Publisher puts new limits on library e-books

[ERD50]

Wow that is a shocking amount of money. If you asked me much of my tax dollars went to fund libraries I would have guessed $20 maybe $40 and said that easily get my money's worth. ERD how did you go about making this calculation.

It is what it is. It's listed right on my property tax bill. They break it down into 16 line items.

$500 does seem high, but my property taxes are high overall.

-ERD50

 

[clifp]

It is what it is. It's listed right on my property tax bill. They break it down into 16 line items.

$500 does seem high, but my property taxes are high overall.

-ERD50

Ah we don't have any break down on our property tax, plus much of the state/city revenue is funding via a very stealthy generally excise tax.

It looks like Hawaii spends $25 million on libraries a year/divided by ~500K taxpayers or about $50 each. I am sure the ones in Illinois are very nice, and probably even have heaters, comfy chairs, and selection of music to listen to while enjoying the free lattes . Either that or you and the DW have a way too nice house. .

Still I am curious what people think about replacing libraries with some type of ebook subscription services.

 

[Bestwifeever]

I have two books on CD checked out through interlibrary loan, four hardcovers by the bed waiting to be read; DH also has several checked out. It's probably the only community service that everyone in the community can use at any time (and it is always busy), and I imagine it helps property values to have a good library.

Our taxes in my Illinois town are also high, but I just checked them for 2010: Library is $210; library pension fund is $19.98. So that's a little less than $20/month for our house, down to 2 people now. I think our library is very well managed; I've never heard anyone complain that the staff wastes money.

I am sure the ones in Illinois are very nice, and probably even have heaters, comfy chairs, and selection of music to listen to while enjoying the free lattes .

We do have heat in the winter and even AC in the summer, and some awesome comfortable chairs and computers available--no lattes, though

 

[samclem]

Don't these ebooks cost a lot less than a hardback? That would seem to take some of the sting out of the limits on re-distribution.

"Fair" is whatever the buyer and seller agree upon.

Public libraries: Probably not a legitimate role of government, but if residents of an area decide they want to tax themselves for this purpose, I'm not sure it's any more of a problem than if they decide to have a taxpayer-funded community center. Sure, private enterprise could do it, but the infringement is minor. I think it's good for everyone that a poor parent can take his/her kids to the library and they leave with armloads of "Go, Dog, Go!" , "Call of the Wild," etc.

 

[ERD50]

Don't these ebooks cost a lot less than a hardback? That would seem to take some of the sting out of the limits on re-distribution.

"Fair" is whatever the buyer and seller agree upon.

Agreed. What I don't know though, is what is the licence fee versus a physical book. I assume less, so they need some limits somewhere. As you say, whatever the buyer/seller agree to.

Public libraries: Probably not a legitimate role of government, but if residents of an area decide they want to tax themselves for this purpose, I'm not sure it's any more of a problem than if they decide to have a taxpayer-funded community center. Sure, private enterprise could do it, but the infringement is minor. I think it's good for everyone that a poor parent can take his/her kids to the library and they leave with armloads of "Go Dog, Go!" , "Call of the Wild," etc.

I'm all for anything of an educational nature. I want poor and not poor kids alike to have access to the good stuff. What I question is all the 'pop-novels', 'pop-CDs', 'pop' magazines and the like. In fact, I wonder if DW would read so many of those pop-novels if she had to pay for them directly? And if you won't pay directly, the whole indirect payment through taxes is really a bit of a scam. It's the old "you are already paying for it, might as well use it' mentality. It doesn't make for efficiency or rational utilization.

-ERD50

 

[RockMonkey]

In Salt Lake we have have a county library system, with branches throughout the various neighborhoods. We also have an incredible city library (even has lattes).

You can use the same library card at the Salt Lake City library, and all of the county library branches.

Both use Overdrive to lend e-books. You can check out 10 at a time, and they are automatically deleted from your device after 21 days, and you CAN NOT return them early (seems like a waste). If there is not a copy available, you can get in line and wait for the last user's 21 days to expire. Unfortunately the e-book selection is not nearly as broad as the paper book collection. It's about 10,000 titles in the county system, and less at the city library. I am able to find titles I want to read (currently have "The Lost Symbol" and a couple children's books downloaded), but I often browse the bookshelves for something interesting if I can't find something electronically.

E-library-books are fantastic, and I would have to see them go away because the publishers and authors are not getting a fair deal.

