People could sign up for the service through a simple tax checkoff and benefit from the economies of scale, and the poorest of the poor could receive subsidies. We’d still be talking about a fraction of the $2,700 a year that the average wage-earning U.S. household spends on entertainment, and the resultant revenues for the publishing industry would far exceed what publishers are enjoying now.

Which do you care about more? Purity of the “public library” business model or libraries’ thriving in the Amazon-Google era—especially when this new arrangement would provide many more free books than now (even if nonsubscribers had to wait longer to read bestsellers than subscribers did)? And what about the nature of the rental service? Librarians will play up different kinds of titles compared to Amazon, which is accountable to no one but shareholders and already enjoys too much power over publishers.

The subscription service could linked with other features. I’ve told how public libraries could leverage their trustworthiness to succeed as “book lockers” so people could own e-books for real and read them in the formats of their choice—quite an improvement over the tyranny that Amazon imposes through its pet formats and proprietary DRM. Booklovers cherish instant and eternal access to the e-books about which they most care.

Furthermore, Amazon and Google have e-book ecosystems, and public libraries need to be able to offer the same, complete with stellar apps and synching between devices.

To address another point, I favor tax money for the basics, if possible, not just philanthropic contributions; and very shortly I’ll do follow-up post on the topic. Like the Pentagon, libraries are worthy of support at the national level—beyond what the good people at the Institute of Museum and Library Services are able to provide (being reliant on others in the end). Maybe we should even call the related legislation “The National Defense Library Development Act,” in the tradition of “National Defense” highways and “National Defense” scholarships. I’ve already reminded my readers of the tremendous variations in library spending in different states.

Local and state library systems could buy or develop material that the national system didn’t have and adapt its contents, and they could participate in its operation; I certainly believe in local autonomy.

But in regard to at least some federal support, let’s remember that this is the UNITED States of America. Even my political opposite Paul Ryan goes after federal grants on occasion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were won over by a little statistic. Seventy percent of Americans hold library cards, and, recognizing this, many conservatives just might be more open-minded than you think. William F. Buckley, Jr. was a gung-ho supporter of the TeleRead proposal, writing two “On the Right” columns in favor of it. Like Andrew Carnegie, WFB realized that public libraries are enablers to help patrons improve themselves financially, culturally and in other ways.

As for publishers establishing a rental service, it just would not have the same reach as the service I propose for public libraries. What’s more, alas, the related idea, of giving away free books in the name of data collection and relationship building just isn’t going to cut it as a way to address the book needs of low-income people. Actually when some librarians and I and others were working on a nonprofit library project, we did bake the data-collection concept into it (with privacy protections in effect). But by itself this is hardly the ideal way to go; serious money still needs to be spent.

Of course, “serious” is relative. We’re talking about a minuscule speck of America’s GDP and significant benefits, especially if the national system is well integrated with local schools and libraries. And, yes, “local” could include home schools as well as charter schools so dear to conservatives (even if I myself am a big public school booster).

Thanks,
David

Now the publishers would be well served by improving upon Amazon’s model (and exerting some control for themselves) by offering a Netflix-like subscription service or smaller “rental” option for ebooks, which I bet would lead to more revenue for them as well as help assuage people about DRM (you don’t need to “own” if you are only interested in a one-time read-through–and you could offer a discounted purchase price for those that want to subsequently purchase the ebook).

To address the fact that such a private system doesn’t serve the larger nation or community, the publishers’ system could offer a concession by making available, free, a large set of classic books and reference materials beyond the ones that are already out of copyright. Right now the publishers guard Fahrenheit 451, 1984, etc. because of their heavy use in schools (required purchases!), but imagine the mileage they could get out of making these essential pieces of literature freely available for everyone and anyone. They could get public schools to sign up directly, get high schoolers everywhere to establish accounts with them and provide them data, enter into tablet and ereader relationships with device makers to mutually promote their service, and overall get great publicity by giving up content (but not the rights!) they currently could charge for under the foolish copyright law.

To me, this would solve the biggest issues concerning publishers’ motivations and loss of control. More importantly, it would solve the issue of funding this behemoth, but without destroying the “public” part of its mission.

But for that to happen, public libraries need to offer something in return–namely a way to give visibility to authors. I’m not sure how that’d work. Perhaps in the page that appears during and after an ebook downloads, the library could display a link to an ebook with a similar theme in their collection.

At any rate, to put deeds to my words, I just lowered the Smashword’s library price for Hospital Gowns and Other Embarrassments: A Teen Girl’s Guide to Hospitals, to $1.99. (Retail is $4.99, the print version is $14.95.) My hunch is that hospital-bound girls who check out a copy from their library will want to have a copy of their own with them when they go in. It’s that helpful.

Another benefit libraries could offer would be price-based linking to places where the book is sold. “Price your library copy under $9.99,” they could tell publishers, “and we will offer readers links to the retail outlets you specify,” perhaps along with a note from the author about his or her other books. That’d make it even easier for reading from a library to lead to sales. Tit for tat.

The real enemy of most authors is obscurity and not theft.

Happy New Year,
David