Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
Is it wrong for someone to drive on the road even though they paid a miniscule amount to pave the spot their car is on? Is it wrong for a kid to go to school even though their parents only paid a fraction in taxes for the cost of the education? Of course, the answer is no; that's how services work. You spread the cost over many and allow equal access to the service. Libraries work the same way as any other service. You can fiddle the costs to make things look bad for some, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
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Show me where anyone in this thread has said using the library is wrong.
Also nice try with the false equivalencies. The people who made and maintain the road are paid for their work directly. This isn’t the case with authors whose work is checked out from the library, yes there are benefits but those benefits are far more questionable than the straight pay those others get.
Publishers are running a business. Businesses are out to make a profit, they do not exist to serve the public. Now even setting everything at equal in terms of library patrons giving good word of mouth of a book vs buyers, and the people they influence into reading the book being equal again in numbers that borrow the book vs buy the book the publisher is going to see a bigger return from the buyers unless the license for libraries is astronomical.
Thus it makes sense for the publisher to try and entice buyers over borrowers. Which is what this 8 week wait is about.
After that 8 weeks everyone has access to the books. There’s no distinct public benefit to the public having immediate access to essentially free new release fiction books. Yeah you might be a bit behind the zeitgeist unless you buy the book and read it but chances are you’d be on a wait list anyway since statistically you’re not going to be the first one to check every ebook you want out as they become available. And this doesn’t present a drain on society.
Is it inconvenient for those who can’t afford to purchase every new book they want? I don’t really think so most of the people in this thread have said they have long TBR piles (digitally and or physically) so they’ve got plenty of reading material.