E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians • Hacker News Board

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#61

Post by devoply » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #24

tadzik_ wrote: post #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 len…

People seem to instinctively feel that an e-book shouldn't cost as much as a real book. A paperback edition of a book often has multiple owners throughout its — sometimes considerable — lifespan. That's simply part of the deal, and it always has been. E-books lack the ability to share, sell, and pass it on. That's fine, but the market won't bear nearly the same price as a paper book that can do all those things. An e…

I just saw some Evian water in a nice container to spray on people's faces for $8. The market in the Western world has jumped the shark. It'll put up with many things thrown at it.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#62

Post by pgeorgi » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

uneekname wrote: post #49

eyegor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually if you're willing to pay for it, you can buy 10+" eink screens with wacom digitizers on top (drawing pen support). They're quite good for tech papers and manuals because they're a similar size to real paper, no eye strain, you can draw notes directly on them, and ofc you can cram tons of papers/textbooks/manuals into something that weighs next to nothing. Edit: if you're curious, look into the likebook mimas…

As a student that looks like exactly what I'm looking for, but I'm never going to shell out $400 for one when I can get an early-gen Kindle for free. Really hoping we will see prices decrease for higher-end e-ink displays.

> Really hoping we will see prices decrease for higher-end e-ink displays.

Unlikely to happen: similar to silicon, eink's yield (that is, amount of parts produced with no errors) goes down quickly (quadratic if not cubic, I forgot) with increasing size.

A system based on lots of eink chiplets with small enough margins that you can tile them could scale up, but the margins are also a difficult area.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#63

Post by SolaceQuantum » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #31

dgacmu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely dependant upon volume. According to [0], the average US non-fiction book will sell under 3,000 copies in its lifetime. For the proceeds from that to pay the author, editor, and marketing... Well, that's not a lot of copies to amortize those salaries across. The numbers are obviously very different for a New York times best seller, where physical goods costs will represent a larger fraction of the cost.…

Coincidentally, it costs between $2000 and $4000 to print and market a book. So, what, say $1 per book pays for that. The rest pays the author. But wait! Authors only get a buck or two royalty per book. So why do they cost so much? Use your imagination.

Marketing, type setting, cover design, editing, distribution channels, licenses for fonts, lawyers for contracts between everyone, accountants for managing the money flow of all the above, analysts to track how well each genre is selling and why, etc? And if the cover is particularly glossy, has metallic shiny lettering, velvet, etc. That also jacks price because that stuff all has to be custom made.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#64

Post by criddell » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

heinrichhartman wrote: post #18

avar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, the digital e-book is inherently more valuable than a physical book. I often re-read or consult books (or chapters) I've read on a whim. If I had to e.g. take my library on vacations to do the same thing I can trivially do on a Kindle I'd need to travel with a minivan full of books. There's all sorts of other value, like search functions, not having to fill my house or storage box with books, and avoid…

I feel exactly the opposite. I hate reading stuff on screens. - It hurts my eyes when I do this for hours. - It comes with lots of distractions. - Digital Annotations are a PITA - Zapping through a book works much better in hard-copy If I am supposed to spent 1h+ reading your content. You better make sure I can buy a printed copy.

When you get old, there may be a time when the ability to dial up the font size on any book is more important than all the things you list.

The accessibility benefits of a good ereader (ie not a phone or tablet) are important for a lot of people.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#65

Post by ainiriand » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #14

ainiriand wrote: post #2

What is more important, culture or company profits?

Company profits indicate what is important to a culture.

Indicate, not dictate, like it seems to be the case. In this case it looks like the company profit is deciding how the culture should be given to the population. There has to be some wiggle room here between company profits and general access to culture I think.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#66

Post by ainiriand » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

kozak wrote: post #3

ainiriand wrote: post #2

What is more important, culture or company profits?

For a company, it's obviously profits. Without them, the company will cease existing.

And for a country? A company or the ease of access to culture?

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#67

Post by someguydave » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #54

hrktb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. For me this was true ten years ago. The tides have shifted. Now a physical copy means: it will degrade faster than my devices (think books for children). It will take physical place, we’ll…

Physical books last at least ~50 years. That is longer than any physical computer lasts and longer than any of the companies that offer cloud services (IBM doesn't offer e-Books yet) have existed. There is a good chance that some of them will go bankrupt over this time.

which is why you should get your e-books as drm-free local files

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#68

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

It seems to me as though an interlibrary alliance could pool resources to create their own digitizations of print-version books. They already pay extra for the library edition of a print book. For that higher price, they are supposed to get more durable covers and paper. For a more expensive e-book, what do they get? Self-destructing DRM. Why would anyone agree to that--especially a library?

