Occasionally, ckbk's licensing arrangements for subscription content change.

Every year we add dozens of new publishers, but occasionally some of our subscription license agreements come to an end.

In 2021, one of ckbk's licensors, Workman Publishing , was acquired by the international publisher Hachette .
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Hachette currently does not license its books to subscription platforms, and so following this acquisition Hachette terminated Workman’s license agreement with ckbk.

We hope to be able to reinstate licensing for subscription content with Hachette in future, but rather than have these much-loved Workman titles such as The Silver Palate and The New Basics unavailable on ckbk, we have included them as à la carte add-on titles..

The reason we introduced the à la carte retail program was to make it possible to include key titles on the ckbk platform, even when the publisher concerned does not participate in subscription models.

We believe it is better that these books are available as add-ons rather than not available on ckbk at all. In no case has ckbk chosen to make a book à la carte for commercial benefit. It is simply the only option we have in order to include books from publisher which do not currently license to subscription services. We prefer to make all books available within the ckbk subscription, and do so in all cases where it is possible.

If you prefer to only see content which is included in your ckbk Premium Membership, you can set this option in the user settings menu to exclude à la carte books (unless you they are ones you have already purchased).