E-books: Penguin vs. Libraries and Amazon as Lion

[alanajoli]

Just a couple of links today. PW blogger Peter Brantley wrote up what I think is an excellent entry about the problem with leaving libraries out of the e-book revolution. Brantley's assessment is that by making e-books unavailable through libraries, a whole class of Americans is denied access to those resources. If the market does shift so that more and more books are published exclusively in electronic format, I agree that this is going to become the problem that Brantley anticipates. In the mean time, thank goodness for paper books, Interlibrary Loan, and the host of other resources available at the public library.


(The rotunda at James Blackstone Memorial Library, my local source for research and reading.)

Who's getting e-books right? According to Kent Anderson, Amazon is getting everything about publishing right, and everyone else in the book world needs to seriously up their game. This is, at least in part, true: writer friend of mine Audrey Auden dumped all the other e-book retailers for her self-published Realms Unreel because Amazon's customer service and platform were by far more beneficial to her in convenience and sales. On the other hand, Jim Hines recently discussed how Amazon can change your prices without your permission, as recently happened with his Goblin Tales. I maintain my wariness around Amazon, despite finally jumping on board with Amazon Prime (as it keeps us comfortably in diapers here at Casa Abbott).

Comments

Access issues

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

One of my concerns about access to books is wondering whether the poor have access to ebook readers. On the one hand, ebooks are (at least in principal, and sometimes in practice) much cheaper. And it matters that libraries have ebooks in their collections. But at present, most ebooks require a large upfront cost (roughly $100 minimum, sometimes substantially more). That makes me worry that the poor will have no access to ebooks, because they won't have readers, and decreased access to print books, because printed books will increasingly be the exception. Perhaps the declining cost of readers will make this concern moot, but in the meantime, I worry that technological changes will make books ever more accessible for the middle class and wealthy at the same time as they become less accessible for the poor.

Re: Access issues

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I agree -- although I'm glad that Overdrive works with computers, which are available, usually at an hour or two a shot, at many public libraries. (The computers were probably the best used resource at my local while I was working there, and I bet they still are.)

My local also lends out nooks, and those are always checked out. I think patrons get two weeks with them. There are only, like, seven for a town of 30,000 -- but it's a start!