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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."
Keyword: "friction", in this context.
"...publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower"... In other words don't read our books.
I'm sure the somewhere in the depths of SOPA, the "library problem" is being handled.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
As this year marked the passing of this brilliant man who struggled with this question all his adult life, perhaps it would be best to read it in his own words.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Its what the author (copyright owner) says it is, until the works are in public domain. Not the publisher if they are not producing the copies any more.
The good thing I can see it ebooks lowering the cost for indie authors, cutting out the middle man.
The bad thing is publishers can nolonger afford to pay writers $1,000,000 for a best-seller so there are fewer financial insentives for people to write.
For folks who want to read, and maybe even, learn? What is this world coming to?
Where's the Fahrenheit 451 Fire Department, when you need one?
Ironically, it looks like we might see this day, since distribution of physical printed material can't be limited and controlled . . . by whoever wants to control it, for whatever reason.
Printed books . . . they just cause trouble.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have yet to meet a debate in which I did not favor the side of the Libraries, if there was one.
... doesn't like when things like lowering their income through radical technology effects them instead of workers. It's ok to look down on the poor and people who's jobs are offshored as not being 'efficient' or 'competitive' but when it happens to business models or "intellectual property" (read: Intellectual monopoly) - heaven forbid!
With the In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.'
WTF is "friction"? And what is this "unlimited" thing? I don't know how the Amazon deal works but the Overdrive model allows libraries to loan a specific number of copies of each title. There's nothing "unlimited" about that. I'm patron 19 of 22 waiting for one of 3 copies of a title on my list. And what's "friction"? Do they mean I no longer have to haul my fat ass to the library to get the book? I don't have to do that buy purchase their book in ebook form, either. Seems like a pretty level playing field to me. And the artificial scarcity created by the licensing model might push me towards purchasing since I can get it right now instead of a few months from now. Is that what they call "friction"? If so, again...covered.
Publishers, stop acting like you sell paper. You don't. You sell content. Act like it.
Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out.
There is no reason why it should show mercy to publishing industry - carriage industry produced something even. publishing industry is just middlemen. and now, unnecessary.
And look how they threaten new technologies and those who use new technologies - 'without friction' they say. wow. imagine it with carriage industry - if this suing frenzy bullshit had been around back at the start of 20th century, we probably wouldnt be using cars as we are using them today.
i say fuck them. you should say so too. society's progress cannot be held hostage to the desires of a minority interest to protect its private profit.
Read radical news here
I'm a librarian (in Germany, though the issues here are basically the same), and I think the publishers do have a point. Two points, to be precise:
* A digital copy of a book can be borrowed by a library customer without them having to leave their home. No need to actually get to the library, hunt for the book and then having to get it back 4 weeks later. It's all happening online. That makes borrowing digital books from library a million times easier and more comfortable, and thus make libraries far more popular again.
* A digital copy of a book needs to be bought once, and then you'll own it for all eternity. That is, in theory, true for a physical copy of a book as well, but in practice a library has to constantly (re)buy books it already owns, whether the physical copy is starting to get old and worn or because books are being stolen/not returned, etc.
It is not unrealistic to assume that these two points combined might result in financial losses for the publishers, and a solution for this might have to be found. The suggested 26 uses per digital copy would mean that popular titles would have to be renewed roughly every 2 years (assuming a standard borrowing time of 4 weeks). Currently, the rule of thumb is that a (physical) book should be renewed once it is older than 5 years at the latest. Not all titles are borrowed out constantly, though, so it's entirely possible that the costs for the library would not rise even with the 26-uses-per-copy rule.
Give them a basic income so they can concentrate on doing things that contribute to the more rapid advancement of knowledge, instead of working to impose artificial scarcity.
There's really no difference so long as they adhere to the "if we only have one digital 'copy', then only one person can have it checked out via overdrive at a time". In the past, they only bought the books people actually read anyway (no library has a library of congress size collection of books, and they even sell off their old books to make room quite often).
I'm always amazed that libraries have stayed around as long as they have; very thankful for that, but still amazed. If libraries didn't exist right now, and someone was trying to start some, I'd imagine publishers would be just as scared, even though it means a whole lot of book sales to the libraries, a handy distributed archive for free, and a bunch more potential readers (ex. people that might not have the cash on hand to buy a bunch of books now, but might later on, or even people that simply lack the physical space at home to store them).
Forget this being bad for publishers for a second... ebooks could be very very bad for libraries in general. As long as Overdrive has the copies, there's no need for the libraries themselves (there's still a need for the money to buy the ebooks, but that could get diverted from the libraries to overdrive or similar).
Personally, I think the requirement that ebooks only be checked out 26 (or whatever) times before they have to buy another copy is just ridiculous! I'll concede that restricting each copy to only be used by one person at a time is an understandable correlation to the current physical world, but even that is 100% arbitrarily imposed. Unless society allows things to become extremely draconian and Fahrenheit 451 -ish then, at some point, ebooks and mp3's are almost certainly going to be freely available to all (maybe after some tax to support the storage and bandwidth)... there's simply no technical reason to prevent that.
