MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Random House's new library pricing increase revealed

dkperez · 03-07-2012, 09:50 PM

Somewhere in reading through 7 pages of entries, I've lost something......

This whole thing strikes me as commerce, not learning, not public good, not whatever...

Library wants books. It wants paper books and it wants e-books.

There are 6 major publishers. As I understand it, 5 won't sell books to the library at all. The 6th WILL sell books, but wants to charge 300% or more for the library to buy the books...

I keep reading here in MR that there are all these fantastic indie authors and publishers. If so, and the items from the "big 6" are unavailable or unreasonably expensive, WHY can't the libraries purchase from these other sources? I'm sure, since these excellent alternatives exist, there should be easily available information on the alternate John Sandford or James Patterson or Nora Roberts... So, library, FIND a way to get the alternative books.

The ALA (I presume some umbrella library group and lobby and something out there to advocate for libraries) should GET THE WORD OUT. I find it hard to believe that the public can't be made aware of the problem with the publishers. Between the Internet and all the other media, there should CERTAINLY be a simple way to put something up that'll tell everyone "These are the publishers that REFUSE to make e-book content available to your libary. Here's the one that' WILL sell books but want to charge 3 TIMES what you'd pay for the same book."

Everybody keeps saying publishers ONLY respond to the monetary bottom line. Fine, maybe a few thousand or tens of thousands of people refusing to buy books from companies that continue to refuse to move into the 21st century can help the publishers figure out it may be smarter to provide materials the libraries want at reasonable prices...

03-07-2012, 09:50 PM	#98
dkperez Groupie Posts: 184 Karma: 1047931 Join Date: Dec 2010 Device: nine	Somewhere in reading through 7 pages of entries, I've lost something...... This whole thing strikes me as commerce, not learning, not public good, not whatever... Library wants books. It wants paper books and it wants e-books. There are 6 major publishers. As I understand it, 5 won't sell books to the library at all. The 6th WILL sell books, but wants to charge 300% or more for the library to buy the books... I keep reading here in MR that there are all these fantastic indie authors and publishers. If so, and the items from the "big 6" are unavailable or unreasonably expensive, WHY can't the libraries purchase from these other sources? I'm sure, since these excellent alternatives exist, there should be easily available information on the alternate John Sandford or James Patterson or Nora Roberts... So, library, FIND a way to get the alternative books. The ALA (I presume some umbrella library group and lobby and something out there to advocate for libraries) should GET THE WORD OUT. I find it hard to believe that the public can't be made aware of the problem with the publishers. Between the Internet and all the other media, there should CERTAINLY be a simple way to put something up that'll tell everyone "These are the publishers that REFUSE to make e-book content available to your libary. Here's the one that' WILL sell books but want to charge 3 TIMES what you'd pay for the same book." Everybody keeps saying publishers ONLY respond to the monetary bottom line. Fine, maybe a few thousand or tens of thousands of people refusing to buy books from companies that continue to refuse to move into the 21st century can help the publishers figure out it may be smarter to provide materials the libraries want at reasonable prices...