E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
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Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#2What is more important, culture or company profits?
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#3What is more important, culture or company profits?
For a company, it's obviously profits. Without them, the company will cease existing.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#4What is more important, culture or company profits?
Apparently neither if the book publisher actually refuses to sell the ebook to libraries. It's almost like they want people to pirate it.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#5> consumer expectations that a digital file will be less expensive than a physical copy
That expectation is justified, because bits haven't been a scarce resource ever since Shannon's digital circuits drove marginal cost of copying a file to approximately zero.
> very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format
If the market isn't willing to pay that price, then their business model isn't sustainable. Blaming libraries and attempting to make their product artificially scarce (with rate-limiting contracts or technical tricks ("DRM") at best only postpone the business model's eventual failure. While it would be unfortunate if authoring books became unsustainable, the publishers may not be needed. That's what capitalism does: it removes inefficiency, including middlemen that no longer strictly required..
> Potash said that studies consistently show library patrons to be more frequent book buyers overall—which is another reason Macmillan’s letter stung. “They are taking their readers, their customers, their fans, and intentionally trying to frustrate them,” he said.
Giving your actual paying (even indirectly through a library) customers a worse experience than they could get by sim0ply downloading a pirated copy is always a bad idea. It takes a long time to rebuild from a bad reputation.
However, the bigger problem is failing to recognize that the real competition is for people's attention. Rate-limiting or otherwise restricting libraries is throwing away the most important resource: people's awareness that your product even exists. Do you want free advertising even when people read your book for free, or do you want fade into obscurity without even the possibility of making a sale?
> The licensing model for libraries and e-books itself is complex and difficult to explain to outsiders.
That's intentional, because they are trying to use complex tricks to artificially recreate scarcity instead of adapting to a new business model.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#6Usually I'm against restrictions like this, but this doesn't seem that bad. It's only for ebooks and for first 8 weeks, with people waiting years for the next book of their favourite author, waiting 2 more months when they are not willing to buy that book is nothing.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#7Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#8> There’s a tension in e-book pricing generally between consumer expectations that a digital file will be less expensive than a physical copy and the reality that very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format
There's more to this than the cost of making a book. As a consumer, a physical thing inherently has more value than a digital one because it keeps the value after I buy it. I can lend the book to someone legally after I'm done with it. I can sell it, trade it, or donate to a library.
With a digital book (or any other digital good) I lose all of that. Since I'm getting so much less, why should I pay the same price?
The digitization makes it impossible for businesses to control the distribution of their products, unless they go full DRM and effectively prevent people from owning the things they buy – but in that case, there should be no surprise that people don't want to pay quite as much.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#9> very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format
Either that's bullshit, or the costs are entirely artificial. I really, really want "Concrete mathematics" by Donald Knuth. I really, really don't want to pay €80 for it. A good alternative for me would be the e-book, but it isn't any cheaper. I doubt if anyone will buy the ebook for that price while there are free copies available online.
Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians
#10> consumer expectations that a digital file will be less expensive than a physical copy That expectation is justified, because bits haven't been a scarce resource ever since Shannon's digital circuits drove marginal cost of copying a file to approximately zero. > very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format If the market isn't willing to pay that price, then their business model isn't su…
But the cost of printing a book isn't exactly high. Most of the cost of a book is in the author, editorial staff, and other human services. The manufacturing is near nil.