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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Reasons like this?
How about money? The library actually pays money, even when the book is underutilized. Up front. It is not necessary to pay even more money each time the library loans it out. The library already owns the license until it expires, if it expires. Again it is not lost sales. Would the publisher like to sell more direct licenses instead of selling the license to borrow? Absolutely. They are fighting for market share. They don't want to compete on price, so the only thing they have left is converting borrows into sales. Not lost sales, they are trying to create more sales. They could also try to sell more expensive licenses to libraries during the new release window.
I don't think even Macmillan themselves believe the problem to be single fold. They can only hope that they gain enough extra revenue to make up for additional lost readers. If it is not n the library any more (with as many copies) then the would be borrowers either buy, or go to a competitor for a different non embargoed book, or simply grow more patient.
There is a valid price slot just below the publishers. It is not going away, and neither is it a race to the bottom. Are publisher going to compete in that price slot? Not with new releases. Maybe with their back catalogue. Their business model does not allow new releases to be that low. Maybe they adopt, maybe they don't have to.
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A couple of points. First, readers who don't buy books are not customers to publishers. I doubt publishers are going to waste effort or change their business model trying to chase that will o' the wisp.
Second, libraries are a much, much smaller piece of the pie than they were back in the 50's. According to one article I read, in 1950, the there were around 11,000 titles published in the US, the average library purchased 14,000 titles a year and there were a bit over 11,000 libraries in the US. In 2015, the sales to libraries had dropped to 1.3% of publishers' trade sales. Ebook sales to libraries doesn't move the needle much for publishers at all.
Pretty much, the argument for library sales importance to publishers has been reduced to marketing, but if a library patron isn't going to buy books, I'm not sure that's a particularly effective marketing platform.