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In both this and a traditional library, one person buys the book and then a bunch of people read it for free. What are you saying is the difference between those scenarios?

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It is not possible for a single physical book to be read by hundreds of thousands of people, concurrently. an ebook enables this.

I think a more apt example is, if the library started printing the books and giving it out themselves.

Most libraries have ebooks these days.

They’re limited to a certain number of loans before the library has to buy another license, or a per-checkout fee. Physical books have about a 50 to 100 checkout lifetime and ebook licensing is similar.

Not the library I go to for ebooks.

There are quite a few different purchasing and lending models libraries use today. Outside of the big 4/5 publishers, many publishers will sell ebooks to libraries using a sim use model (pay 1 subscription fee and checkout as many times as possible over the period), and some will even let the library buy in that model perpetually.

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