Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
Is it worthwhile for publishers to have their books in libraries at all? Amazon certainly has not felt the need to do so, and does not seem to be suffering thereby. Will MacMillan suffer if all libraries boycott even all of its books? It is a difficult question to answer. The main tangible loss will of course be the loss of the direct sales to the libraries. To what extent will this revenue loss be offset or exceeded by additional sales? Of course more intangible benefits are claimed to accrue to publishers from their library books. Things such as goodwill, discovery and the like. Are these in fact worthwhile? If so, I wonder why has Amazon not raced to make all of its imprint and KDP books available to libraries? In the absence of answers to at least some of these questions a boycott may prove counter-productive. For example, if MacMillan thought it was in its best interests not to deal with libraries and was only continuing to do so for historical reasons and fear of the public relations fallout of discontinuing, a boycott by libraries may well play right into its hands.
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I suppose the publishers may gain a few sales by having books in libraries. Although I am not someone who buys a lot of books (I stick with library books most of the time) I have occasionally bought other books by an author based on one I read from the library.