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Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn
%15 is 15%. The other factor is the shipping, and the number of middle men.....
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ALL paper costs amounts to 15%. Printing, inventory, distribution add up to about 15%.
I.e. switching from paper to digital doesn't cut the book's costs by 75%, 50% or 25%. It's more like 15%.
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Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn
Its not that expensive.
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Yes, dude, it really is going to be that expensive.
You're planning to subsidize the equivalent of billions of dollars of ebook purchases, plus build out a huge infrastructure to support it, plus you're going to need lots of oversight.
And if this leads to more people borrowing more books (as you propose), that's going to mean more money thrown at this process.
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Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn
We already have a public library system where you can already download e-readers. It has not expanded the scope of government or turned us into Communist China.
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True, but that's because it is one part of a larger system of book availability.
Have you failed to notice all the hub-bub every time the National Endowment for the Arts, or any other government agency funds something that someone finds "offensive?" In the last few months, Congress threatened to pull funding from National Public Broadcasting because they fired a correspondent who made an anti-Muslim remark, and from the Smithsonian for showing a work of art where ants crawled on a crucifix.
What do you think will happen if 1/3 of a library's ebook lending budget goes towards lending porn? You think your Senator is going to smile approvingly and say "hey, people are reading more now!"
There is no question that a radical expansion of ebook lending will create an expensive new entitlement that everyone will want to use, that no one will actually want to pay for, and will be threatened with a loss of funding the instant any remotely offensive text gets checked out.
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Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn
The current system we have with e-books at the public library is unsatisfactory. Checking out books is a nuisance, and ebooks are usually CHECKED OUT!!! WTF? How can an ebook be checked out?
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*sigh*
OK, here's the deal. A library basically contracts with Overdrive, which charges them a fee for every time an ebook is checked out.
If there were no limits, library patrons could theoretically bankrupt the library in short order, as they would check out tons of books they can't read right away. Why not indefinitely check out as many ebooks as you want? After all, it's "free" right...?
By the way, despite your correct observations that libraries are relatively cheap, guess what? Their budgets are
still getting cut.
While I support libraries, an expansion of library lending services to the point where it drastically reduces piracy is simply not going to happen.