broken is waiting to be fixed

sabrinawrites:

The pullback of Penguin from the library market means that four of the “Big 6″ publishers no longer make their frontlist titles available to libraries in digital form: Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette, which was rumored to have been rethinking its library strategy, but to date has not altered it. Another major publisher, HarperCollins, has famously placed 26-loan limits on its frontlist titles, leaving only Random House to support unfettered library lending.

The withholding of ebooks from the major U.S. trade publishers from the library market is an unprecedented denial of free lending access to the marketplace. ALA has repeatedly indicated its willingness to discuss a variety of business relationships between publishers and libraries; apparently these discussions have not been persuasive to publishing executives who fear the erosion of their ebook markets from library retailers and patrons.

I’m not sure who Penguin believes they’re punishing, but it’s probably not who they think. Pirates will find away to steal content no matter what. Paying customers and library patrons will simply be annoyed momentarily and then find something else to read. Thus, Penguin kicks itself in the teeth, and technology (and reading) marches on.

I think this is sad because library ebook access is a step towards a wider proliferation of reading in a world dominated by video, music, and bad TV; cutting it off seems to be a little like self mutilation.