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Originally Posted by dkperez
This whole thing strikes me as commerce, not learning, not public good, not whatever...
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It's about both commerce and public goods. You might want to keep in mind that no matter what, public goods have to be paid for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez
I keep reading here in MR that there are all these fantastic indie authors and publishers. If so, and the items from the "big 6" are unavailable or unreasonably expensive, WHY can't the libraries purchase from these other sources?
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They can.
Random House has around 17% market share (based on sales revenues). The "Big Six" have about 57% of market share, so libraries could easily go to other publishers --
if those publishers offer ebooks people want
and have a library arrangement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez
The ALA (I presume some umbrella library group and lobby and something out there to advocate for libraries) should GET THE WORD OUT.
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They're already doing that. I hate to break it to you, but it often takes more than 5 days for something like this to change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dkperez
Between the Internet and all the other media, there should CERTAINLY be a simple way to put something up that'll tell everyone....
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Yeah, it's called "spam."
Seriously, any system that could notify every US citizen of a private issue like this would be abused six ways to Sunday and get summarily ignored. The people who are interested in this issue will be better served with a more targeted plan, which I suspect orgs like the ALA are already prepping.