Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
What is the advantage of getting your eBooks from your local library?
Is it just to avoid buying them? Or are there books you can get from
the library that you can't find elsewhere?
Am I missing out on something if I have a reader that can't do Adobe
DRM?
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Can't find elsewhere?
Well, let's take a backlist paperback novel by a bestselling author before she became a bestseller. This book is not available in a local bookstore, and cannot be special ordered since it is out of print. The library *system* may have a copies floating around in it but since these books are 10-15 years old many have been damaged or lost, and the one branch that has a copy is in the tiny branch 20 miles away. I can go to Amazon and find a used book seller who will sell it to me--with creases and a coffeestain-- for $15.99 plus $3.99 s&h.
Or I can go to overdrive, click it up on my computer, and be reading it within minutes as long as there isn't a hold on it (and there is often is a hold on it, but I've never had to wait more than a few weeks for a book).
Books can be read on ADE so you don't need a reader that handles the DRM unless your eyes can't handle reading on a backlit screen.
(By which I mean to say my local digital library consortium has all Lisa Kleypas's backlist, and I've never seen the complete collection anywhere else. This is actually kind of unusual; it is more usual for the library to have books 3 and 5 of a given series and none other, but if you're ready to read book 3 or 5, it's there).