Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
A pretty good deal for most any writer not named Rowling or King.
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For a non-best-seller, depending on how you interpret it, the deal for the library may also be unattractive.
When an eBook is purchased via Overdrive, in some states (Maryland, Delaware), everyone in the state can borrow that book. In New Jersey, there are a few regional consortiums, including one for the southern half of the state.
Now, in my state, Overdrive collections are generally county-wide*. There are 23 libraries in my
county's Overdrive system. That's actual libraries -- some of those 23 libraries have up to half a dozen branches, as does ours.
It's true that only one person at a time can borrow that Overdrive book, but with non-best-sellers, that's often enough for a county, or a smaller state-wide system like Delaware's. But I don't think that $3.99 is intended to be the fee for an entire state.
I did see that they bravely said they would charge $3.99 to the Harris County Library System, so the idea is not to charge separately for each branch. But even $3.99 for every separately administered library may be a lot of money compared to buying three or four Overdrive copies of a serious non-fiction book, and thereby cover a state like Maryland.
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* Except multi-county in rural areas.