 

[samclem]

I'm all for anything of an educational nature. I want poor and not poor kids alike to have access to the good stuff. What I question is all the 'pop-novels', 'pop-CDs', 'pop' magazines and the like.

While I'm sure there's no easily defined line about what they should stock, a general guide might be: "Is our community better off because people read this book/magazine/etc."

 

[kyounge1956]

So, what should the limit be? thirty two? Eleven thousand? Why would the recipients be expected to decide? (snip)

But the recipients do decide. It is the library, not the publisher, which determines when a book is no longer lendable. The publisher does not get to set a limit on the number of times a physical book may be read before it has to be replaced.

 

[M Paquette]

I think the ideal of causing an essentially non-degrading electronic representation to stop working and require repurchase when it's old paper predecessor would have failed is an interesting and novel approach to creating artificial scarcity and demand.

If the technique can be licensed by other vendors, we can look forward to some other novel applications. Imagine DVDs that fail when a film print would, requiring repurchase, or consider purchased music that gradually develops scratches, pops, and hiss!

 

[kyounge1956]

I think it's a fair policy--libraries can pay for more licenses for the most popular books. Our library has notations in the backs of many books that outline the circulation history. Hardly any of the books I read have been circulated even 10 times after four or five years. This quote at the end of the article, from one of the librarians, was interesting and realistic imho:

Not all librarians are decrying HarperCollins' policy. Jason Kuhl, library operations director at Arlington Heights Memorial Library, said the new requirements might not be the financial drain some predict.

"Many times, books don't circulate 26 times. What we see with popular books is a surge once it comes out, and once everyone has read it, the interest wanes and we liquidate them," Kuhl said. "We will always buy a lot of copies upfront. With e-books, we won't necessarily replace every one of them."

Interesting quote. Lots of the books in the public library here are old enough still to have the labels in the front with the due dates stamped on them. You've made me curious whether they have been checked out 26 times and if so how long they had been in the collection. It sounds like the limited-readings license may let libraries save shelf space that might otherwise be occupied by the sort of books you describe, that have a brief period when everyone wants them and then are pretty much forgotten.

 

[haha]

I think the ideal of causing an essentially non-degrading electronic representation to stop working and require repurchase when it's old paper predecessor would have failed is an interesting and novel approach to creating artificial scarcity and demand.

If the technique can be licensed by other vendors, we can look forward to some other novel applications. Imagine DVDs that fail when a film print would, requiring repurchase, or consider purchased music that gradually develops scratches, pops, and hiss!

A considerable number of people would just say eff it, this is one area of my life that I can just do away with a lot of annoyingly crass people getting into my pocket. Most books are total crap anyway. We can go back to poetry readings in coffee houses, sing alongs, block parties in the summer and trying to stay interested in the old gal or man.

But maybe i will hang on my personal library instead of downsizing to reliance on e-books.

Ha

 

[chinaco]

.. Most books are total crap anyway. ...

Low publishing cost makes almost anyone a writer or publisher. It will be interesting to see if e-books suffer a similar fate to newspapers.... or it the model shifts... free book... watch 10 commercial on your ipad or e-reader.


Public Libraries will evolve over the next 25 years. One trend I would expect is for many of the branches to close... It will be considered an unnecessary expense (too costly to perform the basic mission)... In many ways the public library is just a method of supporting and perpetuating the body of knowledge and ideas and making it available to the masses. They will redirect the money to other more efficient methods that support the mission.

Because of economics, publishers might sell only a limited number of perpetual licenses to a work (with unlimited use)... but throttle the number of licenses base on a couple of factors... one factor being the number of participants in the library system. That way one has access but has to (perhaps) wait in line.... economics would dictate that some will not be willing to wait for certain works and buy the e-book.

Because e-books are cheaper to produce... I suspect that the average cost of a book will be pushed down (much further). How low will depend on several factors... one being more sales of the same work.

The public library could turn into little more than a low-income subsistence mechanism... In a way.... it already is!

One final note: you comment about crap... if many books were not purchased, but driven by subscription... libraries would not need to purchase crap that no one (or few) will bother to read.... you have to wonder how much of our tax dollars is wasted on books no one reads.

 

[donheff]

So, what should the limit be? thirty two? Eleven thousand? Why would the recipients be expected to decide? The author and publisher should reserve the right to how their intellectual property is distributed, even in "free" format. Putting it into the public domain without restrictions is giving their income stream away, but I'm sure many of our social welfare engineering fans here expect that. (Those filthy rich authors can afford it, it's their moral obligation to give that income away......)

