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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."
Shouldn't changing dynamics of supply and demand dictate the market needs? It sounds like these companies are simply grasping at straws to hold onto the last vestige of their current position by artifically creating demand. It's bollocks, if you can't make a living as a writer then you probably shouldn't be..
I lived with limited borrowing in libraries with hardcopies, I can live with limited borrowing in libraries with e-copies.
Currently I can reserve a book, cancel it online at my county library and pick it up at any location. The waiting period for one of Songs of Ice and Ire was 200 people. Those are people like me - cheapskates who do not want to cough up any amount for a hardcopy.
If library had unlimited number of books, I assume few people would buy the book and all just go to the library and read it.
I think that the pricing where people should wait for a free book for a limited time is quite reasonable model.
I do not care about a model for movies, tv and music, but books are of a different category and while I won't care if Hollywood or BMG survives, I will care about surviving of publishers and ultimately, good writers.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Reduce the friction. Get rid of it entirely. Then count the usage levels of any given work. (Yeah, yeah, I know That's not simple, but it would be a whole lot more straightforward than the current mess.) Then pay the artists / authors / coders / whatever based on how much their work is used or enjoyed.
Then the reduced friction would be in everyone's interest, both the users' and the creators'.
Of course, the publishers would still go fairly extinct. Is that a problem?
Joe Unknown doesn't have that ability. He needs the services offered by a publisher: editors who understand not only clean prose, but what will sell; marketing teams that can put together a big push on a book; and salesmen that can make a store take a chance on an unknown writer.
Uh, Amazon will 'take a chance' on anyone who can upload a book to them. Most books get no marketing beyond that required to get into book stores. Most publishers expect a book to be edited before they see it so they don't have to spend time doing so.
The average unknown writer will never sell a book to a big publisher. The average unknown writer who does sell a book will get an advance of a few thousand dollars and then be expected to do their own marketing. The average unknown writer who's capable of writing a book that would sell to a big publisher would do much better to just upload it to Amazon, Smashwords and other book retailers where they'll make most of the money rather than hand that money to the publisher instead.
In my experience, the only people who still think publishers are required are publishers and unpublished writers.