I just love going to my local library to "rent" a digital book on my Kindle only to be told that there's no availabile "copies"
Is love to read more on Kindle or other book readers if there was an actual good platform that was embraced by both national and international authors. Same with audio books for that matter. It's even worse than streaming somehow
Penguin Random House: one copy/one user, metered access: titles expire after 24 months, then library must repurchase
Hachette Livre: one copy/one user, metered access: titles expire after 24 months, then library must repurchase
HarperCollins: one copy/one user, metered access: titles expire after 26 checkouts, then library must repurchase
Macmillan: one copy/one user, libraries limited to 1 copy of newest titles for the first 8 weeks after publication, metered access: most titles expire after 24 months or 52 checkouts (whichever comes first), then library must repurchase
Simon & Schuster: one copy/one user, metered access: titles expire after 24 months, then library must repurchase
Ebooks are priced at 2 to 4 times the retail rice when sold to libraries.
A question to those working in publishing: where does the revenue end up? Is this another example of a rent-seeking scheme like Elsevier/Wiley et al. have been up to in scientific publishing or does it work like Spotify where at least part of the revenue goes to the authors?
[1] https://cheshirelibraryblog.com/2019/09/10/why-do-i-have-to-...
And isn't this "available digital copy" issue at the heart of the lawsuit the Internet Archives is dealing with when they stopped placing copy limits on digital books at the start of the pandemic?