tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4771887482682364543.post8169466290809721951..comments2024-03-21T14:04:11.960-04:00Comments on BeerBrarian: Who's a Bully? A reply to Martin Taylor and more on #hcodBeerBrarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10969632673190542761noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4771887482682364543.post-63782860631707571342011-03-07T11:25:21.623-05:002011-03-07T11:25:21.623-05:00Nice post. No conflict of interest for Mr. Taylor...Nice post. No conflict of interest for Mr. Taylor, right? ;)<br /><br />Mr. Taylor also writes: “For an average 2-week lending term, libraries would get a full year of lending for about US$10-20, based on typical ebook prices—that’s about 40-80 cents a loan.”<br /><br />Libraries in Canada don’t get a deal anywhere near this. We pay *more* for an e-book than for the same print book. According to this NYT study, publishers are making 4x the profit on an ebook sold at the same price as print:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/03/01/business/01ebook_g.html?ref=media<br /><br />Sorry, we are being gouged. Perhaps if publishers actually sold ebooks at one-half to one-third the price of print, I might be sympathetic to their plight, but right now it’s pure greed.<br /><br />We also don’t even own the ebook — we license it. What is that?!? Gimme a break.<br /><br />As you note, Radiohead figured it out. <br /><br />Neil Gaiman (HC-published author) figured it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI<br /><br />Steve Jobs figured it out. Apple passed 10 billion downloads a year ago: http://gigaom.com/apple/10-billion-itunes-song-downloads-could-equal-10k-for-one-lucky-customer/<br /><br />They also dumped DRM in 2009: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=14773<br /><br />Baen Free Library figured it out: http://www.baen.com/library/<br /><br />So did Sony. They partnered with Freegal to offer libraries DRM-free downloads of the entire Sony Music catalog: http://www.freegalmusic.com/users/sndlogin<br /><br />How about this as a radical idea:<br /><br />Remove the DRM, lower the price and place a few links at the front & back of the ebook to allow patrons to purchase items from the publisher. Publishers will get more sales, more authors will make money and libraries will be able to expand their collections to serve our communities.<br /><br />There is absolutely no reason to ever artificially limit an ebook. As it stands, Harper Collins' draconian digital book-burning policies will force libraries to make a choice: buy the same titles over and over and over every few years and forego purchasing new titles or only buy new titles.<br /><br />Frankly, I don’t like either of those options. Our library has already made a decision — we’re not spending one cent of our million dollar book budget with HC.DBotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01490960792802927881noreply@blogger.com