Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorow
On the other hand, although cars may eventually stop running, by then they've been resold long ago. Major rentals, like Sixt for example, keep their fleet young, since they know that the resale value of cars decreases exponentially after reaching a certain age. Do libraries have that liberty of refinancing new eBooks?
People in favor of overcharging libraries love to compare eBooks to paper books rather than looking at eBooks for what they are: a new technology. They try to preserve an old business model by introducing artificial limits. Their business model mind you. Who cares if libraries, the gateway to knowledge, draw the short straw.
I repeat: Why should libraries pay a multiple for the same eBook compared to what normal people pay, while car rentals get premium discounts when purchasing cars for their fleet?
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I find it odd that you consider an ebook/pbook comparison invalid, but an ebook/car comparison perfectly valid. Especially when they are used in completely different ways, and I don't mean reading vs driving. A book in any format, is typically* used once by a user, unlike cars, which might be used multiple times by the same user.
Books are also less commodified than rental cars. An individual is unlikely to go to the car rental place and specify exactly which make and model they want (unless it's high end of course), rather, they select a type, eg medium-sized, and the car rental place will give you what *they* choose. However with books, it's unlikely that an individual will go to a library and say they want something from genre X, and leave it up to the librarian to choose something for them.
If you want to compare business models, then consider the considerable "wastage" of having books idling on shelves, even electronic ones. In the transport industry (to which car rental companies belong), such idling indicates vast overstocking and the solution would be to massively cull the excess. I am guessing you would not be supportive of such an action by libraries?
In short, I disagree that a car rental company is a valid comparison to a library.
* I think in general the number of times a book is re-read by the same person is tiny in comparison to the number to once-only reads. I read a lot, and I re-read my favourites, but the proportion of books that I re-read compared to those I don't is vanishingly small.