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Originally Posted by HarryT
Don't you think the author might be slightly irked if a library bought one copy of his or her book, and then lent it to a million customers simultaneously? (Especially given the US library's system's shameful lack of a PLR.)
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It's not just a question of authors being "irked". Most authors don't make a living from their book sales and have day jobs to pay their bills. If their income went down even further because everyone was getting all their books from the library or pirating them, they probably wouldn't be able to justify spending any more time on a career that wasn't bringing in any money.
Make no mistake, though, I am a firm supporter of libraries and use them often myself. I do buy ebooks, but I can't afford to buy every book I'd like to read.
I just came across an interesting article about Toronto's library system (
here) that outlines just how our library system is changing for today's clientele. An important statistic that has bearing on this conversation is the following:
Quote:
In 2009, the Toronto Public Library circulated 31,271,072 items, of which 151,367 were e-Titles.
When e-Titles were first circulated in 2002, only 2,500 items were downloaded.
The new collection budget for 2010, which is more than $17 million, includes approximately 70 per cent for print materials and 30 per cent towards electronic, video and audio materials.
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Given the large difference between paper books circulated and ebooks downloaded, it does make sense that libraries concentrate the majority of their budget on acquiring paper books. Ebooks are starting to really take off, and I'm sure that as their circulation continues to grow we'll see a shift in how much is spent to acquire ebook licenses. We'll have to be patient, though, because libraries will have to wait for circulating/download numbers to come in, then wait again until it's time for the new budgets to be drawn up.