@Marilynn: Please take another look. My commentary explicitly calls
for America to spend much MORE on content, with far more reliance on
the library model–and more money for libraries, aided by publishers
pushing in the same direction. On top of that, I warn: “Even the
best-stocked national digital library systems aren’t necessarily going
to propel you to the top of the list for a free loan of the latest
Grisham.” What I do propose for the impatient is a Netflix-style
rental service well-integrated with the national digital library
system running it; library patrons would pay monthly or yearly fees,
and publishers and authors would get their shares of this revenue,
with popularity as the main criterion (even though there still could
be other models for, say, valuable academic writings of inherently
limited demand). I certainly would want fair compensation for content
providers whether people enjoyed the e-books through the regular
library system or the express rental service or a variant, such as a
book-specific fee to avoid a wait (not the same as buying the book
since friction could still exist via a limited borrowing period–maybe
very very limited in the case of the biggest bestsellers unless the
fee were greater than otherwise).

@StaHi: If libraries have bought more than one copy (or the electronic
equivalent of multiple copies), then each woud be treated like a paper
copy–e.g., two books would mean two simultaneous checkouts allowed.
That appears to be the main model for OverDrive, and I myself can
appreciate the logic. The problem arises when many patrons are waiting
for just a limited number of copies. If we do away with the paper
analogy, then, as my response to Marilyn would suggest, we need to
compensate writers and publishers accordingly so they don’t lose out. We
must be fair to content providers!

@Michael: While I don’t agree with every syllable you’ve written, I
most emphatically think you’re right in saying that it isn’t enough
just to get the books out there. Here’s to family literacy programs
and other efforts that among other things will encourage parents to
raise both their children’s expectations and their own.

@Binko: I appreciate your pro-library sentiments. At the same time
I recognize publishers’ need to make money money off the minority of
books that do hit it big, which is why libraries and publishers could
try a number of different business models, such as payment by the
number of accesses (variants of which are in use already, though not
necessarily on the most library-friendly terms).

Happy New Year,
David

Yes, yes, let’s raise more money for libraries so they can multiple copies of books that are in high demand for a short time. Of course, all the joys of restrictive digital copyright will still apply and the libraries won’t be able to re-sell those copies when demand drops.

We are morphing into the Corporate States Of America. All hail to the divine right of corporations to maximize their profits. No solutions allowed for libraries that wish to get more digital reading material into the hands of more readers unless it leads to buckets of lucre for the big publishers.

So, yes, I think there need to be libraries. I think libraries should support Project Gutenberg to make sure that every reader can get public domain books easily and free. I also think that each time a new, still in copyright, book is checked out, there should be a payment made to the rights-holder (this is done in England, for example). I’d certainly offer my books free of up-front charges in exchange for a modest payment per use. With today’s technology, we might even be able to alter that payment based on whether the book was fully read or returned only partially consumed.

Your statistic on how entertainment dollars are spent is discouraging but not surprising. On a dollar per hour of entertainment, books are a bargain… yet still, many people don’t read. We need libraries to encourage the next generation of readers, but we also need to recognize that turning libraries into free versions of the Kindle or Nook store does have consequences.

Rob Preece
Publisher

Traditionally, libraries could only lend out the physical books that were in their possession. Until something is in place to allow for compensation to the author each time that a book is lent, libraries will be limited. I think that the cost of many ebooks is way out of line right now and that is a factor in the number of copies that are owned by the libraries. I recently looked up a popular writer’s latest novel. It was $12.95 for a Kindle version. I tend to support Indie writers for that very reason.

Recently, I waited three months for the newest Dean Koontz ODD THOMAS novel from my library’s digital consortium. Sure, it was a long wait, but the cost of free is time, and I was willing to pay it. I also bought Jim Butcher’s newest “Dresden Files” because I didn’t want to wait months.

If you aren’t willing to pay time for free, then you should ask your local government to put more money into your library, join the local friends of the library association and help raise funds for more books, and get your library to cut the loan time in half so the book will be returned faster.

David, your “solution” is to make all books available for free instantly through a library makes no financial sense for publishing. Why would anyone buy a book when they can get the same book for free instantly? Why would a publisher stay in business to sell a few copies of a book to a couple of libraries who can then loan it out to millions of people instantly? Why would a writer spend many hours over years writing a book for less money than they’d make in a week at minimum wage?

How would destroying the financial structure of publishing and all hope of profit for writers help the poor, children, and those to freaking cheap to spend a few bucks on a book?

That’s like the old saying about eating all the seed corn when you are hungry without thought that you will have nothing to plant later.

* Years ago, I lived in a part of Seattle where the local public library was always crowded. It had the highest checkout rate in Seattle, so much so that a librarian there told me that over half its books were checked out at any one time.

* In Washington, D.C. for a summer, the closest library to where I lived was bulging with unchecked-out books. Even on blazing hot, humid days when the library would have been a good escape from the heat, I was often the only patron.

The difference? That Seattle neighborhood was heavily Jewish, with two synagogues within a block of the library. The DC neighborhood where I lived was just outside the spreading gentrification and mostly black.