If it is legal to lend out that physical copy, what is the difference, philosophically, between taking that copy off the shelf and placing it in a reader-proxy robot that can turn pages and focus its camera on them? What is the difference between that and flipping through static photographs of the pages while the physical copy is kept in a "digital lending" vault? What is the difference between that and flipping through pages of OCR-digitized text that correspond to the photographs? And if the physical copy is permanently placed in a defunct mine and no one ever has physical access, what prevents the mine from lending the digital text to any partner library, so they can in turn lend the single digital copy to a person?

If the publishers want to play stupid games, award them stupid prizes. Buy the paperback/cheapest edition of the book, shear off the spine, scan both sides of each page in a machine at 1200 dpi, re-bind the pages (plus paper cover) into a corrugated plastic cover, catalog it, and put it in permanent storage. Now OCR the 1200 dpi images, downsample them to 96 dpi, and package the text and low-res images into an e-book. When a user thinks the OCR made an error, the low-res image can establish a page and location, and a rectangle of the high-res image can be delivered from a web interface. The user's guess at the text content can then be verified or rejected by AI--easier than OCR from scratch--and used to update the book file.

All the lending software needs to do is verify that no more than N natural persons are looking at the digital files for N real copies at the same time. The physical copy could always be retrieved from storage and shipped to the borrower, after all. The legal copyright model has nothing to do with the time and money costs of physical shipping. A property title can move faster than the speed of light, even when the property itself is immobile. Even if the lending model doesn't work, sell the beneficial interest in the book for $20.00, and then pay $19.99 when they sell it back, the $0.01 representing physical-book storage fees and bandwidth costs.

Whether or not the end-user can copy the files they receive is immaterial. I can already borrow a library book and scan every page at home. That would be me violating the copyright, not the library. The burden on the library is to say, "please don't do that, unless it is for legal, fair-use purposes". And the burden of policing it is on the owner/assignee of the copyright. If going along with the copyright system voluntarily is reasonable, people will go along with it voluntarily. If not, people will pirate. This may seem tautological, but increasing forced compliance will reduce voluntary compliance.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#69

Post by BeetleB » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

heinrichhartman wrote: post #18

avar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, the digital e-book is inherently more valuable than a physical book. I often re-read or consult books (or chapters) I've read on a whim. If I had to e.g. take my library on vacations to do the same thing I can trivially do on a Kindle I'd need to travel with a minivan full of books. There's all sorts of other value, like search functions, not having to fill my house or storage box with books, and avoid…

I feel exactly the opposite. I hate reading stuff on screens. - It hurts my eyes when I do this for hours. - It comes with lots of distractions. - Digital Annotations are a PITA - Zapping through a book works much better in hard-copy If I am supposed to spent 1h+ reading your content. You better make sure I can buy a printed copy.

If it hurts your eyes, you're likely not using an e-ink display. It's a reflective surface, just as paper is. It shouldn't hurt your eyes any more than paper will.

Distractions? Not in any of my e-readers.

Digital annotations suck, I'll grant that. But then again, I like my physical books and would never put markings on them, so for me this isn't a disadvantage.

Browsing is much better for physical books, but heavy hard bound books are much a pain to hold while reading.

Pros and cons to both.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#70

Post by shantly » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #60

Freak_NL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to instinctively feel that an e-book shouldn't cost as much as a real book. A paperback edition of a book often has multiple owners throughout its — sometimes considerable — lifespan. That's simply part of the deal, and it always has been. E-books lack the ability to share, sell, and pass it on. That's fine, but the market won't bear nearly the same price as a paper book that can do all those things. An e…

Video piracy's gone down specifically due to Netflix. As each brand stops allowing Neflix to host their content, and as long as income remains to flat for a large portion of America, I'm expecting video piracy to make a comeback as soon as people remember it exists. Subscribing to HBO, CBS, Disney, and whoever else, on top of Netflix, will soon become cost prohibitive. Doing without isn't a consideration, so illegal…

It's more about the convenience than the price, for me. I'd pay $30, maybe $40, per month for access to basically anything I want to watch (past that I may as well buy as I watch, and even at $40 I'd have to do the math to make sure it's sensible). It's having to keep up with several subscriptions, having to figure out where something is when I want to watch it, inconveniences like logging in on a new device, expired sessions on devices that don't have password managers (or keyboards...), multiple different interfaces (for basically the same thing) to stay familiar with, crap like that.