HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations

[natasha_fawn]

This librarian http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.p...e-library.html suggests that the average lifespan of books at her(?) library is about 35 loans, and that appears to include academic books. I wouldn't be surprised if it is shorter for novels. (Novels are read all the way through more often than academic books are.) People are not nice to books they don't own. They get tossed around, shoved in bags, and generally spend more time out and about than a privately owned book that lives on a bookshelf.

Note that I am not saying that I support this cap, just that 26 loans may actually be reasonably close to how long current hardbacks last. (Current hardbacks being more poorly made and less durable than their predecessors.) Can anyone find some real data?

[ATDrake]

Well, this is purely anecdata, but one of the municipal library systems in my region has a catalogue that shows the usage numbers for each copy of a particular book, as well as last loan date, etc.

So if you were to go in and check the hardcover edition of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code via the catalogue link at the top of their website, you'd see that they had 19 copies, almost all with a minimum usage of 30+ loans, and the top 3 circulating copies at 60+ loans.

Also, half their copies are going unused at the moment. I suspect you'd get much the same numbers for many of the popular bestsellers of yesteryear, and even higher usage numbers for certain perennial classics.

If you check the oldest copy of Agatha Christie's After the Funeral, there are 3 copies at 78, 69, and 42 uses respectively, and all of them checked out as recently as this year.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by natasha_fawn

This librarian http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.p...e-library.html suggests that the average lifespan of books at her(?) library is about 35 loans, and that appears to include academic books. I wouldn't be surprised if it is shorter for novels. (Novels are read all the way through more often than academic books are.) People are not nice to books they don't own. They get tossed around, shoved in bags, and generally spend more time out and about than a privately owned book that lives on a bookshelf.

As Jann comments under that article (refering to the pictures);
"Do you think this has more to do with the way the books are handled, or the way they are constructed? Seems to me that pages used to be sewn into hardcover books, whereas now they are frequently glued."

The books we sent to libraries were stiched together with the spine cover attached to the cover, not the pages.

We didn't handle paperback book for libraries but I recall that the library I used from '58 - '70 had the paperback books rebound.

See Library binding.
"Library binding is the term used to describe the method of binding serials, and re-binding paperback or hardcover books, for use within libraries. Library binding increases the durability of books, as well as making the materials easier to use. A lower cost and in-house alternative to library binding of paperbacks is the stiffening process."

[natasha_fawn]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Well, this is purely anecdata, but one of the municipal library systems in my region has a catalogue that shows the usage numbers for each copy of a particular book, as well as last loan date, etc.

So if you were to go in and check the hardcover edition of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code via the catalogue link at the top of their website, you'd see that they had 19 copies, almost all with a minimum usage of 30+ loans, and the top 3 circulating copies at 60+ loans.

Also, half their copies are going unused at the moment. I suspect you'd get much the same numbers for many of the popular bestsellers of yesteryear, and even higher usage numbers for certain perennial classics.

If you check the oldest copy of Agatha Christie's After the Funeral, there are 3 copies at 78, 69, and 42 uses respectively, and all of them checked out as recently as this year.

Ah, clever, I didn't know any libraries showed the number of times a book has been loaned!

So now I wonder what the discrepancy is. I've just found this article http://nyunews.com/news/2009/11/17/books/ about the NYU library. It states that it generally takes 20-25 loans for the "cover of a publisher-bound book to become detached." And that the cost of repair is $10-$60. I wonder if any of those books listed for your library have been repaired? Or maybe University libraries have different repair/replacement criteria?

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

So, they're squeezing a little more money out of the customers they already have in exchange for losing the customers that will sustain them ten years from now. Typical modern business short-sightedness: It's all about boosting the short-term stock price for the benefit of the speculators. "The long view" means thinking about next fiscal year rather than just next quarter. The Rupert Murdochs of the world win. And everyone else...?

Here's a thought: Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron. He was greedy, ruthless, and very, very good at what he did. He started from poverty and made a huge fortune. But he would be mocked, today, especially by the Murdochs of the world and their kin, because he was "too nice". He spent his money. Worse, he spent it on the "undeserving" -- people who hadn't accumulated wealth of their own, who, in modern belief, deserve only poverty. He bought libraries for towns who couldn't afford them, and pipe organs, which don't get quite as much press. He helped people with that money. He believed it was his obligation to use his wealth for the benefit of others, and he did. And, apparently, had a hell of a lot of fun doing so -- more fun, I would think, than partying on a yacht ever could be. That would be laughable today. People believe wealth is virtue, and should never be shared with the less virtuous (that is, the less wealthy), and things like libraries are liberal nonsense.

It does not surprise me that a man like Rupert Murdoch would push something like this. Public libraries, and public schools, have always been one of the few forces for equalization in economic class across generations in America. Being from Wisconsin I know how public schools are under assault from the right wing in America. That public libraries would be in the cross-hairs as well does not surprise me.

I am actually in a volunteer group in my local community that works to support our local library financially and other wise. One event we hold every year is a sale of books to raise funds. Most of these books have come from individual donors, but some are books that would otherwise be sent for recycle by the library. These books have been cycled in and out of the library far more than 26 times. If access to books from public libraries is sharply lessened or ceases, especially in economically poor areas, will a tree still be able to grow in Brooklyn?

“Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.”

