Slashdot Mirror
The Looming Library Lending Battle
smitty777 writes "The NY Times is running a piece on the tug of war between publishers and libraries for e-book lending. In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.' For example, Harper Collins claims in this corporate statement that unlimited lending would lead to a decrease in royalties for both the publisher and the writers. The NYT author further states that 'To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser.' Their current solution is to limit the number of readings to 26 before a book license must be renewed. In the other corner are the libraries, who are happy that e-books are luring people back to libraries, bringing with them desperately needed additional funding. With e-book sales going extremely well this year and the introduction of more capable e-readers, this debate is likely to get worse before it gets better. The Guardian also has an interesting related piece on the pricing practices of the Big Six publishers."
That means the property of real books have that they degrade over time.
I guess publishers take their words by the same place they take their business models.
Rethinking email
Friction in this context is the level of effort a library patron has to go to to get the book. Zero friction is: as soon as it occurs to them they want the book, it magically appears in their hand. Which is pretty much would unlimited library ebook lending over the Internet would be like. Since it's so much easier to borrow the ebook for free than pay for it, it's not a viable marketplace for publishers to sell books in.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
In the paper-book-lending context, I'd guess friction refers to things like the need to physically go to libraries to pick up and return books, the need to repurchase books every once in a while if they're damaged, etc. Basically anything that keeps lending from being instant and easy, which publishers are worried that ebook lending will be.
The main fight as I see it is over whether lending should have some sort of royalty model. Traditionally there was a very decoupled one: very popular books would probably sell more copies to libraries, so sales were in a sense proportional to demand, but per copy, there was no greater charge for a book that's lent out every week versus one that sits on the shelf all year. Publishers seem to want more of a royalty model for ebooks where libraries pay by lending-person-days or per X lend-outs or something of that sort. There are some ways of structuring that that would reduce costs for libraries for some kinds of books, mainly that it'd be cheaper to stock huge long-tail catalogues that rarely get borrowed, if it's pay-per-lending or pay-per-lending-day. I'm guessing the publishers might even allow that to happen, and are mainly hoping to capitalize on best-seller titles, which are where most of the profits lie, and where they're worried library lending will cut into sales.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The term which applies was coined by the excellent David Wong (whose talents are wasted writing dick jokes for cracked.com), and is FArtS (ha ha! "farts!" get it): it stands for "Forced ARTificial Scarcity."
To be honest, there is a perfectly logical chain of events, enabled by technology which already exists, and is in wide use, which effectively eliminates printers, publishers, bookstores, all the shipping of books, and so on. If it costs nothing to make a digital copy and deliver it to my reader, why should I pay for one? The entire publishing industry hasn't figured out the answer to that question, but they're going to have to, fast. One way or another, the print media economy is going to come crashing down in the next few years, wiping out anything that hasn't adapted to the new model (whatever that is).
Publishers know this, and they're terrified. So, they are trying to impose (force) limits (scarcity) on the distribution and use of digital media where no scarcity exists (the artificial part). That's what this "friction" is: an effort by an industry whose days are numbered to prolong - even if for just a little while, and at great inconvenience to the rest of us - the economic model upon which they depend.
They're refering to the degradation of physical material. In library lending, books will hold up through a certain number of checkouts before they need to be repaired or replaced.
Publishing houses are attempting to apply this same limitation of physical books to e-books in an attemp to preserve their buisness model at the expense of the larger consumer market
You can start here and read up on it. It's a rather abstract concept. Publishers need a market with friction because they live on the transaction costs people buying books. In a sense, publishers are the friction.
I don't like these guys but this is the correct assessment of the situation. Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Keyword: "friction", in this context.
They want income from libraries per each book loaned. Presumably this is supposed to be similar to how deadtree books decay and must be replaced by libraries. In reality it's just a money grab from the content middlemen, same as the RIAA, MPAA, etc etc.
Publishers in the UK have long had the law that book in a library can not be repaired as they wear out from the toll of circulation and other wear and tear. This is seen in the fly-leaf inscription "You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer".
This prevents repair of worn books as well as re-purposing paperbacks into effectively hard cover books. The same law is in effect in many countries. In the USA the "First Sale" doctrine kills it
So wear and tear, driving back and forth, etc are collectively the "Friction" that creates an effective end of life of a book in the UK. In the USA, there is only the back and forth of borrowing as books can be rebound many times. With an e-book, friction is zero, it is a one click dollar free effort.
The publishers want to set the life of a book as 26 lendouts via e-mail, which on the face of it is reasonable. If a book costs $25.00 that is about $1 per lend. At $100 it is about $4 - a little higher. So a small library fee per lent out book would suffice to pay the publisher.
As it is, taxes pay for the library books, but the low friction of e-books means that there will be far more loans, because friction is near zero, thus taxes must go up to match the similar cost of a similar number of friction based books.
So we will come to an accommodation in between these extremes, since the e-book model costs so much less in paper, printing and freight and overhead profits that the publishers could set the life of a book a 100 lendout and still be ahead.
However, 26 lends is WAY below the lifespan of a well cared for, hardbound book.
Check your premises.