Major publishers are taking wildly different approaches to resolving the woes surrounding e-book lending at libraries: they're experimenting with both the short-yet-cheap subscription as well as an expensive option to pay only once for perpetual use.

ENGADGET: Macmillan tests selling e-books to libraries in two-year stretches

Overdrive, which powers the back-end of e-book lending for thousands of libraries, has confirmed that Penguin is no longer allowing library lending of its new titles.

FORBES: Penguin Group Has Halted Library Lending For E-Books

Also, lending e-books allows libraries to potentially serve more patrons beyond the hours and walls of their branches.

CNN: E-book lending: Your public library's best kept secret?

This was a big blow to libraries, which consider lending current bestsellers to be a critical service.

CNN: E-book lending: Your public library's best kept secret?

Even though libraries have options to get many e-books for free, lending out many of the most popular titles definitely costs money.

CNN: E-book lending: Your public library's best kept secret?

It pledged to slash more than 190 non-elected public bodies, including the Public Lending Right - which collects payments for authors whose books are loaned by public libraries.

BBC: Museums Council axing should be reviewed, say MPs

For Coates, the hope now is that the sales data from these arrangements will in time be enough to convince the big publishers that lending e-books is a way to grow and that they should work with libraries and not cut them off.

FORBES: Bilbary E-Books Set To Reconnect Publishers With Libraries

Bucking the trend, children's fiction remained the one area where lending figures rose, with children's books representing 37.4% of all books borrowed from public libraries.

BBC: James Patterson tops library lending chart

Before libraries and publishers can come together and agree how to solve the problem of library e-book lending, they probably will have to understand each other.

FORBES: What Is Going On With Library E-Book Lending?