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Originally Posted by jmaejr
Why can't the market decide prices and they will adjust accordingly based on demand. No one is forcing anyone at gun point to buy anything...including 120 dollar e-books. Why are people so afraid to voice their opinions with their wallets, would they rather have the Brown Shirts telling them what to do and how to do it?
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Supply and demand doesn't work with monopolies, and copyright gives monopoly over books. With pbooks the libraries at least have another source for books: donations. With ebooks there is no such luck.
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Originally Posted by murraypaul
FRAND isn't a law, it is something imposed by standards organisations.
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Considering the last Apple vs. Motorola case I would say that it's imposed by courts.
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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Indie, small publishers, new authors who want exposure, public domain, etc.
Buying at inflated prices is worse than not buying at all.
All I can say is that if libraries won't boycott Random House over this, then they deserve to be taken to the cleaners; and I hope RH raises its prices even higher.
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Libraries can't boycott publishers. Publishers don't want to sell books to libraries. They see it as a loss, not a source of revenue.
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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
I'd also say that it's not really the publisher's problem if citizens can't be bothered to adequately fund public libraries. I would agree that book purchases shouldn't take a significantly higher percentage of library funding than before, but ultimately it's up to the public to fund the libraries, not for commercial vendors to take the hit when we cut library budgets.
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It's not the public that decides the budget of the libraries.
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Originally Posted by HoopyFrood
I don't see the problem, if the e-books are too high the library shouldn't buy them. Buy the dead tree version. I mean this is like a no-brainer. I like e-books, but I don't want my taxes financing the greed of these e-book publishers.
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This is what the publishers want the libraries to do. Giving in like this would just make publishers increase the prices of ebooks until it's impossible for the libraries to justify buying them.