"What do holds have to do with the cost of digital books?
This may seem surprising, but patron holds are the single biggest factor in rising costs. To maintain reasonable wait times, the Library buys additional licenses of a digital title when patrons place more holds on it. That means that when hundreds of patrons place holds on a single New York Times bestseller, the costs of “buying down the holds” can quickly become astronomical."
How odd - I know it's the licenscing and I can understand the reasoning behind, but at a distance it seems like ritual almost. When they get the e-book, the data is there, and when you hold it, you get a copy, the "original" is untouched, but the library has to act as if it was unavailable.
It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds.
> People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal
ARPANET was gracefully turned over, for the most part, to the commons, as was GPS. Public libraries are a millenium old as a concept [1], but only half a century (EDIT: millenium) old as a continuous practice [2]. We're not at the tail end of a collective-action halcyon; we're in the centre of it.
Don't forget that printed books also have license fees included in their price. The printer also has the data there and could just print extra copies and sell them at cost+profit but they're not allowed to because copyright.
I don't think a latest bestseller should be in a library in the first place. Maybe a couple of years later when the hype has died down if it's still a good book, they can have it for the few people who want it for what it is rather than being trendy. But I never expect libraries to have anything new and fashionable. Movies and music too are always old or obscure, at least where I am.
It's funny that these artificial licensing constraints for software seem much more natural and acceptable. Especially software where the complete thing is distributed for free but you have to buy a license to activate it. It's even more in-you-face with network licenses where every computer in an organization can have and use a copy but you have to wait for somebody else to finish using theirs before you can use it on your computer. Oh, and then maintenance fees, and lapsed maintenance fee fees, and different prices depending on whether you buy a network or node-locked license.
I find it reasonable to stock the latest best sellers. They’re almost inherently culturally important because of their popularity. It’s important to provide a means for people to participate in that culture, even if they can’t afford the book.
I’m also generally happy when people read long-form content outside of school. I’ve certainly been guilty of not reading anything longer than a news article for long stretches.
once libraries exist, they want to perpetuate their existence (or jobs, at least) so they chase the popular in search of more library "views" which justifies their existence. I'm not anti library, but this is why they do stuff like lend out power tools.
You make it sound nefarious for them to loan power tools somehow, while it seems like it's just an identified community need niche that they can service that no other organization will, the same as offering free tax advice or ESL classes or anything else.
people criticize "rent seeking" all the time, but the avg person is a rent seeker. Everybody wants stable income/job security, including (especially?) librarians. I'm not calling it particularly nefarious, rather I'm pointing out its nefarity is in keeping with ordinary human nature.
This is one of the most unhinged take I've ever read on libraries. Respectfully, it looks like you have never understood what libraries really are. At least here, in Italy, a library organizes events such as photography shows, local artists exhibits, and sometimes hosts voluntary activities (people here might know things such as corderdojo ecc...)
The discoverability of new books is excellent, librarians routinely make a selection of books on some topics, it may be a generic one "history", specific one "important people in history" which are way better than any other system that tries to recommend me books
Last, but not least, libraries are on of the few remaining places "for the people, by the people". You're not expected to pay anything, you can walk in any, take a book, read it, sit down and relax. It's also a place where a lot of students can go to study in silence, I can't think of many other places which offer a similar quietitude.
It would be a disservice to reduce libraries to "places where you can read Taylor swift books" (not that there's anything wrong with reading Taylor swift or Spare), losing libraries would mean loosing one of the remaining "third places" we have in our always more disconnect society
> Just because some members of the community need power tools doesn’t mean we all benefit from that. We all benefit from police, fire, ambulance, and roads — we all don’t benefit from free power tools.
Lol, roads. Taxes should only cover public walkways and public transit between walkable areas.
And I'm not even sure about sidewalks. First, they require roads, and we already tossed those. I mean sure, we all use roads, but do we really all benefit equally from every road? I've never even driven on half the streets in my town, but my tax dollars still pay for their upkeep. It's madness!
