. But while libraries have endured plenty of audiobook format changes over the years—from LPs to cassettes to CDs to MP3-CDs to preloaded digital—we've never before faced audiobook issues like those introduced by downloadables.

As one Washington State public librarian puts it, "All players and readers are different and everyone has a different problem." (To be fair, however, if my 72-year-old mother can manage to download two to three audiobooks per week onto her Creative Zen, the situation can only be so bad.)

In the early days of downloadable audio, OverDrive and NetLibrary required patrons to download digital rights management (DRM)—protected Windows Media Audio (WMA) files to a computer running Microsoft Windows and Windows Media Player. (Digital media distributors employ DRM technologies—often at the insistence of publishers and authors—to protect intellectual property by preventing end users from copying or converting copyrighted material to other formats.)

While iPods, the most popular line of portable media players, could play Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3)—formatted files, they were unable to play DRM-protected WMA files. Despite this incompatibility, many brave libraries sold on the benefits of downloadable audiobooks dove into the market.

Today, OverDrive, NetLibrary, and Ingram Digital each offers libraries thousands of iPod/iPhone-compatible audiobooks, though DRM technologies still frustrate many end users. "There has to be an easier way to do the initial download process," says a Wisconsin public librarian who would like to see "more MP3-formatted titles, less WMA or any other proprietary format." (A webcomic satirizing the matter recently generated much heated online discussion—see "Webcomic Takes on Audiobook DRM.")

Two circulation models for building downloadable audiobook collections currently exist: one copy, one download and unlimited access. According to LJ collection management editor Barbara Genco's 2009 survey, "It's Been Geometric!," 82.9 percent of the survey's 41 public library respondents employ both models, while 58.5 percent prefer unlimited access.

However, very few audiobook publishers allow unlimited access to their titles, so while OverDrive, Ingram Digital, and NetLibrary all offer titles in the one copy, one download model, the selection of unlimited-access titles is more sparse. (Both OverDrive and NetLibrary offer sets of unlimited-access titles from Blackstone Audio and Tantor Audio. NetLibrary is the sole source for Recorded Books unlimited-access content, while OverDrive additionally offers unlimited-access title sets from Matrix Media, Rooftop Media, and Colonial Radio Theatre.)

The cost of a downloadable audio service is usually twofold, comprised of 1) an access/service fee and 2) the cost per title or per unlimited-access title set. The annual or monthly access/service fee covers initial setup costs, ongoing tech support (most Publib survey respondents spoke well of all three vendors in this area), and staff training as well as the cost of hosting the library's web site.

As an example, Ingram Digital's annual access/service fee, which applies both to its downloadable audiobook and ebook collections, ranges from $750 to $4500 for public and academic libraries. (Cost is based on population served for public libraries and FTE for academic libraries; consortia pricing is negotiated based on numerous factors.) Additionally, libraries committing to the MyiLibrary 12-month purchasing program get their access/service fees waived for that year.

Generally, the more you pay in access/service fees, the more customizable your site. Vendors oversee site customization, though one San Diego public librarian says this is something he feels libraries "should be able to do...ourselves." While OverDrive may be the most expensive option for many libraries, it also offers the most extensive initial and ongoing site customization service. With their lower access/service fees, Ingram Digital and NetLibrary deliver a much more "out of the box" product.

Downloadable audiobook prices themselves vary wildly: an individual title can cost anywhere from $25 to $100, depending on its length and publisher, while unlimited-access title sets can range in cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars. What's more, the downloadable edition of an audiobook can cost less, as much, or even more than its CD counterpart, a reality one Illinois public librarian calls "extremely frustrating."

Take Adriana Trigiani's Brava Valentine, for example (pictured). A CD recording of that title is available in retail packaging from HarperAudio for $39.99 (most libraries would get a discount on top of that from their jobbers) and in library packaging from Books on Tape (BOT) for $100 (standing-order customers could expect a 20 percent discount), while a public library would have to shell out $95 to get that same recording in downloadable format from OverDrive or Ingram Digital, albeit with some limited opportunities for discounts.

The pricing discrepancy between library-edition and retail-edition CDs exists because audio rights to each are often purchased separately, and library-edition rights, as BBC Audiobooks America (BBCAA) marketing director Michele Cobb says, typically include "compensating the author more heavily with an understanding that the title will be listened to by multiple people."

With regard to downloadables, Cobb notes that audio publishers' highest costs—for recording rights, actual recording costs, and rights to use jacket art corresponding to the print edition—do not go away in the digital arena. She does acknowledge, however, that the downloadable format eliminates replacement CD obligations; BBCAA, she points out, discounts all its library-edition downloadable titles, often by as much as 30–50 percent less than the cost of the library-edition CD.

BOT recently began marking down its library-edition CDs to retail-edition cost, though marketing director Cheryl Herman reports the company currently has no plans to reduce downloadable audio prices: "audiobook downloads are still an emerging format...but [we] do review prices regularly and will continue to monitor trends in the marketplace."

One Houston public librarian expresses the feeling of many that pricing models for libraries need to be expanded. "Given the economic downturn and its impact on library budgets," he says, "downloadable books may price themselves out of the library market."

Which downloadable audiobook provider is right for your library can depend on factors ranging from your budget to your patron base. While OverDrive affords the widest selection of titles, many audio publishers offer some or all of their content to all three distributors. Libraries shopping for a downloadable audio distributor should always ask for a complete and updated list of available publishers.

Those in the market for a distributor should also definitely "test drive" the download experience, as each vendor approaches the transaction in a very different way—though, much like the technology on which it is based, everything in the downloadable audiobook industry is subject to change, at lightning speeds. (For a detailed breakdown of all three vendors' requirements and offerings as of March 2010, see the chart directly below, or download this printable PDF version; for an overview of recent and forthcoming developments among the three, see the "E-Audio Three" box at the very bottom of this article.)