Penguin ends library/Overdrive relationship starting tomorrow

[Synamon]

I don't see how not lending ebooks is going to have a positive impact on piracy; in fact, I see the exact opposite occurring. Most people who go looking for ebooks at the library aren't interested in buying a book, they want to borrow one for free (like they already have been doing with paper books, music, movies) and they are willing to wait their turn by placing a hold and putting up with a 2 or 3 week loan period in which to read the ebook. If all the publishers pull out of libraries, then people won't find anything to read there and it's a very short plank to a computer search that will introduce them to the wonders of piracy. Each library was buying the ebooks they loaned out, a single pirate can supply everyone on the internet with a book as it gets copied over and over.

[monkeygirl351]

Originally Posted by Synamon

I don't see how not lending ebooks is going to have a positive impact on piracy; in fact, I see the exact opposite occurring. Most people who go looking for ebooks at the library aren't interested in buying a book, they want to borrow one for free (like they already have been doing with paper books, music, movies) and they are willing to wait their turn by placing a hold and putting up with a 2 or 3 week loan period in which to read the ebook. If all the publishers pull out of libraries, then people won't find anything to read there and it's a very short plank to a computer search that will introduce them to the wonders of piracy. Each library was buying the ebooks they loaned out, a single pirate can supply everyone on the internet with a book as it gets copied over and over.

Exactly! All it takes is a simple search to find anything you want. I have friends that do it. I don't approve of it, and don't do it myself, but it is rather easy to do a google search for a title, and the more popular it is aka bestsellers that these publishers promote, the easier it is to get illegally. Heck I even was able to get a book that I really wanted but wasn't easily available because of geo restrictions, but I paid for it and got it legally. Doing a search for it, I also found it at several pirate sites. That was just putting the title and epub in to a google search, not even finding a specific pirate site. I say, that if the publishers want to have a sustaining business model, they need to allow readers to have access to a variety of books legally either through libraries as they do get paid, or for reasonable prices on the ebook stores. Plus have a well edited book, it is very frustrating to pay good money for a book so poorly edited, that it looks like it came from a pirate site.
If they do this, then I believe that people will pay for their books instead of go to those sites. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that won't pay for anything, but even if you made a book 99 cents, they won't pay for it. That is how they are, but not the majority of people with ereaders are. If there is less honest availability, then the dark net is going to be more tempting. Believe me, there are a few books that aren't on kindle yet that I wish would show up.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Fbone

You're correct. Hachette no longer offers any ebooks. They terminated their contract with Overdrive. I believe it was last year around Kindle joining

Do you have a link? I can't find anything on OverDrive and the articles I've found contradict each other.

Hachette Book Group has been doing a lot of legwork in recent months as part of an effort to decide whether it should increase its exposure to the library ebook market, reversing a previous decision that has kept Hachette's frontlist ebook titles out of library hands since July 2010. (Aug 11)

Simon & Schuster has refused to allow any titles to be borrowed as ebooks in US libraries and Hachette Book Group withdrew its service last year. (Nov 11)

Hachette stopped making its e-books available to libraries in 2009. (Dec 11)

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Synamon

More friction. Borrowing from the 3M Cloud library occurs in the physical library, not online.

If libraries adopted this model, I'd stop borrowing books completely.

[calibrated]

Originally Posted by Synamon

More friction. Borrowing from the 3M Cloud library occurs in the physical library, not online.

I'm no psychiatrist, nor do I have an MBA, but it seems to me that requiring people to travel to a specific physical location in order to download material is not only clinically insane, but also a losing business model.

"Let's see, I can take my laptop to the library and download this legally, or with a couple of clicks I can get it now from the pirate site and not have to go out in the snowstorm."

They never learn, do they?

[Blue Tyson]

They hate Amazon.

so of course they want Amazon to end up with the best lending library.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Do you have a link? I can't find anything on OverDrive and the articles I've found contradict each other.

Go to:

http://search.overdrive.com/

Click on Advanced Search

Then use the pull-down menus for Publisher, Imprint, and Media Format.

I can't find anything for Hachette per se. I did find a boatload of Kindle format books when I selected Grand Central Publishing (part of Hachette) from the Publisher pull-down. For whatever reason, however, I only get 66 Kindle titles when I select Grand Central Publishing from the Imprint pull-down.

Between where I live and where I work, and where members of my immediate family work and go to school, I am finding a much better selection of books published in the last twenty years or so via Overdrive for Kindle than in paper at my local public library. It's going to take more than Overdrive losing one or two publishers to change this. Except, if Random House pulled out, that would be a big loss, leading to me borrowing more paper books and fewer eBooks.

I guess I'm taking a risk that someone may say that if I don't work there personally, I shouldn't read the library book. C'est la vie sur internet.

[anamardoll]

I am not surprised by this, but count me as another person who isn't going to be buying Penguin ever again until they reverse this decision.

I don't buy ANY non-indie books unless I've read them at the library first. (In this way, I'm actually some buying books TWICE: if the library doesn't have a copy of what I want, I send a check and a "shopping list" to them and if I really like the book, I buy my own copy.) I can do that because in between my local library and the FLP, I'm kind of set on reading material for *checks watch* 20 years or so.

If I can't buy Penguin books for my library, then I won't buy them for myself. If Penguin comes out with something I absolutely CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT, I'll buy a copy used and send it to be cut-and-scanned for me. But I don't see that being necessary, seeing that I'm sitting pretty on a library of 1,500+ unread books at the moment.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Do you have a link? I can't find anything on OverDrive and the articles I've found contradict each other.

Not in front of me, no. It has been stated in the media along with Penguin's decision.

I confirmed this by searching Overdrive. All my library's Hachette ebooks are gone. They aren't even listed under publishers.

A few months ago I noticed many library's inventory totals declined. This may have been the cause.

[spindlegirl]

I just found myself gobsmacked by the irony of it all. It had been ages since a book really had me by the eyelids enough to put it on my "buy the paperback" list. (I am quite cheap with books because I am very selective with what I will *own* vs the kind I think are nice but won't keep) The irony is that it was a Penguin e-book borrowed from the library.

Well, that makes my Canada Reads decision easier. My library loan for "Something Fierce" (Not a Penguin book) will be up in 5 days, and I am almost done reading it, and I think I'll buy that one.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

A lot of this seems to be aimed, even indirectly, at Amazon's policy for how you borrow Kindle books.

Possibly. The publisher's spokespeople have been quoted as saying that their contract with Overdrive doesn't permit them using a third party for their ebook files. And, of course, Amazon was a third party.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If libraries adopted this model, I'd stop borrowing books completely.

Until lawsuits referencing the ADA force a reversal.

[Blue Tyson]

What libraries should do is start buying dead tree books from these publishers used and refuse to buy them new.

[piper28]

Hmm, I bet this explains why my library system added about 480 books between yesterday and today (and they mainly seemed to be Penguin). I bet they were getting in before they got locked out.

Now, there interesting thing is that they also seem to have locked it down to no wireless delivery at all to a kindle for Penguin books, or at least the one I checked out today was that way. Amazon only gave me a choice of which kindle I wanted to download it to the computer to transfer via usb, and didn't give me an option of downloading it to kindle for the pc (nor does it appear that I can actually download it in kindle for the pc). This was a first for me.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Until lawsuits referencing the ADA force a reversal.

yeah the audio books part is going to get them in trouble