Comments on: Adobe releases Content Server 4: ePub and new library lending wrinkles, plus other DRM improvements

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Thanks for that clarification. And, of course, since the eBook won’t (ideally) wear out (unless file formats change) and can’t be vandalized or otherwise marred like a print book, there is an argument to be made for replacement savings.

By: Jim Lester

Jim Lester — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:55:26 +0000

Mike,
Okay this is an argument about the costs of buying vs. renting. The current eBook market for libraries is already in a rent model and there is no buy model – Libraries buy access to catalogs from large aggregators. On the positive side this gives libraries access to larger catalogs than they could get through a purchase model. The downside is that for more popular books, the libraries will eventually pay more than retail cost of the book. However even that is hard to determine, since most aggregators charge libraries a flat monthly/yearly fee based upon the expected volume of rentals for that library.

Your question boils down to how much will the aggregators increase the rental fee to libraries to account for increased costs in dealing with ACS4. Unfortunately that is information I don’t know, and couldn’t share if I did. However I will point out that in moving to ACS4 we have fixed problems that the aggregators were complaining about, that will decrease the support costs to both libraries and aggregators, so the math is not at all straightforward.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:19:25 +0000

Have you run actual models to make sure that’s a fact?

Amusing Ourselves to Death:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Published in 1985. Still in public libraries. Multiple print copies bought over those years due to wear & tear, losses, theft. How many borrows were there over those years? Multiply those borrows over the life of an eBook version that *never* wears out. Unless you’re talking about fraction-of-a-penny fees (which I doubt!), I think the math is against you.

By: Jim Lester

Jim Lester — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:12:14 +0000

I don’t believe we have made the pricing public yet, but eBooks will not “wind up being a *multiple* of a single print book’s price” based upon what we are charging.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:22:50 +0000

>>>and will also include a pay-per-use subscription to a digital signing service.

So Adobe is a tollbooth, collecting a fee with each secure transaction — in this case, each eBook borrow from a public library? I wonder what that fee is and what it does to pricing versus a print book versus an eBook? An eBook, after all, would not wear out like a printed book. Could eBooks wind up being a *multiple* of a single print book’s price?