There’s a movement among librarians and what I believe are to be called library advocates to boycott HarperCollins e-books because the publisher has stated it plans to release new e-books that will have distribution limitations. For Overdrive and other library e-readers, HarperCollins intends to publish new works that will permit only 26 check outs before expiring. They haven’t done it yet, but they still intend to.
Publishers Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t publish ebooks for libraries at all, but no boycott has been organized for them that I know of.
One librarian said, “Consumer market eBook vendors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon don’t let publishers get away with the amount of nonsense that we get stuck with through library eBook vendors. I fault the publishers for not realizing what a huge mistake they are making by not realizing that new formats are opportunities…”
In other library news, at least six Alabama libraries were severely damaged in the tornado storm we had last week. Three of them may be completely destroyed. Several more libraries are in badly damaged areas of the state, but no word has come from them yet.
A local history library just south of where I live took a good bit of damage. “Our genealogy and local history material was boxed up and stored at the temporary location,” the Dade County librarian said. That location lost some of its roof. The materials inside were soaked.
If I’m on the Internet and the publisher is on the Internet, why can’t the publisher let me borrow the book directly (with DRM they think I can’t crack) instead of going through a public library? And if the publisher does not want to do it, why would they allow it at all?
Because that would be giving the book away by letting you read it for free, whereas a library has to buy a copy for you to borrow, and you’re the only one who can read it today. If anyone could download or use an app to read it at any time, then they aren’t buying it.
I forgot that in the US public libraries allow you to borrow books for free (in Israel you have to pay a monthly membership fee).
Membership fees make sense. I wonder how the public would react to that. Maybe only part of the collection could be available to members first, and schools could pay a annual fee for all of their students.