One culture valued books and taught that to their children. The other didn’t. Those were the facts.

And yes, history is a factor. It’s depressing to read accounts from just after the Civil War of the zeal that many newly freed slaves had to learn to read, typically taught by religious women from New England, and to realize that was destroyed when the Democrats returned to power in the post-Reconstruction South, making it impossible for those brave teachers to remain.

But while history can remake a culture for ill, once those changes become embedded into a culture, only the people themselves can undo the harm. Governments can keep an eager-to-learn people from getting an education and reading for long enough that they lose all desire. Governments are far less successful at imparting an eagerness to read to those who attach no value to it.

Politics makes matters worse rather than better. When politicians, eager to do anything to get reelected, bow to teachers unions and don’t allow incompetent, unmotivated teachers to be fired, any role that a good teacher might play is nullified.

Faced with a teacher culture that just wants to get by and a student culture that doesn’t value reading or education, the good teachers migrate to suburban schools where the situation isn’t so depressingly hopeless. Good teachers attract other good teachers. Mildly motivated middle-class students, taught by good teachers, become more motivated. Good gets better (or at least no worse). Bad gets worse. And it all traces back to politicians bowing to teachers unions.

It’s also hard to come up with government programs that make unmotivated teachers better. Years ago I had a friend who, after a divorce, went back to school and became a teacher. Frustrated that she seemed to know more about fashionable teaching methods than what she was teaching, I tried to get her to take summer programs in actual subjects. The state of Washington had programs to fund that. But the attitude in the teaching community, as she told it to me, was to use the money to take some easy ed-school course. Anything else would require work and study, cutting down on the summer play time teachers value so highly. How do you fix that sort of ‘don’t try’ attitude with government money?

That summer in DC I did meet one dear-hearted elderly black woman who was trying to interest young blacks in Shakespeare. Unfortunately, she seemed to be going about it all wrong. “Read Shakespeare,” she told me she was telling them, “there’s a lot about sex there.” Hey, I felt like telling her, with teen birthrates in the 70% range, these kids already think enough about that. They need to be told to read Shakespeare for the other things he writes about.

In the end, the difference lies in the distinction between a victim culture and a victor culture.

* A victim culture whines and complains, seeing all its problems as flowing from others, who it expects to change. We don’t read, those who are victims say, because our great-times-five ancestors were kept from learning to read by their slave owners. Give us compensation for slavey. Let us into schools where we’re less qualified than those being turned down. Etc. etc. etc. All things that others must do. Victims are always being acted upon.

* A victor culture sees change as its responsibility. Arriving poor and often badly educated immigrants, the Jews from Eastern Europe circa 1900 taught their children to e study and get just as much education as they could. And succeed they did. By the 1920s, the country’s top schools were having to set quotas to keep their kids out.

Race really isn’t the primary issue. In the South where I grew up in the 1950s, whites whined constantly and played the victim, blaming Yankees and others (carpetbaggers and scalawags) for all their ills. The result was a chronically morbid economy. Race was simply the excuse they used to avoid facing the fact that their ‘blame others’ attitude made them their own worst enemies. You can see that in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the mid-1930s.

For blacks, matters went sour in the late 1960s, when LBJ, who as a congressman had fought hard for decades to defend white supremacy, saw that all was over for using white victimization to win elections for his party. So he flipped the scales. Now blacks were to become the official victims and thus dependent on government to protect their special victim status. A better name for his Great Society might be the Great Whine.

The result is the same as in the segregated South for whites, the constant whining of victims and a lack of interest in the sorts of things that will get you ahead: work, education, and risk taking. And getting over that sort of thing is why the economy of the South has begun to improve.

No, government ereader/ebook programs will do little. You can buy a Kindle for less than many inner city boys spend on a single pair of shoes. You can load it up for free with excellent public domain books from Amazon or Project Gutenberg. The means is there. What is lacking is the will in a culture that overvalues pricey shoes and undervalues books.

And a dysfunctional cultures only change when those in them force change, particularly in their expectations for their children. It certainly isn’t changed by self-interested politicians such as LBJ or his modern counterparts.

Furthermore, libraries can endlessly expand digital shelves, and improved discovery tools unique to online media can help even more.

While digital shelves and the just-mentioned tools aren’t just for libraries, they’re more trustworthy than alternatives even though (in the interest of content diversity and freedom of expression) I don’t want them to be the only model.

> Publishers and authors need revenue buffers for popular titles and library circulation constraints are helpful there.

If people insist on instant access to huge bestsellers, then integrated rental services could be the answer, as mentioned (with subsidies for low-income people). Once again, here’s to a variety of business models!

David

But most books in library collections are less than wildly popular. In-fact un-popular and more specialized books predominate. Maintaining those collections of low circulation titles is an important service not just to library patrons but also to publishers and authors. Public and research libraries are bookstores for these sleepers and the libraries absorb the overhead of reference and bibliographic utility services required to encourage this customer base. Publishers and authors and associated production economies need only await recognition and sales, both print and screen, that un-popular book research provokes.