Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Hmm.
Let's say -- $110.00 per eBook. Since there are more than 11,000 people in my county, and the Overdrive collection is county-wide, you are correct. But, then, if you divide the number of people by the number of titles, it's a lot more than fractions.
I pay $50 a year to the Brooklyn Library, and I'm sure a lot more than that, in local taxes, to my county and township libraries. A bit of state taxes also go to libraries, although our state's support of libraries has declined. I also pay federal taxes for library services, most of which I can't take advantage of, but some of which I can. (I have a son-in-law in the reserves, and that's enough of a nexus to give us legitimate access to one collection.)
Before eBooks, I directly paid the local library almost what I now pay Brooklyn -- in fines. No fine revenue must be one of the rarely-mentioned disadvantages, to libraries, of eBooks.
I agree with most of your post so of course I'll pick out this one sentence I don't agree on 
First, a lot of publishers are non-profit. University publishers are the obvious example.
Second, the idea that the only stakeholder a business should, or does, care about is the stockholders is both controversial and probably a minority view. I question whether most people who went into publishing did so because it was the most lucrative job they could possibly get -- although, admittedly, some did.
Of course, if the publishers don't care at all about financials, they won't be able to release lots of good books.
Some newspaper publishers are going non-profit due to the very bad financial conditions in their industry. Despite everything you read here, book publishers are the part of the publishing industry that has weathered the digital transition the best from a financial standpoint (I think that's a fact) and from an artistic standpoint (which I know is an opinion). |
You voluntarily pay 50 to the BPL outside of taxes, which is great, however taxes were what was being discussed. You most certainly do pay more than 50 in taxes in state and federal dollars, however if you do the research you'll find libraries are not the major beneficiaries of taxes people seem to think they are, instead they're more dependent on local money such as your 50$ which I presume is part of their member drive, and grants the money from which is generally exclusively for whatever the grant covers.
Now lets be generous and say 100 of your tax dollars actually go to the library, we'll add the 50 you give them. Further I'll even assume that the full 150 is only going for ebooks. Further lets assume the library only pays $9.99 per license (I'm 100% sure this isn't the case and that it's higher). Lets round that to a flat 10 just to make the math easier and the numbers prettier. 150/10 = 15, so once you've borrowed 15 books you're now on other peoples dime.
Yes I'm pulling numbers, but since we don't know how much of our taxes actually goes to the libraries and unless someone here works in the department for a library which deals with acquiring licenses we wont know those figures. Which is why I was generous to both in the above example.
Circling back to your example of 110 per ebook license, with 1,000 per a county which is a rather small county which would lead me to believe their library is going to be somewhat limited in the ebooks they get.
To continue using you as an example though BPL is a shared resource between Brooklyn and Queens as a base, however any NYS resident can get a BPL and NYPL card, and borrow ebooks using those cards. Which rather drastically raises the number of users of a system not all of whom are paying taxes which go into those libraries.
I'm even reasonably sure without checking that out of state people can get a NYPL or BPL card, though they may need to pay a fee and pay that fee again upon renewal of their card(s).
Now I'm sure the number of NYS and out of state residents who take advantage of this program are the minority, however I'm equally sure any NYC resident who is aware has merged their BPL and NYPL cards. All you need to do is visit a branch in Brooklyn/Queens to merge an existing NYPL card to a BPL account, or Manhattan, Bronx, or Staten Island with a BPL card to merge it to an NPL account. Rather trivial tasks.
So you now have a pool of millions drawing on the library resources. Lets also not forget that not all of those millions are paying taxes, we'll steer clear of those criminally not doing so and stick with kids/unemployed, etc. This is not to shame them, merely to remind everyone that they exist and are utilizing those resources, the library doesn't discriminate against them. But this means the dollars those tax payers do contribute to the library are stretched that much farther.