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Originally Posted by catsittingstill
I would argue that providing books people want to read has a great deal to do with literacy promotion. To be any good at anything people have to practice--and books that make them want to practice reading promote literacy.
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I don't really buy this at all, at least not for adults. My library has adult literacy programs, but the students aren't reading Jonathan Franzen - or even James Patterson. I think that fiction books like this are aimed squarely at people who have no literacy issues at all. (Well, maybe addiction problems)
Quote:
Originally Posted by catsittingstill
And also I would suggest that the market is not setting the price of library e-books until we have lots of publishers, all competing with each other to sell similar products, and libraries can pick and choose freely among them.
When a five-publisher coalition controls a lot of the market, the market isn't free. At which point taking action to offset that doesn't seems reasonable to me.
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It's a free market. There are six big publishers, none with monopoly power, all competing with each other to sell similar products. There are also a significant number of smaller publishers, many with important authors. (Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowlings). That's plenty for a free market - dividing the available books among, say, 4 more publishers won't change anything.