And don't even get me started on sidewalks. I choose to drive everywhere, so why should a single penny of my hard-earned money go toward maintaining sidewalks for pedestrians? Walking is a personal choice. If you want somewhere to walk, go build your own private walking path. Bootstraps, people!
Oh, and public parks? Talk about a bridge too far. Without kids or dogs in the house, I never use them. Why am I still paying for other people's kids and pets to have a place to play? Back in my day, we entertained kids and puppies with sticks and stones in our own backyards, and we turned out just fine. If parents and dog owners want parks, they can band together and build their own - on their own dime, of course.
Heck, when you really think about it, even having a public fire department is kind of overstepping. I've never had a fire, so that's a service I've never personally used. Shouldn't each citizen be responsible for putting out their own fires? You could purchase your own hose and hydrant, or for a small fee, subscribe to a privatized firefighting service. Same goes for the military, and borders. If you don't like immigrants, drive them back across the border yourself.
Look, the free market is the answer for all of this. Well, except the corporate subsidies, and bank bailouts, since companies and banks do actually “cater to our every need from before birth to after death.” But definitely for everything else!
Have you considered leaving this society where people value libraries for one without taxes? It might suit you better.
As per tools, you benefit from having a community that doesn’t needlessly spend on tool duplication or rental, which ultimately concentrates local wealth. But that’s an economic argument when the real one is that it’s a desirable service for cost, convenience and community spirit.
To be fair, the library lovers took over the government from the no tax party, so you are bound to see some friction. No taxes lost their country, and are frustrated.
"I am not opposed to libraries or free tool rental — I am opposed to paying for them with our public tax money. If people want those things, then band together and spend your own money doing it. Ironically enough, I’d even donate to such a cause. "
Alright so NOT public funds, but everyone that wants to take part or that is tacitly endorsing it.. and you would even give happily?
What's the difference with taxes?
I sure wonder how much is spent on public librairies vs the tax cuts companies like Apple get. But surely, we all benefit from multinationals getting tax cuts, aren't we? Much more than from our neighbors having access to books and tools right?
Libraries contribute to literacy and education, cornerstones of a stable democratic society.
If you're worried about government spending your tax money, start with the military aka "defense": $857 billion in 2023. From which we citizens benefit through ... (maintaining a global military hegemony, hurrah for us!).
A 2% trim in defense funds all libraries in the US with plenty to spare.
Because being a good person means giving a shit about literally anyone else.
Sorry, but you're a bad person. "I got mine, fuck you" makes you a bad person.
A normal, functioning society uses its excess resources to help everyone, including assholes who think they're the most important person on the planet.
One tenth of one percent of your taxes went to teaching a toddler how to read, or teaching a teenager how to fix their bike. Someone who can't afford otherwise rented a DVD to watch with their family and you're mad about that.
You're the worst kind of person, and the entire reason that our society is so sick.
> The need for physical libraries has passed just as the need for “public” radio and TV has passed. The internet has made those concepts as archaic as carrying coins.
Your bizarre take is hopefully one of youthful ignorance, but you do know the internet costs money right? Do you also know libraries are a source of internet for people that can't afford it?
> The need for physical libraries has passed... The internet has made those concepts as archaic as carrying coins.
Our species' and society's need for community remains high. Many of us (naive) technophiles predicted the internet would somehow be the best community ever. Perhaps even global.
Oops.
As you know, the internet, esp algorithmic hate machines and social media, destroys community. Our declining public and mental health is just one terrible adverse effect.
The need for libraries, to rebuild and nuture communities, has never been greater.
Kind of but they're meeting a need even if it's a bit of an inefficient way to do it. I don't think most library visitors are there for books anymore, at least not where I go. It's adults using the web, kids playing videogames, parents entertaining their kids with the toys, local bored people chatting to the librarians, club meetings, moving screenings, etc. One librarian told me they're really now a "community center" rather than a library and that they don't have that old-fashioned rule of being quiet in the library.
> It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds.
A side note, there is some sense in the artificial sounds of the ev engines. I'm blind and if not for them, I might be dead in five years, together with many no so attentive people.
No doubt the external artificial noises serve a valuable purpose for both the blind and the sometimes inattentive. The artificial sounds pumped into the cabin to simulate a naturally aspirated V8 are nonsensical.
