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It's early, so maybe I'm still fuzzy, but this whole discussion seems bizarre to me. I went to the link and read about the library issue, and that's not making a lot of sense either......
I don't claim to understand publishing, or reading demographics, but... It seems to me most reading is done by "older" people. They're already buying paper books or going to libraries and reading paper books. They may or may not get an e-reader, but I suspect the percentage will be pretty small. Then you have a whole set of generations that appears to read less and less as they get younger. From anecdotal evidence of my own family, the 35-45-year-olds read some, the 20-35 year olds read far fewer books, and the 10-20-year-olds read virtually nothing they don't have to... It SEEMS to me that ebooks could be a way for a publisher to tap that whole demographic by making books available on cell phones, e-readers, computers, whatever...
Unless there's some huge hidden cost, it SEEMS like the incremental cost of producing an e-book is so negligible that a publisher would WANT to push as many titles as possible out to the libraries to tap the bunch that don't read traditional books and wouldn't buy a book on paper or electronically. It seems like it'd be better to get some dollars by selling a title to a library than to get none from this group that won't buy. And since publishers aren't stupid (I'm presuming they aren't), I've got to be missing something... What am I missing?
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