The supply of spoken word and large print material to Hampshire's Library Service - including authors Danielle Steel and Ben Okri

Hampshire County Council Library Service (The Council) has a purchase contract with a publisher for the supply of alternative format books for our 40 branch libraries and Home Library Service.

The contract is due to expire at the end of March 2024 with a new contract due to last for 4 years up to 31 March 2028. The estimated maximum value of the contract over a 4 year period based on current annual expenditure, although subject to change, is £76,669.

The scope of the contract is for the competitive supply of books in large print for adults, audiobooks in CD and Playaway formats for adults and CD format for children. Coverage must include the publisher's new and backlist titles in library editions. New titles must be available to order in advance of publication and be supplied at the point of publication. The Council require a widespread choice to support in-house selection of bestsellers, contemporary fiction, genre fiction, non-fiction and children's titles. As an example for this contract, we would expect current and the back catalogue of works, in the formats specified above, by the following authors to be available for supply:

Danielle Steel

Ben Okri

Graham Hurley

Philip Reeve (audiobook format)

The Council wants to identify from the market if any potential suppliers have the publishers rights to supply the books and audiobooks in the formats specified. The Council is looking to undertake a quotation exercise with suppliers that can demonstrate they can supply the identified authors in the formats requested.