Arriving late to the discussion...
I've donated several hundred dollars to my library this year. I sent them a check awhile back, and hadn't heard from them (and they hadn't cashed it), so I wrote them to triple-check it wasn't lost under a desk somewhere. My contact said they'd been rushing around in the wake of the Penguin issue -- the books were gone from their catalog and then reinstated again without the Kindle versions, apparently.
And the library is trying to work out how to prevent Penguin from "turning off" books in the future that were legally purchased in the past. And I'm pretty sure that the Overdrive agreements will probably prevent that because I'm sure the books are just "licensed" until the publisher decides they aren't anymore. Great.
This is extremely frustrated to me, as a consumer. I paid for some Penguin books directly with my donations. And I agree this reinforces the idea that ebooks can be "turned off" and taken away at any time. Not a good image to uphold.
Oh, and in other news, I checked out The Help at my library earlier in the year and liked it enough I paid $10 for a copy of my own. Guess that's my last Penguin book for awhile. Good job building your brand.