Why a limit? There is no limit on physical books and publishers don't get a choice on that. No one is talking about putting these things in the public domain. The library buys a license and lends the file out in a serial fashion just like a physical book. Just as with physical books, libraries will buy more ebook licenses for bestsellers and less for obscure books. There is a long tradition in this country of public lending libraries. I have never looked at the law surrounding it but my guess is the courts have ruled that library lending is fair use of purchased physical books. Why should we toss all that history out just because we have a new format. What would the founders say?

 

[donheff]

Or do you think the very concept of libraries being able to purchase books and then lend them to the public is wrong headed?

Where did you get that?

You said 28 copies was more than fair and essentially argued that e-lending is ripping off writers. Since e-lending as done by public libraries is not materially different that physically lending I assumed you must be hostile to the whole concept of public lending. Since ebooks are widely viewed as the future, restrictions on ebooks that substantially exceed those on physical books will likely lead to the demise of lending libraries.

 

[MichaelB]

On the new e-book policy:

26 seems such an arbitrary number. Most library books probably are read less frequently that this, a few many times more. Why not promote a policy that limits availability of an e-book during the initial sales period – say the first 6 months or so, and then allow more e-library use?

Publishers are acting much like record producers in that the authors and artists are the ones that provide the creativity and own the intellectual rights but the producers are the ones setting the rules. It seems the publishers are the ones most concerned about distribution control and lost revenue here.

On libraries

Lending popular books (and videos, and music) for enjoyment and personal use is one purpose of a library, but there are others. Two worth mentioning are assembling materials for academic research and providing the facilities to teach how to research. Learning to research is a critical component of successful K-12 education and the link between school and library is still fundamental to this goal.

Embracing digital distribution of publications can improve the capability of local or smaller community libraries to accomplish these educational and academic goals by an order of magnitude.

 

[MichaelB]

Don't these ebooks cost a lot less than a hardback? That would seem to take some of the sting out of the limits on re-distribution. etc.

No. Publishers have indicated that printing and distribution represent less than 10% of total cost. Pricing for ebooks is still very close to pricing for physical books.

 

[donheff]

I posted my last two replies to WS before reading all the other posts. I would add that I am surprised at all the hostility to public libraries but agree that the issue is the place for public funding of free library lending. We either agree that it is worthwhile or not. If it is, we should try to find a way to make it work in an increasingly electronic world. As for ERD's $500/yr that does sound outrageous.

 

[donheff]

Netflix works awfully good and at $10/month, I wonder why libraries need to stock recent DVD releases. I see no reason that Amazon or somebody can't come up with a ebook of the month club where you can spend $10-20 or so a month, and check out so many books a month like Netflix. Especially for rural areas, I wonder if we couldn't save money by giving everybody a kid an ebook reader and ebook of the month club account. Letting adults sign up for the program and shut down the libraries.

Netflix allows you to checkout unlimited movies at up to three at a time for $9/mth. If Amazon could cook up something like that I would buy it in a heart beat.

 

[samclem]

No. Publishers have indicated that printing and distribution represent less than 10% of total cost. Pricing for ebooks is still very close to pricing for physical books.

The publisher's cost is only one element. I thought I'd read that ebook readers are up in arms that prices for popular books are going up from $9.99 to $14.99 in some cases. That's a lot cheaper than hardbacks. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is $0.99 for the Kindle, I think the hardcover is more than that.

 

[MichaelB]

The publisher's cost is only one element. I thought I'd read that ebook readers are up in arms that prices for popular books are going up from $9.99 to $14.99 in some cases. That's a lot cheaper than hardbacks. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is $0.99 for the Kindle, I think the hardcover is more than that.

The e-versions of popular hardbacks seem to be priced $2-3 less than the physical hardback, regardless of price. The difference is less for paperback, and in some cases the e-version is more expensive than the printed version. To me this is evidence that distribution and price control is the real issue.

Tom Sawyer is public domain and anyone can publish it. Most classics are either free or have a nominal charge for that reason.

 

[ERD50]

On the new e-book policy:

26 seems such an arbitrary number.

It is just as arbitrary as paying $999 for a TV, $25,458 for a car, or $84,562 in salary. It's just a number low enough for them to make enough profit on this new medium, and high enough to get libraries to agree. Like any other supply/demand issue, the two parties will meet in the middle somewhere, or find alternatives.

