The impending closure of a major book distributor that has been in business for almost 200 years has left several area libraries in the lurch.
“When new books come out, (patrons are) not going to be getting them as quickly as they’ve gotten them in the past,” said John Howard, director of the Mahomet Public Library. “I would say, my guess right now is best case, we’ll be back to somewhat normal by January or February, but in the meantime, there’s just going to be delays on bestsellers and there’s going to be delays on non-bestsellers. And we buy a lot of both.”
Publisher’s Weekly reported earlier this month that Baker & Taylor plans to end operations by January after an acquisition deal with ReaderLink did not pan out, and American Libraries magazine reported that the company has had “financial difficulties” over the past couple years.
According to Baker & Taylor’s website, the business was founded in 1828 and works with over 5,000 libraries.
That includes Mahomet and Tolono, which both used Baker & Taylor as a vendor — and both heard about the closure from sources other than the company itself.
Tolono librarian Amy Wildman learned about it when a former employee texted her an article.
“We didn’t hear it from” Baker & Taylor, Howard said. “We still haven’t heard anything from them. … I think I heard about it from a staff member who read about it on Facebook.”
He said that the Mahomet library previously did over 90 percent of its purchasing through the company, though it had already begun to establish a relationship with Ingram Content Group, another major book vendor, when the news broke.
The transition wasn’t easy, however; the library had nearly 900 back-ordered titles at Baker & Taylor.
“We had to go back through, determine which of those we still wanted to get, reorder them from another distributor, we needed to make sure that Baker & Taylor didn’t end up sending them and make sure that we hadn’t purchased them in the meantime,” Howard said. “Some of the back orders went back as far as, I want to say, January of 2024. So they had been getting slowly worse over time.”
He also advised other library directors to inspect their invoices from Baker & Taylor closely, as he’s noticed “mystery $5 service charges” on the library’s last few orders with the company.
According to Wildman, Baker & Taylor was the Tolono Public Library’s main supplier for new releases and editions.
“I have other sources for kids’ books like nonfiction and some picture books … but that doesn’t help me with teen and adult books, like the latest (James) Pattersons that everyone wants to read,” she said.
Wildman explained that one of the benefits to using a library-specific vendor like Baker & Taylor is that the company would send new books ahead of their release dates. This enabled libraries to label and catalogue these titles so that they’d be ready for checkout on the actual release date.
“Without that advance release agreement, we just have to buy them the same as the public does, on release day, which causes a delay in having that processing time,” she said.
This means that new titles ordered from Amazon could be added to shelves about three or four days after the release date, though Wildman added that this is a “pretty optimistic” estimate.
She said that there had been “signs” that something was going on with Baker & Taylor.
“I would order 60 things a month — like 30 things for kids, 30 things for adults — and I wouldn’t get hardly any of those shipments on time,” Wildman said. “To the point where like three months later, I was still waiting for something, and I was like, ‘Well, people don’t even want to read this anymore,’ and I would cancel the back order.”
Howard estimated it’s taken about a month to transfer the Mahomet library’s orders to Ingram, and he expects that most of Baker & Taylor’s customers will be switching over to them as well.
“The struggle we’re having now is that Ingram can’t keep up,” he said. “And that’s not their fault.”
The library is still waiting on hundreds of titles at this point, Howard said.
“Everyone’s going to go with Ingram, I think,” Wildman said. “That’s what we’re going to do too, because I haven’t heard a better option at this point. In the meantime, while they have this huge increase for customer accounts that they probably weren’t counting on two weeks ago, we’re just getting our stuff through Amazon just so I can get stuff to our patrons who are waiting for the newest releases.”
She added that media such as audiobooks and DVDs will not be affected, as the library gets these through a different vendor. Electronic materials are also not affected.
“Every other service should continue as usual,” she said.
Howard likewise said that the Mahomet library’s digital resources are still available, and patrons could also use this time as an opportunity to “find their way back into the stacks” and explore older titles.
Other area libraries who have been impacted by Baker & Taylor’s closure include the Moyer District Library in Gibson City, the Hope Welty Public Library in Cerro Gordo, the Arcola Public Library, the Rantoul Public Library and the St. Joseph Township-Swearingen Memorial Library.
However, not all local libraries are customers of Baker & Taylor; the Champaign Public Library already uses Ingram, said Director Brittany Millington.
The Urbana Free Library uses Baker & Taylor, but “they have not been our primary provider for some time,” said Associate Director Rachel Fuller.
The Watseka Public Library has used Ingram as its main supplier for several years and only used Baker & Taylor for audiobooks and Vox books, which are “talking books for children,” after switching over, said library Director Darcy Wallace.
Don Pippin, director of the Philo library, said the impact there is also relatively minor.
“We have three staff members who do purchasing and only one depended on B&T,” he said in an email. “I will be helping that staff member switch to another vendor. I had been using Ingram and Penworthy for most of my purchases. I was also aware that Follett, which had been exclusively working with schools, is now working with public libraries.”
A few libraries made the switch away from Baker & Taylor early — such as Allerton Public Library in Monticello, which had previously used the company as its main vendor.
“We began to see issues earlier this year (not getting books on time, primarily new releases), so we secured another vendor as a backup,” Director Sherry Waldrep said in an email. “Once the news came out that B&T’s buyout fell through, we transitioned (and still are) to this new vendor. Even though we are a small library, it has been a lot of work primarily because we pre-ordered so many books from B&T.”
The Catlin Public Library switched to Ingram in the spring, and the Oakwood Public Library made the move in September.
Baker & Taylor was the Tuscola Public Library’s main vendor until about three weeks ago, when library Director Devin Black canceled all orders and began sourcing books elsewhere, though he added that the library has “definitely” been impacted by the company’s closure.
The Westville Public Library also stopped using the vendor about a month ago amid plans to “narrow down the amount of vendors that we use,” said Director Nick Sager.
