Briggs: Library books have never been easier to borrow. Publishers hate that.

James Briggs | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Indianapolis Central Library: Then and Now The Indianapolis Public Library celebrates the centennial of the Central Library.

Millennials get blamed for killing golf, napkins, Buffalo Wild Wings and pretty much everything else that once was good.

If public libraries begin to lose their relevance, though, don't look at millennials. You'll have to blame a different culprit: book publishers.

Pew Research Center data show millennials are more likely than members of any other adult generation to visit a library — and they represent the only generation in which more than half had recently been to a library as of 2016, the most recent survey conducted.

Public libraries, in turn, have listened to feedback from their youthful customers and made the analog-to-digital transition more seamlessly than perhaps any other business or service whose legacy revolves around the printed word.

To visit a modern public library, particularly in cities and suburbs, is to find an inviting community space where people can search for books, sure, but also use computers, apply for jobs and access digital archives and databases.

Libraries have modernized so well, in fact, that you don't have to visit them at all. If you live in or around Indianapolis, you probably have access to a library that enables you to check out audio books and e-books through an app and send it to your Kindle, smartphone or any other device.

If that sounds easy, it is — and book publishers hate it.

Popular e-books are getting scarce

Publishers in recent months have started cracking down on the proliferation of borrowed e-books by making popular titles scarce. The latest salvo came from Macmillan Publishers, which in November began limiting libraries to one digital license per book for the first two months that it is available.

That policy will result in longer wait times for new books — and that is exactly the point. The Indianapolis Public Library, for example, typically purchases up to 100 e-book licenses to accommodate demand for popular titles, but now can only buy one license for the first two months of a Macmillan release. That includes titles from popular authors such as Nora Roberts, Marissa Meyer and Liane Moriarty.

Macmillan's move follows similar policy changes by other major publishers such as Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, including similar embargoes on new releases and requiring two-year licenses on books that might not be popular. The changes have generally resulted in libraries spending more money for e-books that, in many cases, are becoming less available.

As a result, the Indianapolis Public Library is implementing tighter, though still generous, limits on the numbers of holds and check-outs people can have for e-books and audio books. Members will be able to have 10 holds and 20 checked-out books at any given time.

"This was slowly chipping away at our ability to buy things for our patrons," said Deb Lambert, the director of collection management for the Indianapolis Public Library. “(Macmillan's new policy) was a tipping point where we're really noticing that we're not able to meet the needs of our patrons."

Publishers think e-books are too easy to borrow

Macmillan is being transparent about the reasons for its new policy on digital sales to libraries. The company had no problem with libraries when people had to go out and get their books in person, but now it's just getting too easy to check out a book.

"In the pre-digital world reading for free from libraries was part of the business model," Macmillan CEO John Sargent said in a letter to librarians, who have been critical of the company. "To borrow a book in those days required transportation, returning the book, and paying those pesky fines when you forgot to get them back on time. In today’s digital world there is no such friction in the market."

The result, Sargent argues, is "the very rapid increase in the reading of borrowed e-books decreases the perceived economic value of a book."

Macmillan and other publishers have yet to provide evidence that e-book lending is devaluing books in a way that decades of free physical book lending has not.

Sargent acknowledges that libraries are, in fact, buying the e-books that they're lending out, but he seems to minimize the scope of the investment they are making.

Lambert, for example, noted that the Indianapolis Public Library paid a total of $3,200 for 172 physical copies of the book "Becoming" by Michelle Obama. The library also spent $11,725 for 155 digital licenses of the same book — which, unlike the physical copies, expire after two years. The huge premium that libraries pay for e-books goes to publishers and authors.

The Indianapolis Public Library this year budgeted $3.4 million for buying physical materials and $1.4 million for digital materials.

"They're saying this is cutting into their business, but the library is buying copies," Lambert said. "We're part of their business as well."

Sargent is correct that digital lending is increasing at libraries, though perhaps not to a level you might expect.

Audio books are having a moment

Consider the Carmel Clay Public Library, whose customer base includes affluent members with above-average means of owning gadgets on which to read digital books. So far this year, only 15 percent of the library's check-outs have been digital. That is up from 10 percent last year, but even that uptick obscures what might be a more significant trend.

"Interestingly, it's not climbing as fast for e-books as it is digital audio books," said Christy Walker, a spokeswoman for the Carmel Clay library. "Digital audio books are up 25 percent over what they were last year."

Carmel's spike in audio book lending mirrors a national migration toward that format, according to the Pew Research Center.

The percentage of adults who say they have read a book in the past year (72%) has been flat for several years, according to Pew. So have the shares of print (65%) and e-book readers (25%). But audio books are having a moment.

One in five Americans said they had listened to an audio book during the past year, according to Pew, up from 14% in 2016. In other words, while Americans are slowly drifting toward e-books, they are flocking toward audio books.

What does all of this mean for the relationship between publishers and libraries? It's hard to reach any particular conclusion based on the limited research available, which is why it's odd that publishers seem to be making a case that each digital book loan results in a lost sale.

Library patrons’ willingness to wait in months-long queues to read e-books suggests that they are extremely price sensitive and aren't going to buy the books no matter what kinds of rules publishers come up with. So what is the point?

Sargent's letter to librarians offers a clue.

While publishers might have liked to curtail book loans for a long time, they had no control over how libraries used the physical books that they purchased. Publishers have total control over digital licenses. Their recent actions indicate they intend to use that control to make their books less accessible to the nonpaying public, no matter how many millions of dollars libraries are willing to pay.

In short, publishers might be restricting access to library books because they finally can.

Publishers, of course, can sell their products under any terms they wish to set. Just remember that, though, if public libraries start to struggle to keep up with your demand for digital products.

You can't blame the libraries. Or millennials.

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Contact IndyStar metro columnist James Briggs at 317-444-6307. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesEBriggs.