[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Follow the money.

If the publisher can afford to lose the library as customer for ebooks, they will change nothing.

Yes, and from the figures we've seen it sure seems like library sales make up fairly little. So unless these sales amount to a fairly massive word of mouth reaction for selling, which seems unlikely given that we know Tor did a full embargo last year to test this, the publisher can afford this loss.

If they find out after a while that their embargo is counterproductive, they have to please the library to get them back as customer. By limiting to one copy they are not hurting the few that use the library to save money, but regular users that cannot just simply buy.

So here's the cold hard truth, the publishers care more about the people who are able to give them money. Not in a mean way, it's just not a businesses job to put compassion before profit. The people who can't, or wont buy books are essentially the same to the publisher. Though I'm sure none of them will say this because they have PR teams, and it's not like they want those who are unable to buy to be unable to buy.

It is also a statement that you cannot simply push the library around. Ebooks are already more lucrative for the publisher than pbooks. Now the library is also responsible for "stealing customers".

This is what the action does. It is not a reason for why this particular tactic, not buying any ebooks, is a good one. Also the cost differences for ebook and pbook are not as far apart as people like to pretend. But that's another dead horse discussion so we can agree to disagree there.

It doesn't appear to be a problem with paper, just ebooks. Maybe, just maybe, the problem of their inability to sell ebooks to customers has other more pressing reasons than the library.

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As I've mentioned, physical books impose many of the same restrictions by their very nature on libraries. There is only so much space a library has to store them. They do not automagically get returned exactly at their due time if not before, really the list goes on. So the publishers imposing a limit to ebooks is bringing them more in line with ebooks in terms of the libraries ability to distribute.


And as to your question, why should the library bow to the will of the publisher no matter what the publisher says.

They shouldn't, I never said they should. I said the tactic of not buying books is foolish for the library. I've stated several times that libraries as a whole were doing a good job with the media in terms of crafting a narrative before this single library decided to not buy ebooks from Macmillan.