Comments on: Deal for Suckers or Deal of the Century?

By: I Like Books

I Like Books — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:04:12 +0000

Libraries, at least the ones I know about, decide how many print books they’re going to buy based partly on how many they expect to be stolen or destroyed in use.

On the other hand, the incremental cost of selling one more ebook is zero. Or rather, selling one more license to use that ebook under the conditions outlined in the license agreement, which could include the number of copies that can be in circulation at any given time, if the publisher had only thought to specify it.

By: me

me — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:53:25 +0000

Something tells me she’s not going to let this one go for awhile…

By: Joneser

Joneser — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:25:41 +0000

Print books do indeed wear out if you can’t buy enough copies of them to have them wear out their welcome on the shelves. Would that we had enough bestsellers to sell them off.

By: Annoyed Librarian

Annoyed Librarian — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:17:37 +0000

And, SNAP.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 01:06:02 +0000

I’m sure libraries would be happy to pay twice as much for digital book per-user licenses if they could sell them when demand drops as they do with printed books. Currently libraries can buy 50 books and sell 45 of them when demand drops. Or, they can buy 50 ebooks and eat the total cost when demand drops.

By: Cristy

Cristy — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:46:19 +0000

Deal for suckers. You get what you WAIT for.

And here, I’ll insert my random words (Stupid unsubstantiated comments about homeschooling in previous two posts by an otherwise seemingly bright blogger for ALA.)

Bee has gone back to the hive. Out.

By: not a hipster librarian

not a hipster librarian — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:09:35 +0000

Wondering how this pricing does or does not relate to how libraries are currently charged for magazines and databases? I’m not in collections so I truly don’t know. Thanks to anyone who can compare/contrast.

By: refchef

refchef — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:15:23 +0000

You’ve outlined the problem pretty well, but I see no suggestions on how to deal with it. Patrons who use ebooks want to read the the current titles. Libraries who want offer current titles in ebook format have to purchase multiple copies. We all know that it makes no sense to purchase multiple copies of an electronic title, but do we just ignore what our patrons want because of it? Do we let them do all their reading out of amazon and B&N because we are mule-headed stewards of the taxpayer dollar? (NO!! You can’t have ebooks because we don’t like the purchasing model!! Go buy your ebooks and leave us alone with our shelves of print titles and dwindling circulation statistics!) What really needs to happen is that Overdrive should provide a way for us to recycle (resell) our “used” ebooks. We should be able to upload what we want to unload into Content Reserve and sell it at a big reduction to libraries who can’t afford “new book” prices. Overdrive makes money off the sale and the seller library gets a little Overdrive credit added to their account.

By: PremproPosse

PremproPosse — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:57:40 +0000

[HerdOfHopelessHeifers]