I'm not fully against the idea. Audio feedback has been a part of the experience of driving for so long. A lot of people probably get a feeling of "I'm going fast" based partially from audio queues. Having that audio feedback of the car speeding up rapidly might help make people realize they're accelerating a bit hard or whatever. It can be easy to not realize how fast an EV can accelerate with its instant torque
I love driving Subarus because their boxer engines are noisier than most car engines, likewise diesel cars like a Ford F-350.
The auditory feedback is faster and easier to process than visually seeing or physically feeling the car move, I can respond quicker and drive more accurately hence it's safer. It's also easier to notice if something is wrong or strange with the engine.
Consequently, I hate driving quiet cars (sedans especially) and find EVs annoying because they have the high pitched, hard to hear motor whine that takes away some of my attention.
I haven’t noticed this in my i4. There is a bit of a whine when you accelerate, but it doesn’t hang around at all. But I bought this car for the soundproofing, so maybe I’m just getting that. I’ve never tried driving a model 3 before.
Any speed that can knock you over is dangerous, and parking lot speeds are enough for that. It doesn't take much to get a serious injury from smacking your head on pavement.
It is how everything in the digital age works - artificial scarcity. It does seem silly, although I also struggle to think how else we can make the whole thing work.
a couple of alternatives are donation models (patreon), or quadratic funding, where a common pool is used to provide the incentive to contribute to the creation of a public good at the actual value you get out of it (see Radical Markets for a description). there's definitely others- the main problem is there are powerful actors who benefit greatly from the status quo, and coordination is hard.
Often times those powerful actors are the authors and creators. There is very little that the traditional publishers can do to stop someone if they want to open source a book, or give libraries infinite copies.
I'm a big fan of alternatives, but have come to realize there often valid reasons why they aren't used.
How would that work for large scale, slow and/or risky return projects?
We have several systems for matching resources to production because there isn't any single way that works best. But it is interesting to try to stretch each model as far as it can, for best results we can get.
I'm not sure I see why slow projects are a problem when you're being paid for labor. You just set expectations, and keep the customer updated on the honest status of the project (give them code they can run, even if it doesn't yet do everything they want).
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "risky"? I can only think of projects that don't yet have a customer. In that case, you just don't build it until there is a customer need for it. Architects don't speculatively design buildings hoping to find a customer who wants it. I think we would be better off if the same was true of software.
Ah, by risky I meant software developed without paying customers up front.
I am curious if there is a open source type model for getting a higher return for doing riskier work, as economics would suggest is fair and also helpful.
That is obviously a typical closed source situation, but people find creative solutions.
Not talking about selling services, but somehow compensating for writing the code after the fact, risk adjusted, while keeping the code itself free. Might need a temporarily hybrid license to accomplish this. I.e. the code is obligated to become free, after some fixed license fees have covered the work cost and risk.
> somehow compensating for writing the code after the fact, risk adjusted, while keeping the code itself free.
This is what labor contracts are for, no? I fulfill my side of the contract (by providing software) and then you fulfill your side of the contact (by providing money), else if I fulfill my side and you do not fulfill yours, I have a legal case against you.
Cutting the queue to an arbitrary number does nothing for wait times!
All it does is throw away information about the demand.
If there is a 15 hold limit, and it's fully occupied, we don't know whether the demand for the book is exactly 15, or whether it's actually 45, with an invisible backlog of 30 people having been turned away from being formally registered in the hold queue.
Those waiting to read the book now face an extra hurdle: they must repeatedly play a time-wasting lottery in order to obtain a spot in the queue. Someone who had been trying to get into the queue for weeks can have it sniped away by someone who gets in on the first try.
The only reason for trimming hold queues is if there is some resource problem; like they are running out of space in the database for tracking holds or something.
It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Why do it for e-books? Cause, wee, they don't take up shelf space in the stacks?
If a book is popular, let the patrons "buy down" their own copy, or else wait behind 90 other people.
There is always bittorrent and filez websites: the real libraries of the digital age.
There are also ... craploads of other worthwhile books you could explore that are not held.
