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I'm really trying to look at both sides of this.
1. If I was a stockholder of HC, I would be all for the management trying to maximize profit and increase shareholder value. I also agree an ebook will not wear out like physical books, so there is the potential of getting more use out of ebooks than paper books.
2. But the publisher is saving money too, since they do not have absorb the cost to actually print and bind an ebook like a paper book.
3. Like a few other have stated, I check out many ebooks yet only read a few. I may only read a couple of pages and determine the book is not really one I'm interested in. It's sad a library would have to count it as a full checkout in those cases.
4. Physical books can be sold and traded unlike ebooks so publisher do not necessarily lose money on ebooks that never wear out. I trade all my ebooks on paperbackswap.com, publishers cannot claim they lose money on only ebooks. There has been no effort to stop trading/selling paper books after you are done reading them.
Maybe a compromise would be to have an initial cost to get the ebook, then a lower (hopefully much lower) charge to the library after the 26 loans. That way the library can "buy" the ebook like they do now and when the 26 checkouts is used up, they can make a decision whether to "renew" the book if it's still in demand.
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