Quote:
Originally Posted by CyGuy
I just read the article and I find this very disturbing. The library should simply purchase the book for full price and then make it available to loan without paying any recurring fee. I can't believe that the tax payers are expected to fund this recurring fee, for a product they already funded to purchase! Wow, just wow. I sure hope they don't get away with this in the US.
|
Not all countries do things the same way. Many countries, the library buys the book, but are still obligated to pay a royalty to the author each time it is loaned out. Now, in most countries, it is an exceptionally small amount, but some countries are a little backwards. In the backwards countries, ebooks have different rates and taxes than normal books, because they're seen as more luxury items, or simply because the laws on the books haven't been updated to recognize ebooks as being books. One example of this is that in the UK, ebooks have the full 20% VAT (value added tax), while paper books are VAT free. The Sweden situation that this thread is about is because Swedish publishers are scared of ebooks, and the change they represent, and purposely set the Public Lending Right at a much higher rate than the paper copy.
The US has no Public Lending Right set up. This really is not a good thing, as many publishers are not allowing their ebooks to be used by libraries, and others are severely limiting their ebooks to libraries (the infamous 26 checkout limit by Harper Collins). Would you rather have your library buy a completely new copy every 6 months to a year, and also not be able to get access to a large amount of books, or have them pay a nickel each time a book is checked out? Say for sake of argument, it is a full dime, and the average retail price of a book is $9.99, and the book gets check out its theoretical max of 52 times a week on overdrive (it could be done more, but it would require more people returning books early, which is only possible on ePub and PDF). $5.20 is how much they'd pay in PLR, where as under the system in the US, they'd have had to buy the book twice (and still have that second copy be considered "wore out" and "expired"). $20, vs $15.19, and the $15.19 way still allows the book to be checked out, where as the $20 way requires ponying up another $9.99.