> It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever.
Libraries certainly do this. Might not be at (your suggested) 75/100 rates, but if a physical book is popular, library systems do purchase more copies.
Those same libraries can then resell their excess copies a few years later at a Friends of the Library sale and recoup a few dollars. This isn’t possible with e-books currently.
That doesn't really matter; as you just noted, the library gets a few dollars by doing so. $4 after two years is an amount that, if it went away, wouldn't matter.
Depends slightly where you are, but often the ebook licenses are time limited, often to 1 year. So not only can't you resell the licenses, you have to keep rebuying them.
Public libraries really should stay away from e-anything, in my opinion. No library would purchase anything of the sort under my watch.
Obviously, since patrons check it out, there is demand for it. Well, so what? There is demand for cocaine and porn; should public libraries offer that?
Demand for something doesn't ipso facto oblige a library to provide it.
Of course demand for something doesn't make it something that should be free.
On the other hand, your arguments against e-libraries are just as vague and lacking in implication.
Libraries promote literacy and/or learning with every book read. Even as a source of entertainment, it promotes a richer culture. All of which does have a total health of society benefit.
> As a consumer, when you buy an e-book or e-audiobook, it costs about the same or sometimes even less than the print book version. But for libraries, the e-book or e-audiobook version of a title actually costs up to three times or more than the print version.
> This is because publishers use a licensing model for selling e-books to libraries. Each copy of a digital book title requires a purchase of a license. While there are many types of licenses, the most common license needs to be purchased and then re-purchased every year.
Something went very wrong in negotiations here. That's all I can say. Who allowed this deal to be penned in its exact fashion? The first publisher to set the pattern probably got a huge payday that should have never existed. LTV of the library should be cheaper vs the individual buyer because volume, but >3x!???!!
I love public libraries. I grew up in them as a safe place to hang out after school waiting for my working parents to be able to get me.
It makes the funding pie shift materially from other things like facilities, staffing, etc. If you're unfamiliar with the Seattle area, the Public Library covers a number less privileged neighborhoods where a safe place is very much needed. This actually makes me angry.
Copyright has a thing called the first sale doctrine. You buy a book and now that copy is yours. You can sell it to someone else or lend it out etc., which is what libraries do. They don't have to negotiate with publishers at all, they just go to a book store and buy books.
Publishers claim that ebooks are totally different and have to be licensed instead of purchased because it's the internet. This is, of course, a naked money grab, but then they threaten to sue anyone who tries to call them on it. Most libraries don't have the resources to litigate it. The Internet Archive is currently making the attempt. Give them money or call your legislators and tell them to pass a law making it clear that the first sale doctrine applies to digital.
> Copyright has a thing called the first sale doctrine. You buy a book and now that copy is yours. You can sell it to someone else or lend it out etc., which is what libraries do. They don't have to negotiate with publishers at all, they just go to a book store and buy books.
Part of the challenge is that reselling digital goods in a way that doesn't allow you to resell to multiple people isn't a solved problem. Crypto is probably the closest to a solution, but obviously that isn't widely adopted in a way that would work for ebooks yet.
> Part of the challenge is that reselling digital goods in a way that doesn't allow you to resell to multiple people isn't a solved problem.
This isn't even close to a new problem. Anyone with a printing press can print thousands of copies of someone else's book, make them look like the original and sell them. The thing that prevents this is that if you do it you can be sued. There is no technical measure preventing it, it's just against the law to do that.
If anything digital copies make this easier, because each copy could have a randomly generated UUID and then if you're selling 50 copies without 50 distinct legitimate UUIDs, you're caught.
NFTs are a (highly problematic) attempt to do this without a central authority: there's no reason not to have an authority, so we can use regular old public-key cryptography.
Why are NFTs highly problematic? I'd argue that a central authority is highly problematic as it will end up looking like the existing Google / Apple marketplaces with no ability to resell, etc. Removing the central authority would allow organic resale markets for form, etc rather than "approval" blocking any real technical progress.
"Central authority" in this case would be the equivalent of the property registry that governments maintain. Since governments are also the ones who actually protect your abstract property rights when it comes to that, there's no reason for this registry to exist on a blockchain.
