eBook Subscription Revenue

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This listing includes royalties from the Cricket Media eBook Collection, an ebook subscription library of more than 1,000 short-form titles for pre-K through grade 8, distributed exclusively by EBSCO Information Services. The collection is sold as an annual subscription to state library systems, K-12 school districts, federal and military library programs, and academic consortia across the United States and abroad.

Behind the collection sits a growing base of 35 subscribers (labeled "Subscriber" in the raw data), which over the earnings on file (3Q21 through 2Q26) have generated approximately $173,550 in revenue across 88 subscription orders. The strongest anchor customers by both revenue and duration include the Illinois State Library, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the Fairfax County School District, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the New Taipei City Library, each of which has renewed the subscription across multiple years. Federal library programs including Military OneSource and DoD MWR Libraries (the Department of Defense's joint library program serving service members and their families across the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force) have contributed some of the largest single-period earnings on record, layering periodic upside on top of the recurring subscriber base.

Across that same window, 64 of the 88 orders (73%) are renewals of existing subscriptions and 24 (27%) are new subscriptions, together representing roughly $126,000 in renewal revenue and $48,000 in new business. In the trailing twelve months, 11 of 12 orders are renewals, accounting for approximately 99% of the $22,028 in period revenue. That mix reflects the stickiness typical of curated K-8 library products once adopted into subscriber programming. In the earnings chart below, this split appears as "income type," with each order tagged either "Renewed eBook Subscription Royalties" or "New eBook Subscription Royalties."

What is being sold. A share of net revenue derived from annual subscriptions to  the Cricket Media eBook Collection, hosted by EBSCO Information Services. Subscriptions are sold and renewed annually by EBSCO, with the revenue from the subscriptions paid quarterly.

About The Book Publisher. Cricket Media is the corporate successor to Carus Publishing Company, the storied children's publisher founded in 1973 by Marianne Carus in Chicago. The Carus family of magazines, Cricket, Ladybug, Spider, Babybug, Cobblestone, Cicada, Muse, Click, and Ask, has been widely regarded as "the New Yorker for young readers" for more than five decades and has published work by Newbery, Caldecott, and National Book Award authors. The ebook collection draws from and extends this editorial universe into short-form titles built for the K-8 institutional library market.

About The Distributor. EBSCO Information Services, founded in 1944 and headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is the library-services division of EBSCO Industries, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. EBSCO handles the entire commercial lifecycle for the collection: pricing, licensing to institutional customers, hosting on the EBSCOhost and EBSCO eBooks platforms, customer support, and collections. The collection is sold as an annual subscription license with new titles added on a quarterly refresh. 

Featured Titles from the Current Collection
The Path to the Moon: The Story of Katherine Johnson by Joseph Taylor. The biography of the NASA mathematician whose hand calculations sent Alan Shepard and John Glenn safely into space and helped bring Apollo 11 home. Katherine Johnson's story reached global audiences through the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. In 2021 the U.S. Space Force named a GPS satellite in her honor.

Dinosaurs Among Us by Dr. Gary Galbreath and Sy Montgomery. Co-authored by Sy Montgomery, one of the most decorated names in American children's nonfiction. Montgomery is a Sibert Medal winner, a National Book Award finalist, and the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association.

Louis Braille: Opening the Doors of Knowledge by James Rumford. Written and illustrated by James Rumford, a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book recipient, Jane Addams Children's Book Award winner, and Charlotte Zolotow Award recipient. The book tells the story of the young blind French student who invented the tactile writing system now used by millions of readers worldwide.

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste by Meg Moss. In 1872, the American merchant ship Mary Celeste was found drifting in the Atlantic, seaworthy and fully provisioned, with breakfast still on the table and no trace of her ten passengers and crew. Widely called the greatest maritime mystery of all time, the disappearance remains unsolved more than 150 years later and continues to appear in popular culture, from Arthur Conan Doyle's earliest published fiction to modern documentary series.

Mozart, Boy Wonder by Marcia Amidon Lusted. A biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who composed his first symphony at eight and toured the courts of Europe before he was ten. The archetypal prodigy story, and a staple of nearly every music curriculum from elementary school through conservatory.

Download the current list of titles here. 

Earnings Note. Subscriptions are sold and renewed annually by EBSCO, with revenue statements issued on a quarterly cadence. When an institution renews or purchases a subscription to the collection, EBSCO pays the annual subscription revenue in the quarter in which it collects. As a result, some quarters will have no earnings to report.

Earnings Note. The 4Q2022 statement shows a ($4,000) negative adjustment tied to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The original June 2022 order was cancelled in December 2022 due to a contracting delay and rebooked in March 2023, resulting in a net zero impact. The institution has renewed every year since.

Payment Schedule Note. EBSCO pays royalties approximately 60 days after the end of each calendar quarter. The first payment owed to the buyer will be 3Q2026 earnings, expected at the end of November 2026.