[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I tried to be very clear about that assumption, and the qualifier that the HC only really works out if that assumption is correct.

Okay, but like I said, given HC's assessment of 26 loans being the point where a paper book falls apart, that kind of casts doubt on the numbers they provide. So the cost analysis only works for the purposes of comparison if they really do price their books that low and their competitors really are 2.5x more expensive, which I think is an overgenerous assumption in HC's favour. Probably the $ gap is narrower.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Mostly correct, except that we're talking 13 months of constant checkouts.

At which point the library would have to go buy everything over again.

If a book is sufficiently popular (the mass-market paperbacks of the first 2 of those Larsson books are mostly still on the "1 week Fast Reads" shelf around here, and likely the demand will keep up while they keep making more movies), means they could keep re-buying extra copies of the book to keep in circulation often enough to match the hypothetical 3x cost of the more expensive non-HC comparison in just 3 years if demand keeps up. (They kept The Da Vinci Code on the Fast Reads shelf for well over 2 years, IIRC.)

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The titles only expire with uses, not with time. If people check out an obscure title 10 times when it first comes out, it stays on the "digital shelves" until it's checked out another 16 times, even if that takes 10 years.

Well then, my library would be so completely screwed because our greedy patrons insist on using up those 26 check-outs on every single book within a couple of months of its catalogue addition.

Seriously, if you go to the New eBooks Arrivals listing for the province-wide consortium and pick any title whatsoever, you'll usually see both multiple copies and a fairly long waiting list, even for weird obscure stuff.

That Vampire Knitting book mentioned earlier? 15 patrons waiting on 4 copies. Some book on taking volunteer vacations where people have to do charitable work on them? 6 copies, 23 waitlist. Pop-history book about two guys probably totally unknown outside of Canada who led a short-lived unsuccessful rebellion within? 5 copies, 23 waitlist, popular enough that some of the libraries have bought an extra copy to offer their patrons.

And this is just the stuff that's been newly available since no earlier than December to an overall population that's apparently smaller than that of most US cities and where e-readers are a mildly pricey novelty sold only in a few stores (no free shipping + taxes & import duties if one gets a Kindle). The numbers get a lot higher for fiction, especially US-bestseller popular fiction.

If we switched over to an individual loan model, we'd burn through our "year"'s worth of licenses sufficient to cover "highest demand" titles in less than 2 months for each, on average.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

To be clear, I'm not saying this is an optimal system, only that it isn't the train wreck some people imagine it is.

Hey, if HC were honest and upfront about it being a subscription model and offered a clear pricing scheme with logical discount tiers at a reasonable cost as a proposed alternative to the usual, I'd be perfectly happy to consider it.

It's the way they try to pretend they're unilaterally doing it for the good of the libraries which they are so deeply concerned about and want to help protect those poor books from being read for "free", instead of primarily pushing this for the benefit of their bottom line, which is so off-putting.

Makes them look like a pack of weasels, and no one wants to give extra money to weasels when they demand it on top of what's already being given to them.

But at least they're weasels who make their e-books available to the library in the first place, albeit weasels whose new-model e-books I won't bother to check out should they show in the library. I'll be perfectly satisfied with reading library paper copies and old-model HC e-books previously acquired in the catalogue.