
You May Have to Wait to Borrow a New E-Book from the Library - spking
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to-wait-to-borrow-a-new-e-book-from-the-library
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Booktrope
This isn't true for most small publishers and self-published books. Libraries
can get lots of great books from these sources, but they usually don't.

Librarians complain it's too hard to find good books unless they buy them from
the big publishers. Libraries even hire a company called Baker & Taylor to
tell them what to buy -- B&T is a distributor that's deeply connected to big
publishers and won't even handle most small publisher's books. When a small
publisher tries to get library sales, usually librarians say it's too much
work to evaluate their books. This doesn't of course always happen -- there
are ways that small publishers can sell to libraries, but it is often too
costly and difficult and I know of many small publishers who've just given up
on doing business with libraries. It's a disservice to readers and authors who
aren't in the big publisher system, but it's how libraries do business.

Now big publishers are starting to say, libraries are in competition with
them. It's ridiculous - books become popular because of word of mouth, and
libraries can be very helpful in this sort of "dandelion" marketing. So
hopefully more authors will wise up and look for alternative publishing
approaches. And maybe libraries will start actually looking for other sources
of books, but, librarians are by and large a very traditional and hide-bound
lot, especially when it comes to picking books, and probably will resist
changing their approach no matter how badly the big publishers treat
libraries.

~~~
EsssM7QVMehFPAs
This implies that librarians are able to filter through the vast troves of the
endless self- or small-scale publishing stream. That is what big publishers
and influential reviewers do for you when they push big names.

I have yet to find a way out of this rabbit hole because the modern publishing
world is stacked with junk now that everyone can create printed and digital
content.

Finding good original non-mainstream content on the internet is difficult
enough as it is. There is no DuckDuckGo for books with sensible PageRank
(yet).

~~~
yabadabadoes
My library accepts request forms from members and then evaluates the purchase.
It doesn't seem like a stretch to accept waiting lists on books you don't have
using a reference to them in a marketplace.

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scarejunba
I've got no problem with waiting for a book. You're trading off immediate
gratification for money. This is an acceptable value exchange for me.

E-book borrowing is so good these days. I walked down to the library, they
reissued my card, I punched that into Libby and picked a book and it was on my
Kindle. Now I just borrow. So good.

~~~
SoreGums
Christchurch in NZ is hooked up with Libby and a video service just recently.
It's pretty great having a solid physical library with books for the
toddler/baby and the digital for me. (though apparently I'm supposed to
actually read physical paper books to encourage the youngins to read as well).
As a student I'd be in the school library all the time, now as an adult with
kids having the public library is amazing, so glad I didn't need to buy the
60+ books we've been through so far (they wouldn't be exposed to books..)

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josh_fyi
The skeuomorphic pretence of "checking out" a book cannot succeed, especially
as users discover how easy Library Genesis is.

~~~
ForHackernews
...isn't that just piracy?

I'd much rather have public libraries come to a reasonable agreement with
publishers.

~~~
Asooka
Publishers will never give up on DRM, so I don't see a point in involving
them. A modern day electronic library would look something like Bandcamp - pay
what you want for DRM free copy of the book. The whole raison d'etre of
libraries is to keep physical books, but once you go digital, there's no point
to making a difference between a shop and a library.

Perhaps the one concession I could make is to have the library provide a
remote access system where you can log in and view books, but anything that
manufactures digital scarcity is repugnant.

~~~
zozbot234
> Publishers will never give up on DRM

Says who? There are markets today where DRM-free content is widely available,
such as recorded music. DRM-free ebooks are an interesting possibility
especially for the "long tail" of content that normally would see very few
sales or even go out of print entirely. We just have to make it clear that
DRM-unencumbered content _is_ valuable to us, and we expect it.

~~~
acomjean
Looking at tech publisher:

Oreilly tried selling drm free books. They gave up, and went subscription only
(you can buy drm books of theirs through other services).

Manning still has drm free books (though they insert your name into each page,
which is a neat trick)

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campfireveteran
Encrypted "borrowed" DRM books that self-destruct after a certain period of
time (like many of those historic tech books on Internet Archive) are garbage
and a waste of my time. I'll either borrow the real thing or steal a DRM-free
ebook. The. End.

~~~
imgabe
You can borrow them and decrypt and copy them the same way you do with DRMed
e-books you buy.

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gnicholas
> _Under the old rules, a large library system like New York 's or Chicago's
> might have ordered hundreds of e-book copies. Now each system — large or
> small — can buy only one when it goes on sale._

Interesting, so the incentive seems to be to break up larger "library systems"
into smaller ones? Sounds terrible.

In general, I've found the ebook selection at my library (San Mateo County
Libraries) to be terrible. I can't remember the last time they had a book I
wanted to get. I have done title searches many times, and they always
autocomplete the name, but then there are no search results. I assume these
books are available in hard copy, but they just choose not to get them in
ebook format for whatever reason. Too bad, since I'm pretty much never going
to check out a physical book from my library.

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mindslight
It would be great if a bunch of libraries pooled their single copies, split
the files apart into individual pages, and wrote an app that allowed members
to automatically check out one page at a time as they read.

Of course the real answer is sci-hub and the like. Libraries have always
fought the good fight for public access to information (threatening signs by
the xerox [sic] machines notwithstanding), but they're chained to playing by
the rules of an obsolete copyright system that gets continually worse. They
will only be able to truly re-focus after larger society moves to Free
copying, such that basic access is taken for granted.

~~~
Zanni
I think it's important to distinguish between scientific papers, which the
authors _want_ to make as publicly accessible as possible, and fiction (and
non-fiction) books, which the authors are trying to make a living from. There
are a lot of issues with current copyright law, but "free copying" isn't a
solution that's going to appeal to working writers.

~~~
bachmeier
I don't think we want to move to a system where you can't monetize books, but
very few authors are able to live a middle class life by writing books in the
current system.

~~~
Retric
However, other systems like Patreon seem to support vastly more authors than
traditional publishing.

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_raoulcousins
The Seattle Public Library has 769 holds on the ebook of Margaret Atwood's The
Testaments, with 146 copies! One copy is ridiculous. This is almost three
times the number of holds on physical books (376 physical books total, I'm 286
on the waitlist for it).

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noveltyaccount
> According to Sargent, 45% of Macmillan's e-books were being borrowed from
> libraries, a number he says is growing rapidly.

That sounds like a big number. I don't know how much an author makes from a
library borrow compared to a regular purchase, but I'd wager increased library
borrowing is a net bad thing for author paychecks. So MacMillan is trying the
same tactics movie studios use (I sure can't borrow a DVD from my library when
the film is in theaters, let alone buy it) to throttle free access when a
book's value is highest (new release). This seems reasonable to me.

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einpoklum
> You May Have to Wait to Borrow a New E-Book from the Library

1\. eBooks are for copying, not borrowing.

2\. So, no, you never have to wait... unless there's some artificial DRM
standing in your way.

