By the Numbers: 46,000 e-books

E-books used to focus on niche topics geared toward small, zany readerships, which made for riveting titles such as Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen or The Hidden Power of Adjustment Layers in Adobe Photoshop. Now e-books cover the gamut, and the Santa Clara County Library District announced this week that it has 46,000 digital titles in its collection, including pop culture favorites like Wolf of Wall Street and 50 Shades of Grey—you know, if you’re into corporate barbarism or Penthouse letters. There are also classics and previously banned titles like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The digital collection, dubbed the “ReadersFirst Guide,” taps into 292 library systems and serves 199 million readers who can access books with a smartphone, tablet or computer. The county, which has offered e-books for seven years, hopes to appeal to a broader audience, given that the percentage of adults reading e-books rose in the past year from 23 to 28 percent.

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