Some books have padlocks and are not included in the subscription catalogue. These books need to be purchased separately.
The reason for this is that some publishers don't allow us to include their books in our streaming subscriptions. Since we still want to make these books accessible to you, we have added the option of purchasing them outside of the regular subscription. Books that can be purchased would otherwise not be available on BookBeat at all and the option to buy them does not in any way affect what is included in our subscription.
Purchased books do not use hours and you can also access them in the BookBeat app without an active subscription.
You can always tell if a book is included in our subscription catalogue or not by looking for a padlock on the front of the book. If a book doesn't have a padlock, it is included in our subscription catalogue.