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."

Comments

Re:What does this statement mean?

[symbolset]

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.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[ExecutorElassus]

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.

No, not really

[symbolset]

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.

Re:No, not really

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't like these guys but this is the correct assessment of the situation. Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

Except "limitless" is not the issue at stake. Almost all library e-book lending works just like physical copies - the library can only "lend out" as many copies at any one time as the library purchased in the first place. What the publishers want is to impose restrictions that are even more onerous than the real world - deleting books after a certain (small) number of check-outs.

At best they can argue that physical books eventually wear out, but not in the same time frame these guys are trying force on ebook lending.

Re:No, not really

[Baloroth]

Actually America already does precisely that in the universities for research. Historically, writers of philosophy, politics, and science have been funded that way across the world. A few literature writers as well (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis come to mind). I believe that is still pretty common. However, authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge) can't succeed under such a system. Or would you propose that we should pay any writer who wants it no matter the actual contribution to society of their work? No, that system would never work because everyone wants to become the next billionaire runaway success writer. The writers themselves wouldn't agree to it: if they actually wanted to, that system is already in place (as I said: university professors do pretty much exactly that in many cases).

Re:No, not really

[rsilvergun]

Not exactly. The idea with basic income is that you're guaranteed enough money to be comfortable (food, shelter, medical care). This frees you up to take risks (like writing for a living), because you're not risking starvation if you spend a few years writing full time. You see some of this in Canada, where socialized medicine has allowed several writers to work part time for enough to support themselves. In American you can't do that because part timers don't get medical benefits....

To contrast the Universities, you can't get funding unless you've got a proven track record; e.g. it's already your full time job (I'm aware there are exceptions, they are exceptions nonetheless). You can't generally transition from, say, full time accountant to full time writer that way. They won't give you the funding because, hey, you're an accountant, not a writer. Now, get a few successful books under your belt and you'll get grants, but we're not talking about the lucky few that manage to make it; we're talking about the thousands that didn't...

Re:No, not really

[LordLimecat]

Serious counterpoint to your strawman:
We have limited resources: paper to print books, time to publish them, shipping to distribute them. For ebooks, its computer time to produce them, writer's time to create them.

Absent the capitalist system of letting the market decide which products are desirable, how do you determine which ebooks deserve to succeed? How do you determine how much to reimburse the author?

These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources. Figure that out, and your idea can work. Its less of an issue with ebooks since fewer resources are needed, but theres still the issue of authors expecting to be paid and the folks who digitize their work expecting to be paid in line with the worth of their product.