> Something went very wrong in negotiations here. That's all I can say. Who allowed this deal to be penned in its exact fashion?
I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it. It's more likely that nobody "allowed" the situation to happen, and the publishers just had much stronger bargaining power. So libraries either pay to participate and adjust their budget accordingly, or don't have e-books to lend out.
Or, put more provocatively in a forum run by a startup incubator: capitalism allowed this to happen.
My local library does appear to have a large enough budget to cater for this new demand but I can understand if many other city libraries don't.
I don't live in Seattle and I don't use that many digital holds; for me most are just video games. But recently my county library added a limit for physical holds. "Wait times" seem to be one of those Goodhart's law metrics: by capping holds, you haven't really reduced wait times, just moved most of it out of sight of the reporting API.
But there's also kind of a mismatch of incentives at play here. As a patron, I really care more about throughput than latency on every hold I place. It takes me days or weeks to enjoy what I've checked out. But so does everyone else, so there usually isn't something I want on the shelves. In order to keep up throughput, I need something in my holds list ready when I return something. So I have a few dozen holds that go into the system as basically lottery tickets.
If it were just me, a policy of "unlimited holds, 2 out at a time" Netflix style would probably work, and I try to implement that by pausing (when I remember). As long I have an item or two out, I'd rather the librarians didn't consider my holds as any kind of "wait time" to optimize.
When a new book comes out the I know I want to read but do not wish to own for various reasons, I will generally put a hold on both physical and digital copies. Sometimes the audiobook too though that’s my least preferred way of consuming the content. Whichever comes available first is the one I will read. My library does have a holds limit but it is something like 75 items so I rarely have to think about it.
I feel like the Seattle Public Library part of the original title (The Seattle Public Library Is Reducing Our Maximum Digital Holds. Here’s Why.) is relevant. Could drop "public", "our", and "Here's why" if it's a length issue.
I find the limits at ny libraries to be exceptionally high. Why does anyone need 25 digital books checked out at a time? That’d probably help with waitlists too.
People read for reasons beyond pleasure. I might be doing a study or comparing authors, I might be reporting on history or researching someone. I might be doing a comparative analysis.
Ten checkouts seems low enough that it's likely to get regularly cause problems. 100 checkouts seems too high. So start bisecting. 50? Almost certainly too high. 25 maybe reasonable.
They also might have p90 checkout rates and found that 25 is a data driven choice. Librarians are smart people.
To put a concrete number on "tons" - when I was a kid we'd frequently check out 300 books at a time, and the reason the number was 300 was that library cards had a limit of 100 each, and my mom, my dad, and I each had our own library card. Any time I was home sick from school they were all used to check out books for me; and yes, we would go through all 300 of them. Kids' books are pretty short.
I suppose this is true, but feels like the exceptional case. And why not have a reasonable policy that allows someone to appeal their hold limit and have it subjectively approved. I am a fairly prolific reader and I only have 7 holds spread out across 3 libraries. I seriously doubt 25 is the p90 here.
You’ve never been behind a parent and two kids at the automated book return? I have seen kids with 30+ books each. Usually the parent has a bunch too. I’ve also seen people with dozens of videos too. Usually older folks who may not be able to enjoy reading as much anymore or maybe enjoy the background noise in an empty home.
I mean it depends how much you read. If you read 1 book a month, sure. If you read 4 books a week and it's mostly relatively popular genre fiction, you can't just wait to get through the waitlists, you have to pre-plan your reading and sign up for all the books you plan to read for the next 3 weeks ahead of time.
> As a consumer, when you buy an e-book or e-audiobook, it costs about the same or sometimes even less than the print book version.
That "even" looks out of place. Since I would expect some digital detritus that can be reproduced in unlimited copies at close to zero cost to cost less, then I would say that it "sometimes even costs more than the actual book".
It's not surprising when it's less; "even" adds emphasis on some parameter that has gone beyond expectation.
Now imagine the impact of those high ebook costs on more rural, or even suburban libraries.
