Quote:
Originally Posted by BadBilly
(...) because e-books don't wear out so they should never, ever expire and they should certainly cost less than paper books.
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I haven't read all the discussions about this subject, but as far as I've read, no one is saying that the books should not expire
and at the same time cost less than paperbacks.
I said in my last post in this thread that I see no harm in ebooks being more expensive than paperbooks
if the library are allowed to treat the paperbook and the ebook the same way, i.e. interlibrary loans and eternal use. This would save the library a good deal of money, and that money should go to the publishers. Such a deal would be worth paying a premium to the publisher.
Or, if the book has to expire, it has to be rediculously cheap since the book must be re-purchased every second year, providing a steady income for the publisher.
Paying a large sum* for a book that expires doesn't make sense, and will lead to a poorer service and poorer selection as a lot of older books will expire and not be renewed.
*even $25 is a large sum to keep a book for only two years! A hardbound book costs the same and lasts much longer than two years!
You do remember that after two years the licence expires whether the 52 loans are reached or not, right? For unpopular books that gets checked out once a year this is expensive, so the libraries will not renew these books, and older books
will(!) disappear from the system. That would be a disaster, since the publishers don't care a damn about preservation, and cannot be supposed to pay for preserving their books! As you yourself say, publishers do what they must to make money, everything else is not their priority. That's why we have libraries.
What we are saying isn't that books shall be free or that books shall be available to everyone, exactly where they want it, and exectly when they want it. But the libraries need to retain their independence from the publishers. The libraries are supposed to make books available
after the book has disappeared from the market and preserve out cultural heritage, and we must make sure that they can do that.
I'm not saying that the libraries should be allowed to do what they want with ebooks in the first couple of years when the publisher is earning back the money they've invested in a book. But it is important that the libraries get a copy of the epub or mobi or whatever, and that they have the right to do what they want with the file after a while when this particular book gets harder and harder to find!