Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll
I absolutely favor government intervention to keep prices set the same regardless of the customer. Random House can't charge me 300% of what they charge everyone else; why should libraries be any different?
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How about because their usage is different than a book sold to an individual consumer would be?
I'm not saying 300% more is reasonable, but something above consumer level retail probably is. Libraries were often already paying double retail list though so how much of an increase above that might be justifiable?
The publisher makes the point that a digital copy can be lent forever, but have they come out and guaranteed that they'll update the formats the library has if ePub falls out of use or the DRM scheme changes? What if OverDrive goes under, will the publisher guarantee transfer of the libraries copies to a different distributor? If they want to claim the digital copies last forever then they need to do something on their end to at least give libraries an actual expectation they will be.