These libraries have less money to spend on expensive ebook subscriptions, but at the same time ebooks are much more useful to patrons who live a long ways from the library and may have difficulty going to check out physical books.
The same probably applies to libraries that serve more impoverished populations.
While the change makes sense, I can't help but feel that the system can be managed more intelligently. For example, if I have 15 books "on hold" on Libby, there's no reason for the library to treat the #15 book with the same priority as #1 and spend more money to buy additional licenses for it.
> As a consumer, when you buy an e-book or e-audiobook, it costs about the same or sometimes even less than the print book version. But for libraries, the e-book or e-audiobook version of a title actually costs up to three times or more than the print version.
> This is because publishers use a licensing model for selling e-books to libraries. Each copy of a digital book title requires a purchase of a license. While there are many types of licenses, the most common license needs to be purchased and then re-purchased every year.
This is why I have zero sympathy for Publishers' efforts to go after the Internet Archive for their scan and lend digitap library. The publishers have been price gouging libraries in ways that shoild be straight up illegal and most Authors have gone along with it.
I think the sadder part of this is that this licensing model means that a cartel of publishers will set ebook pricing as high as possible to squeeze every surplus dime out of libraries. High enough to make libraries make extremely difficult budgeting systems but not high enough to strangle their golden geese.
In the past, libraries could buy physical books and that was it. But once, own forever. Maybe they’d need to purchase a lot of copies of popular books or replace damaged and lost items. Otherwise, the rest of the money could go toward local programs that help the community.
Now, publishers will try to essentially extract surplus funds away from the community for extra profit margins that they don’t need to stay in business. In the past, a library that stopped buying books still had books. Now, a library that fails to pay their tithe will become a shell.
This feels like a lawsuit from US justice department waiting to be filed against the book publishers. Why does an ebook need to cost 3X to a PL compared to what I as a consumer would otherwise purchase from Amazon.
That graph of expenditures is nuts. The hold-driven purchasing is more than 50% larger than the other categories of new titles and renewals.
Does every library do this? I know when I want something popular from King County Public Library I often find that there's a weeks or months long waitlist.
But often times those popular titles are rather frivolous, only popular because they're new, and I'd be just as happy if I'd read something older.
I wonder how much it would cost to surface an in-stock recommendation in lieu of a too-popular hold whenever a user goes to request such a hold.
Libraries are dear to me; they were my first taste of independence away from home. I was in heaven amongst all that potential, and as I got older I'd sometimes check out stacks of books and read a fraction of them.
After reading this shelftalkblog I decided to reduce the number of Holds (I mostly Tag books for later, but I also tended to Hold books more out of anticipation than probable follow-through), especially on the popular books, and kept Holds on the books I was most likely to read. Libraries are a public good and I've been taking advantage for too long; I'll scale back my acquisitiveness and think before I click.
If libraries want to be part of the e-racket, maybe they need to drink the full commercial Kool-Aid, and introduce a two-tier model: a free, regular membership and a paid, premium membership. The premium memberships fees go toward buying content, and are rewarded with perks like longer loan periods, priority holds, and exclusive access to new material.
Libraries are one of the most socially equal institutions we have. They are crucial to lower income families. I’d rather those who don’t want to join the queue simply use their money to buy the material than let them buy their way to the head of the line.
Libraries have limited money. I'd rather they buy 10 different books than 10 copies of the same book, even if that means some people have to wait longer to read that one popular book.
Don’t even joke about it. Libraries should be free to the public, period. Providing free access to library services to the public is one of the most important benefits government should offer their citizens.
Nothing like a library debate to bring out the virtue signaling rhetoric about low-income families.
But, hold your horses; the proposal is actually about having some people who pay, in exchange for a few meager perks. Not to make it an entirely paid system.
Here in Canada, we sort of have a working healthcare system. (Not like in civilized countries in the EU, or in Japan, though; another topic). Anyway, I can visit an emergency room and not pay a cent. Yet, people staying in the hospital can pay to upgrade to private rooms. It's just one of those rational compromises in a strained system.
Why have a cow at the idea of people donating money to a library in exchange for some privileges, while it continues to be mainly free.
