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| Photo Credit: MediaBeat |
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, none of the Big-Six publishers have made their books available through the special Kindle Lending Library, but Penguin has taken that refusal a giant step forward. Penguin claims to have major security concerns - most likely having to do with piracy of the company's books.
The other five Big-Six publishers have had their own way of dealing with public libraries, with Simon & Schuster (publisher of that absolutely wonderful new book by our brain dead friend, Snookie) and MacMillian never having allowed any of their e-books to loaned by libraries. HarperCollins has perhaps the most ridiculous e-book policy of them all in that it will allow copies of its e-books to be borrowed only 26 times before they have to be removed from a library's "shelf." HarperCollins claims this is akin to the life span of a physical book, although many have disputed their math - me included. Hatchette has a policy that disallows libraries possession of its bestselling e-books (only backlist titles appear to be available for check-out).
But Random House deserves a paragraph all its own: it does not restrict the use of its e-book titles by public libraries at all. (Here's hoping this translates into increased sales for this publisher.)
Frankly, I don't think that pirates are working from copies of e-books borrowed from libraries because the Big-Six do not seem to have been any more successful in protecting their titles than has any other publisher.
Around and around we go...
I guess it is going to take awhile for them to sort it all out. I hope they will see the sense in making all formats available to library patrons.
ReplyDeleteOh for pete's sake. I don't know how other people react, but if a book is not at the library (I read paper books, but the principle is the same), I just don't read it. I don't have enough money to buy all the books I read. If I can't get a book at the library, then I go to the next one on my list of 300 titles that I want to read.
ReplyDeleteKathleen, I hope they figure out this whole e-book distribution thing before they make the same kind of deadly mistakes made by the record labels. Hardly anyone buys whole albums anymore - and I think the labels are largely responsible for that.
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Factotum. I'm a little surprised at the variety of Big Six attitudes, however, and wonder which will ultimately prevail. These are critical business decisions that have the capacity to make or break publishers.
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