It's the printing press all over again, and the world will adapt (er... the world at large will drag the small minority that are part of the publishing industry along kicking and screaming the whole way). If I were in print, I'd be scared too - they're going to go the way of monks handwriting bibles eventually.
The real question is how the authors will get paid. If we did have a universal system that had all ebooks freely available, then I'd suspect all other ebook distribution would damn near stop (including giving your friend a copy of your ebook, since they could just go get it themselves for free). If that happens, then we'll have very solid stats on downloads per-title. That could be used to pay the authors. Number of music tracks owned per-person is certainly much higher now than it was in the days of LP's and tapes. Number of books owned is likely to go the same route. Thus, authors could be paid a very small amount per download of their book, and still make approximately what they make today.... we'd just have to get that money into that system somehow (tax?). This is probably a good 20years off still before it gets anywhere near that point... in the meantime, I expect a lot of fighting/kicking/screaming/drm/laws/etc from the industry.
Evolution is finely tuned, revolution is almost invariably bloody.
What's happened with Digital is that there's been a revolution. The old establishments are fighting hard to last long enough to evolve some new method of staying in business (and employing people) and continuing.
In the meantime, we have a fight with lawyers, as people try to hold on to the old ways (same as happened with the introduction of the printing press).
The simple press of reality will eventually force the matter, and digital will start to be what it should (i.e. very low cost, almost zero scarcity). What's good for society at large is a slow, planned migration to this, rather than a quick scorched earth approach.
That being said, I'm not saying "Suck it up", otherwise the extremely conservative may well get legislation in place that will effectively break progress for a long, long time.. We all have to keep fighting the abuses that are laid on by the corporations to obtain the freedoms that society needs to flourish. It's an eternal fight.
That's life though.. Without the struggle, there's no progress.
Bu.. Bu.. Socialism! Seriously, good luck with that. I'd love to have it, and maybe it would work in Europe, but Americans have a deeply ingrained notion that if you didn't 'work' for it, it's not yours (funny how that goes out the window when we're talking inheritance & trust funds, but double think's strong in this country...).
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So why does your business model need to be sustained?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They just need to make eBooks cheap enough to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook (I don't know if you actually do have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, but maybe you should, causing some friction to the process).
If a eBook costs $10, then it might be worth it for me to go to the library to check it out for free.
Lower the price to $3, and then it's not worth the trip for me. Lower it to $1 and I'll likely buy books just to try out an author, rather than staying with my normal safe choices of authors I know or recommendations.
I've bought a lot of content from Smashwords (usually paying between $0.99 and $4.99 for an eBook). I've bought very few eBooks from Amazon - it's hard to justify paying more for an eBook than it costs to have a paper book (often used, sometimes new) mailed to me.
Sorry, both jobs involve work. The analogy is reasonable. As a software developer, I'm in the same boat as authors. If I can't get paid for my work, then I should go do something else - even if that "something else" involves mowing lawns. Whether or not my skills as a software developer are more useful to the world than my skills mowing lawns is secondary to the question of whether I can afford to make a living doing those jobs.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but federal law requires that I incinerate this ebook!"
"But... WHY?"
"It's already been looked at 26 times."
?
Evolution is usually pretty bloody as well. Not surviving because you weren't the fittest usually means you end up inside another creature's stomach.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They would have made the exact same argument if they were talking about the founding of public libraries. In 1930, how was there more 'friction' from the library than from the publisher. Answer, there wasn't. Media Barons just want to use the shift in book 'manufacturing' as an excuse to get rid of the libraries that they no doubt always thought were stealing from them.
> authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge)
Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.
Bark less. Wag more.
Professional writers are discovering that they can make far more money by self-publishing on the Internet than they can by working through a publisher, and by charging much less for their works, at that.
See A Newbie's Guide to Publishing.
Publishing companies add nothing of value to the process, and are simply parasitic.
Really? How does a living wage have fuck all to do with "North Korea"? You don't actually know shit about DPRK except that it's commie, and commie is bad, right? Idiot.
I borrow my books from library.nu because they've generous lending terms.
Authors and editors are valuable, but publishers are basically parasites nowadays.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Not entirely.
I am in the process of publishing my first book (as an e-book, incidentally). I could self-publish through Amazon with ease. But I wouldn't mind someone taking care of all that busywork for me, and doing some marketing, and for his efforts take a cut.
It depends on what exactly the publisher is doing for you that matters.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Get paid a comfortable salary for no work and you just have to put out any old trash? Once that becomes popular who is going to be paying that comfortable salary? I can assure you that most people I know will gladly stop working for that, after all that is all Social Security Disability has become in this country and that bit alone is bankrupting the federal government.