The Library has increased investment in digital collections to meet patron interest.
the most common license needs to be purchased and then re-purchased every year.
This doesn't sound like an 'investment' to me. It sounds like they're renting books for a year at a time.
I can see this easily incentivising only a small subset currently popular books, rather than a wide spectrum. I think the regulators have not yet caught on, regarding the effect the publishers greed will be having in this area.
I can get the anger against publishers, who seem to add almost no value to the process. But what’s wrong with the authors charging a licensing fee as described here? They deserve a right to charge what the market will support for their work, like everyone else. Personally I don’t even think this change matters - reducing the number of holds to 10 is very reasonable and I bet most will not even do enough reading to make those holds “worth it”
In the absence of artificial monopoly that is copyright, "what the market will support" is zero, though.
And copyright, despite the name, is not a right - it's a privilege granted by society, with the notion that it is a net benefit for said society. Libraries are a part of that equation, and it's not unreasonable to expect some special dispensations there.
This forces borrowers to communicate higher quality information indicating their actual highest priority books.
Which helps the library improve the economics and provide the best service for the resources they have to work with.
Having each reader's hold list interpreted as an ordered prioritized list would add even more information. People with similar lists but differing priorities would be served even better, more cheaply.
> But for libraries, the e-book or e-audiobook version of a title actually costs up to three times or more than the print version.
Is this an economically rational outcome for a not-obvious reason, or have libraries been very poor negotiators here, in the way they have spent public funds; or have e-book sellers been exploitative (or a bit of both)?
I guess it's because of copyright, i.e. it's hard to make an illegal copy of a printed book, and it's easy to make a digital copy of an ebook. So the ebook-markup is partial due to the expected privacy.
My other guess is, that it really is more expensive. I think, the publisher's digital infrastructure is really bad. And there is a lot of overhead when publishing a new book with lots of DRM on it. And most books don't get sold that often. So a small number digital purchases must pay for that over-proportional up-front cost.
I know that where I live my understanding is that basically the publishers felt 'screwed' by the old deal that they had with print books and that libraries were underpaying. So when e-book negotiations started they used that to try to claw back some of the money they felt they where owed as it where.
Honestly fair. I am the exact person that uses my Libby holds as my TBR. I had no idea the cost was so high for digital licenses. Especially embarrassing because my library is 2 blocks away
Honestly at this point, I feel like the ethical thing to do is "steal" digital and buy/borrow physical, the copyright surrounding digital goods has been so thoroughly gamed in the favor of publishers.
Is there reason to believe authors aren't getting a cut of the library license costs?
I used to buy my ebooks until I realized libraries had ebook catalogues. A large portion of the books I've borrowed are sales the author lost, they ought to be compensated somehow.
Yes, they do. I believe it starts around 10% based on what I've heard from authors of not-tremendously-high-selling books. My friends who self-publish get much, much more. I believe digital sales/loans are also immune from "returns" or other chargebacks that apply to physical book sales.
I don't know how anything about getting a cut works, but my understanding is that authors don't have to allow their books to be in the library at all, and libraries specifically need to get permission to lend e-books.
oh I'm sure they get /something/, its just not proportional to the their contribution.
I'm out of the habit of using the library because I was far away from one, but my normal approach is to just buy the physical copies of the book, regardless of whether I read that or the physical one. There are publishers who go out of their way to be drm free and i do make a point to buy those (Tor comes to mind).
What an absolute bloody rort by the publishers, reducing their production/transport/storage costs while jacking up the prices for the libraries and turning them into subscribers. Despicable.
> While there are many types of licenses, the most common license needs to be purchased and then re-purchased every year.
Forcing libraries to repurchase their entire collection every year should be illegal. I would also settle for a loophole that would allow the library to OCR a physical copy they own and then own the resulting digital copy.
My opinion is that right of first sale should extend to digital goods and if publishers provide no legal means to lend or transfer works from one to another than the owner should be able to do so by whatever means they choose. Legally this would require owners to destroy any copies they may have made, no different from other digital works (e.g. compact discs). This would immediately cover libraries who would gain the benefit of having a collection which is not consumable (library books are good for 20-30 checkouts) and could remain a public good.
