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A couple things come to mind about this whole problem...
Publishers have been doing ebooks for several years. Part of their JOB should have been to forecast what would happen as demand increased. A year ago we hit the tipping point. It was OBVIOUS to anyone that looked even a LITTLE that demand go absolutely insane this year. I think the publishers deliberately stuck their collective heads in the sand and decided to ignore the trend. 19th century robber-baron mindset in a 21st century world...
Returning library books... Instead of making the default 21 days for borrowing, why not make the default SEVEN days. The borrower would have to change the period to 21 days. Yeah, a few people would be "inconvenienced" when their book stopped working, but if they routinely aren't able to read a book in a week, they'd learn to change the period. How many thousands of books are sitting there, finished, that haven't been returned?
Supply and demand... This whole thing seems most like prohibition. No liquor, lots of illegal liquor. People want to borrow ebooks. LOTS of people - MILLIONS of new e-readers. If the publishers won't make them available, some of those people will go to the speakeasy for the liquor - er pirate sites for their ebooks... If it's not already rampant, I foresee a huge increase in pirate sites, just like the ones for software, music, and films.
The publisher's refusing to make books available to libraries is fueling a HUGE industry in pirated books. JUST like it did for music and films. You want to minimize piracy, make the product so cost-effective and ubiquitous that it's not WORTH the effort to steal.
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