Most inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished authors have heard of J. A. Kon­rath. They fol­low his blog and his progress with his inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished books.  He took his tra­di­tion­al­ly pub­lished books back from the pub­lish­er and suc­cess­ful­ly pub­lished them him­self. Oth­ers joined him. He’s the first true guru to many indi authors.

Now he’s going a step fur­ther. He has start­ed a pro­gram that’s still in beta form, one to sup­ply e‑book man­u­scripts to libraries. It is called EAF-Ebooks Are For­ev­er. Instead of a library buy­ing a man­u­script for a lim­it­ed num­ber of bor­rows, it will buy a copy that is good for­ev­er. (The same way libraries buy phys­i­cal books.) And, just as with phys­i­cal books, the e‑book can only be loaned to one per­son at a time. For a pop­u­lar book, a library would buy mul­ti­ple copies, just as they do with phys­i­cal books. Sounds like a good idea to me.

A full-size book would be pur­chased for $7.99, no mat­ter its price on line, even if it is offered for free. It would prob­a­bly already be avail­able for sale every­where, not locked into one venue, such as KDP.

Kon­rath envi­sions even­tu­al­ly offer­ing every inter­est­ed inde­pen­dent author’s books to libraries. I’d like to join. I tried, but the site does­n’t seem to be accept­ing oth­er con­trib­u­tors yet. But I’ll watch for any updates. Mean­while, to learn more, click high­light­ed words to see Kon­rath’s blog expla­na­tion. Find EBooks Are For­ev­er here.