I'm surprised we've made it this far into the digital age without more consumer protection in this space. PC game companies eliminated secondary markets 20 years ago and that model has expanded to nearly all other media.
> I would also settle for a loophole that would allow the library to OCR a physical copy they own and then own the resulting digital copy.
That was what the Internet Archive was doing.
They got sued and the last I heard, had lost at every level. That said, I don't know that the lawsuits are over yet.
To be clear, no one claims that IA digitally lent out more copies than it physically had. The publishers argued that IA couldn't make a digital copy and lend that instead of the physical copy.
> [2024-04-19] Today, the Internet Archive has taken a decisive final step in our ongoing battle for libraries’ digital rights by submitting the final appellate reply brief [PDF] in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library.
“Furthermore, they argued that the Internet Archive was not abiding by CDL, as it had acknowledged that its partner libraries were not always withdrawing their physical copies from their shelves.”
Are you sure no one argued they weren’t lending more books than they had? Specifically during the pandemic it is true that just kind of decided that it was probably the case that there were plenty of library books not being distributed (note books they didn’t own) so it was ok to loan basically as many copies as they wanted
Does this mean they library can also "give up" their licenses once a book becomes less popular? (This is still worse than the system for physical books, but at least it lets them dial back the rent over time.)
This would be terrible for libraries' abilities to keep archives of old books. What would be better is for less popular books to have cheaper (free) licenses for libraries.
> We could have public libraries be entirely outside the copyright system.
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, extending the right of first sale to digital goods would benefit everyone without requiring a special exception for libraries.
> We could have public libraries be entirely outside the copyright system.
Where is the line between this and something along the lines of libgen? I’ve been using distributed libraries for years and haven’t paid for a textbook once…
It might be do-able now. Today, distributors of content (Google, Facebook, etc) have more political clout than copyright holders.
Go for, say 25 years with no formalities. For 25 to 50 years, you have to file a copyright registration with the Library of Congress and pay a modest fee. For 50 to 100 years, you have to pay a huge fee (millions), just so a few classic movies people will still pay for can have coverage, and some famous music that still generates revenue can be covered.
To be honest, I'm not even sure that long makes sense.
The point of copyright is to encourage creation of content. But do we actually have a problem with too little content being created these days? If anything, it's the opposite - there's an overabundance of content, to the point where the actual problem is finding the real gems in this firehose (and this does not correlate with price or popularity at all).
Maybe it's time to just drop the whole thing altogether. It does mean that the only people who will write books then will be the ones who either enjoy it as a hobby, or feel very strongly about saying something. And I'm pretty sure that this will still result in more content being created than there is actual demand for.
> I doubt it’d have a material effect on production of new books.
The fact I can just wait to checkout a lot of books I'd otherwise buy digitally massively cuts back on me buying books in the end. I practically don't even subscribe to magazines anymore because it's so easy and free to just check them out on Libby. I just went on a long road trip and had tons of hours of audiobooks digitally delivered for zero cost up front.
Obviously I'm just N = 2 (my wife is the same) but I imagine some decent chunk of potential book sales are similar.
In addition to the not-buying part, there's also (A) where do I find room to store this and (B) who can I lend this to when I'm not using it and (C) how do I get it back when they're done, etc.
Thankfully, the local library is a traditional American institution ready and capable of doing that for myself and others in my community.
I guess it depends on when you pay your property tax bill (or when your landlord does). I know I pay over $200/year in taxes to the local library, so my family tries to make heavy use of the place.
This may seem surprising, but patron holds are the single biggest factor in rising costs. To maintain reasonable wait times, the Library buys additional licenses of a digital title when patrons place more holds on it. That means that when hundreds of patrons place holds on a single New York Times bestseller, the costs of “buying down the holds” can quickly become astronomical."
How odd - I know it's the licenscing and I can understand the reasoning behind, but at a distance it seems like ritual almost. When they get the e-book, the data is there, and when you hold it, you get a copy, the "original" is untouched, but the library has to act as if it was unavailable.
It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds.