If you've kept an ebook in Amazon's KDP Select program, you know the trade: exclusivity in exchange for Kindle Unlimited (KU) page reads. For years, that exclusivity also meant your book was shut out of libraries. For several months now, that’s no longer the case, and we’re seeing many authors having success in getting those books into library distribution through Draft2Digital.
In September 2025, Amazon updated their "How to Enroll in KDP Select" help page to inform authors that library distribution is an allowable exception to its exclusivity rule. With D2D, your KU ebook can reach major library platforms such as OverDrive, Hoopla, BorrowBox, cloudLibrary, and the newly added Vivlio Libraries— without breaking enrollment or losing your page reads. The one limit to remember: while you're in KDP Select, you must select library channels only, not competing retail stores or subscription platforms. Print, as always, was never restricted, so you can also use D2D Print to get that print book published wide.
Why this matters: Library sales are surging.
Looking at our aggregated wide-market data for the 2025 VS 2026 YoY January–April window, library royalties grew roughly six times faster than the aggregate of our retail and subscription partners—up about 24% year over year, while library share of total royalties climbed from around 10% to better than 12%.
Even more telling, the volume of books purchased and circulated through libraries actually dipped slightly while royalties jumped, meaning each borrow is worth more than it used to be. That's related to the shift toward one-copy/one-user lending (the model OverDrive favors), where borrows roughly doubled in value year over year. For a further explanation on library pricing options, please visit https://draft2digital.com/library-pricing/.
The genres leaning into libraries hardest are exactly the ones that have historically been most locked into KU—science fiction, thrillers, LitRPG. And in May, though the final sales still aren’t tallied, it looks like there has also been a major resurgence in the always popular genre across all platforms: Romance. In other words, the readers you could only reach through KU before are now showing up at the library. And given the challenging global economic conditions lately, it’s possible that reader access to your books through libraries is likely to continue to grow even more in the coming months.
Going wide to libraries means more than ebooks.
Print is still how most library patrons read, so route your print titles through a wholesaler that libraries can buy from (Use platforms like IngramSpark or D2D Print, but not both, as both companies use the same wholesale platform — and either of those work far better than KDP Print's “extended” distribution). Audio is the fastest-growing format, and as long as you're not ACX-exclusive with your audiobook, it can reach library wholesalers too. You can expand your audiobook reach using our audiobook partnership with Voices by INaudio.
Don't forget to tell us what you've got!
Distribution puts your book in the library catalog; but it doesn't put it in front of the merchandisers who decide what to feature. That's where we come in.
Fill out the D2D promotions form at d2d.tips/d2dpromoform to let our promotions team know what you're working with—especially new releases and any KDP Select / KU titles you've just added to library distribution under this policy change. Even if the release date is not new, those books are brand new to the library world, in the genres the data says are surging. Let us go to bat for them and help you sell more.
Because when you do well, so do libraries and their patrons.
We’ll see YOU, dear author, at the library!