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Originally Posted by stormcloude
There was this quote in the first post of this thread: S&S e-books are currently available through the 3M, Baker & Taylor and Overdrive platforms. Each title licensed by a library is usable for one year from the date of purchase...
That's where I got the 17 loans before the book expires. Of course that's a rough estimate that doesn't take into account people returning it early, but most people I know rarely do that. They just wait for it to expire. I can see it being economical for best sellers that are extremely popular for a short window of time, but I really can't see libraries paying year after year after year for a book that's only checked out a handful of times each year. And what about out of "print" ebooks? I've seen a few indie publishers go under in my preferred genre and if the book licenses expire, then access to those ebooks are gone permanently too.
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Thanks I missed that part about 1 year. It is not common I think.
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I'm probably just too much of a bleeding-heart liberal hippie, but the whole idea of licensing ebooks sits wrong with me. It just seems like bph greed to me.
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Not an uncommon opinion by any means, but for publishers and authors each library loan is a lost sale and as ebooks don't deteriorate and are much easier to copy for anyone who wants to than paper, the publishers and authors are trying to make about the same amount of money per copy as paper. maybe they make more and maybe less.
Some may be gouging but I think that will stop as soon as someone actually comes up with some concrete profit/loss, actual cost of lending for libraries of ebooks VS. paper etc. Not in this decade I think.
At this point libraries will be way ahead expense wise on ebook VS. paper book lending as the infrastructure requirements such as buildings, staffing, getting them ready for loans, loss etc. are practically non existent.
And I have read a few articles from large libraries stating that while ebook expenditure on the books themselves is 3% of the book buying budget, ebook lending is up to 50% of total lending. And this is very important to libraries as many get funded based on the number of book loans. And while we still have paper, and libraries are spending 97% of budget on paper, how does higher ebook pricing, if indeed it is affect anyone severely except in terms of convenience for those of us who are not to poor to buy ereaders.
I am a bit of a bleeding heart liberal myself, I would like to see everyone have enough to eat and decent housing and clothing. I don't expect the farmers, retailers, restaurants or property owners to provide it at their expense. It is up to us all as individuals and a society provide what we can for our less fortunate or less able members, and to vote for legislators who will both enact measures and enforce without prejudice against gouging and slumlords and fraud...
Helen