I would add that I am surprised at all the hostility to public libraries but agree that the issue is the place for public funding of free library lending. We either agree that it is worthwhile or not. If it is, we should try to find a way to make it work in an increasingly electronic world. As for ERD's $500/yr that does sound outrageous.

What hostility are you referring to? I questioned whether libraries should carry pop-stuff, but I don't think there was any hostility in there - can you point out the hostility in case I just missed it?

What do you pay for library services? So far we have a $50 estimate (per household?) from clifp, and $230 from BWE. For us, library districts are not always the same as town/county districts - I don't know the exact boundaries of ours - it is possible that my $500 is subsidizing lower value households, but it could be the other way 'round also. If my # is outrageous, maybe I need to try to do something about it. Yes, we have a nice new library, no lattes.

When companies are greedy it prompts similar reactions in their customers. Serves them right if people start widely using account sharing techniques to download each other's libraries.

Now, calling companies 'greedy' and advocating the breaking of contracts sounds rather hostile to me. If you don't like the terms, don't enter into the contract. Simple.

While I'm sure there's no easily defined line about what they should stock, a general guide might be: "Is our community better off because people read this book/magazine/etc."

Yes, it's subjective and won't be agreed upon (like most things in a democracy). I'd take your guide one level higher though - "Is our community better off because people pooled their common resources (tax $) so that anyone in the community has access to this book/magazine/etc., and could the private sector fill this need better?"

And why not apply that to any commodity? Gas stations, butchers, movie theaters? Isn't the community better off if people have gas for their cars, good quality meat on their table, and are entertained and happy... comrade?

I'm just trying to understand where the line is drawn, and I personally lean to the idea that it was crossed when libraries went from mainly reference/educational material to pop-stuff. It would be a tough argument in public though, like so many govt provided services, people see this as 'free' and want more, not less. And like the test I apply to most subsidies - if the person wouldn't buy this product/service with their own money, why should they buy it with OPM?

-ERD50

 

[Westernskies]

It's getting harder and harder to be a cheapskate. Corporate America will find a way into your wallet one way or another...

We don't need any more threads closed because someone takes your bait and a thread blows up into divisive politics. Knock it off already.

I agree.

 

[donheff]

What hostility are you referring to? I questioned whether libraries should carry pop-stuff, but I don't think there was any hostility in there - can you point out the hostility in case I just missed it?

I didn't mean hostility in the sense of anger -- just opposition. And my comment was clearly aimed at multiple posters not particularly at you. You did indicate opposition to subsidizing general reading (pop) vs libraries as reference institutions. But America's (and UK's) public library systems have fostered general reading for more than 100 years. Sure, we could stop all that which is why I said the issue of whether to have public lending libraries is one of public policy. But as long as we have them I think the issue of how many readings an ebook should get from the library is more of a copyright matter. I would recommend treating ebook licenses like physical books - if you buy an ebook you should be able to give it or loan it to anyone you see fit; if a library buys one it should be able to loan it out serially just as it does a physical book.

What do you pay for library services?

I don't know but I think it is paid for by general revenues in DC which would be more like Hawaii's $25. If it is paid by property taxes as in your local, fewer people pay and they pay more. If that is how DC actually does it, I pay a lot

Now, calling companies 'greedy' and advocating the breaking of contracts sounds rather hostile to me. If you don't like the terms, don't enter into the contract. Simple.

Depends on your perspective. Mine is somewhat hostile. Copyright periods have been extended many times and IMHO have tilted too far toward the producers/sellers and the descendants. [/QUOTE]

 

[Westernskies]

if you buy an ebook you should be able to give it or loan it to anyone you see fit;

So If a student buys one college e-textbook, it would be OK for them to give it or loan it to everyone else in the US educational system as they see fit?

Simple conversion to a pdf file, then it is the public domain for free... How's that going to work? What would be the incentive for research and new course materials if the end product is going to be distributed at will for nothing? The textbook industry would collapse overnight if students could "give or loan their course materials as they see fit" without any pesky IP restrictions.

Electronic distribution is a lot diferent than a physical book, as such I believe we need different guidelines for re-distribution. I guess it does depend on your perspective; I am in a manufacturing business that is intellectual-property sensitive, and have firsthand knowledge of what it costs to develop and protect IP property rights from those who would take them without any form of compensation.

 

[Rustic23]

Why should E-Books be any different from Hard Bound books as to the number of times a library can lend them out? If the E-Book has to be returned or expired before it can be lent out again, it is just like a hard copy. Just because one can does not mean one should!