“The man who dies rich dies disgraced “

Andrew Carnegie

[Shopaholic]

Wow! that's so sad. In the budget cut in our city one of the first things on the chopping block was library funds. Some libraries will pay the fee but I don't see a lot of them being able to afford a yearly fee for a book license.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by natasha_fawn

I wonder if any of those books listed for your library have been repaired?

Quite likely. Every so often you see a listing in the catalogue which is unavailable because it's "In Mends". But that generally tends to be for older books with only a few copies that it looks like someone may have treated badly (and kids' books).

Personally, I kind of doubt that regular hardcover books fall apart after 26 full-length reads unless they're really shoddily bound or a lot of people are basically abusing the books.

But the libraries around here seem to have a shared in-house repair system (one of the librarians for another municipality once told me that they kept a special machine in the basement for polishing the scratches out of CDs & DVDs, which sometimes made unreadable ones work again), so maybe that lowers the cost.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by natasha_fawn

This librarian http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.p...e-library.html suggests that the average lifespan of books at her(?) library is about 35 loans ...

"His", (he goes by the name of "Horst" which makes him male), and "his" library would be the Vienna University Library, one of the leading academic libraries in Austria. Still, books can usually be repaired, re-bound, salvaged by other means; also, this could be the selling point for library ebooks (say good buy to lost and damaged books), but no. It's just stupid.

[natasha_fawn]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

"His", (he goes by the name of "Horst" which makes him male), and "his" library would be the Vienna University Library, one of the leading academic libraries in Austria. Still, books can usually be repaired, re-bound, salvaged by other means; also, this could be the selling point for library ebooks (say good buy to lost and damaged books), but no. It's just stupid.

Ah, I didn't see his name, thank you.

It is a great selling point for libraries, I agree. It may even be a big reason ebooks have been adopted in many libraries, though that has been slow. But it's exactly why HC has implemented this whether we like it or not. I'm just trying to get an idea of how reasonable the 26 loans restriction is as an analogue to the lifespan of paper books. (As you and the NYU article point out, this equation would also have to include repair costs. It also has to take into account the relative prices libraries pay for paper books vs. ebooks, which statistic seems to tip it into "unfair" territory right off the bat.) I find it curious how little real data there seems to be available about library book lifespan.

Spoiler:

In case anyone's wondering, my own knee-jerk opinion is "I don't like it." I do think it is legitimate for HC to take this kind of thing into account, but I don't like it and I think they're taking it way too far.

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Quite likely. Every so often you see a listing in the catalogue which is unavailable because it's "In Mends". But that generally tends to be for older books with only a few copies that it looks like someone may have treated badly (and kids' books).

Personally, I kind of doubt that regular hardcover books fall apart after 26 full-length reads unless they're really shoddily bound or a lot of people are basically abusing the books.

But the libraries around here seem to have a shared in-house repair system (one of the librarians for another municipality once told me that they kept a special machine in the basement for polishing the scratches out of CDs & DVDs, which sometimes made unreadable ones work again), so maybe that lowers the cost.

not sure if you know this but you can even buy relatively inexpensive consumer versions of these devices. I've even use some of the optical grade cerium oxide polish I have to polish glassware or even my reading glasses to buff out a problematic CD by hand and get it back to workable. But the CD/DVD buffing (repair) devices are out there and very easy to use and they work most of the time.

[pietrocrazy]

I volunteered at the public library a few years ago. Most books were hardcover, bound in special library bindings, and they seemed to last practically forever. On the other hand, the cheapest paperbacks (think Harlequin Romance) never lasted more than a year or two, but I'm not quite sure if that's because they fell apart or just because there were constantly so many new ones coming in.

[stickybuns]

So... how long do y'all think it will take publishers to start implementing a maximum number of views on all e-books? "You may read this book 5 times before an e-cup of e-coffee will e-spill all over it. Thank you for your business, please bend over again soon!"

[stormcloude]

Originally Posted by stickybuns

So... how long do y'all think it will take publishers to start implementing a maximum number of views on all e-books? "You may read this book 5 times before an e-cup of e-coffee will e-spill all over it. Thank you for your business, please bend over again soon!"

I can't help thinking of the uproar if iTunes were to say, "Okay, you can only listen to this song 10 times then we're gonna delete it from your account and make you buy it again."

Some people take DAMN GOOD care of their books (and library books!) and expect them to last a lifetime. To have the manufacturer tell us how often we have to replace the things we've bought is abhorrent. This is a power-grab by HC, pure and simple.

[CHunter_Author]

Its a savy tactic for the publishers if they can pull it off. Kill the e-book loaning trend of their titles before it becomes popular idea. I don't see libraries buying books over and over, especially for such a low number as 26. 75 to 100 times, that's more reasonable. But what this will do is open the door for independent authors and publishers on the e-book side of things. Libraries will probably be more likely to give an up and comer a chance if the product is good, if the price is reasonable, and if they do not impose draconian restrictions, which they likely are not to do. By stitching an avenue publishers could be paving a way for countless competitors. They had better think this through.

[stormcloude]

Originally Posted by CHunter_Author

But what this will do is open the door for independent authors and publishers on the e-book side of things. Libraries will probably be more likely to give an up and comer a chance if the product is good, if the price is reasonable, and if they do not impose draconian restrictions, which they likely are not to do. By stitching an avenue publishers could be paving a way for countless competitors. They had better think this through.

Hmm, if some of the smaller independent publishers would donate say, one of their titles to a bunch of libraries, the libraries see that those books are popular and then buy more from that publisher... I wonder how that would work.