Ahh, to be liberal and not have to deal with the reality of economics.
I've seen no indication that kids gain a love of reading anything besides more fluff books from the Harry Potter series. The distinct lack of well educated individuals in America seems to agree with that. A "love of reading" is all fine and dandy, but when it is a love of reading just Stephen King or (*shudder*) Stephanie Meyer, it doesn't carry forwards to very much. May even be counter-productive in some cases, since they grow so used to such simple works that they never move on. It's the literary equivalent of eating baby food your whole life (or, well, mac'n'cheese anyways: it's still tasty to adults, but it won't provide what you need to grow intellectually.) Now, if they read Isaac Asimov (or Mark Twain et al.) afterwards, that would be different. But they usually don't.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Forgive me if this sounds rude, but if you'd missed the point by any wider margin you might have gone full circle and hit it :P (Stay with me on this, I'm going somewhere).
First off, you're not giving people money to write, you're giving them money to provide a base-line standard of living, which in turn gives them the opportunity to write (or go to law school, or invent cold fusion, or anyone of a million things better than working 60 hours a week at McDonald's). The point of basic income isn't to replace the rewards for a useful job. It's to ensure that the struggle for existence doesn't snuff out our best and brightest. You know, we sent physicists to the trenches in WWI, right?
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism? I've got a lot of right wing friends who, when confronted with this reality either come up with something crazy (like returning to an agrarian society ala the Amish) or end up with Socialism is everything but name (e.g., missing the point by so wide a margin they go full circle and hit it).
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These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.
And that differs from capitalism how? Have you looked at the world economy lately?
And in the third corner are the consumers, who just want to read the damn books and just go to the next Torrent site, don't care about copyright anymore because the greedy cooperations have made a farce out of copyright. We just download a 200MBytes Torrent with about 100 e-books and don't give a crap.
You know how to increase competition and profits? Just limit the copyright term back to the good old 7 years (+7 years extension). That would finally open the market, break up the monopolies we have now, and bring the entertainment industry much more profits overall.
I really can't understand how your American people are good with it that you grand one company an unlimited monopol-right to a good. Aren't you all for pro-markets, pro-competition and anti-regulation of markets?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
The problem with Capitalism is it's broken.
Capitalism is the worst system ever invented. Except for every other system ever invented.
Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone as long as they are willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that's useful to someone else.
Where Socialism, Fascism, and Communism are systems that require people to act against their natural tendencies (working harder and going further than required in a system where everyone is rewarded and punished equally and where incentive and thinking out of the box are not survival traits), Capitalism instead leverages self-interest and the desire for people to better their lot to improve things for everyone and create wealth & prosperity where there previously was little or none.
Capitalism has raised more people from poverty than any other system ever created.
Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more relative freedom and at a higher standard of living than any other system ever invented.
Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.
For these reasons and many more, "Progressivism", Socialism, Communism, and Fascism are doomed to failure and to taking their rightful places on the junk heap of failed ideologies.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.
Socialism can determine resource allocation based on fair metrics: popularity, cost/benefit to society as a whole and to the individual, democratic polling and so on. Capitalism's flaw is that it can only determine the best way to allocate resources by looking at what makes the most profit, which can be at odds with what is best for society (e.g. Fox News ot The Daily Mail/Sun newspapers).
Capitalism only works when socialism lays down some pretty strict rules to skew the results. When we fail to do that the result is bullshit like the Murdoch empire and the global financial meltdown. Left to itself capitalism just lurches from boom to bust and back again.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
not quite. Capitalism would have destroyed the entire economic system in the last few years. Fortunately, the governments and their taxpayer funds were there to bail out the banks and prop the whole thing up.
Capitalism is just as flawed as the rest of the systems. To point out one above the others is an ignorant choice. However, the others are flawed too.
The world is a complex place, to try and choose one system to rule is too simplistic to really work. What you need is to take from all of them, mix it up a bit and try to tweak it as you go to ensure smooth working of the system.
So unfettered capitalism would have the peasant workers killed for being unproductive while a few super-rich got richer and richer and more and more inbred and stupid. You'd end up with a truly stagnant society where the talented poor could do nothing to fix the problems and the decadent rich cannot conceive of change.
So you have capitalism for the majority, but then ensure its regulated so the poor do not starve (socialism!), the rich do not take over the world (communism!) and everyone has to abide by rules that are enforced by others (facism!)
After all, you say "capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance"... a) that has no place in a capitalist system - charity is a socialist concept (unless you're subsidising a market so they can purchase more of your stuff, but that hardly applies to dictatorial African states.. unless they're buying arms of course... hmm), b) the US is technically poorer that most places, the only reason you're not the recipient of humanitarian aid is because you've received it in the form of debt (so it doesn't count as aid). if you had any chance of paying off the national debt, then maybe you'd have a point. Chances are, China is going to be paying your way for you for some time.