I subscribe to the DBW (Digital Book World) newsletter. One just landed in my inbox, with this headline:
Shocking News from Libraries [sarcasm intended, I believe] in which the email blurb talked about how library borrowers buy a lot of books after discovering them in the library and that libraries have been saying so for ages. The email blurb went on to say this:
We have no direct knowledge of this that we can share, but it’s our guess that publishers have heard the message. So, here’s a message from DBW to libraries: Those publishers are our readers (along with many librarians) and they’re smart folks. They’ve heard your message and have evidently not yet done what you want them to do in regards to ebooks. So, try another strategy, a different message.
Is wide-spread library ebook borrowing an inevitability? We don’t know. But it’s not happening any faster because of yesterday’s study.
Well, there’s not much I enjoy more than an idiotic article that is WRONG, so of course I clicked through to this article
The article sets out all the ways in which libraries drive book sales in significant numbers. Then actual article says this:
Publishers worry that if readers can borrow their ebooks for free and easily, they won’t buy them, cannibalizing their business.
Take a minute. Absorb the blurb text and article text.
In what universe can these two things be true?
1. Publishers are smart and have heard the message about book borrowing leading to book sales.
2. Publishers are afraid eBook lending will lead to lower sales.
Let me re-write that blurb for you, DBW!
We have no direct knowledge of this that we can share, but it’s our guess that publishers have heard the message. So, here’s a message from DBW to libraries: Publishers are living in a world so paranoid and closed off to the facts that their reality distortion field is cutting off the oxygen to their corporate brains.
There all fixed.
Librarians are Nate Silver. Publishers are the GOP party leaders
Publishers, do you REALLY want to be Karl Rove insisting that you have worked too hard and spent too much money to lose Ohio even though the math proves you did?
Do you really want to be Fox News, the GOP and the Romney campaign all rolled into one on November 7 wondering what the hell happened to their comfortable, warm illusion of the world?
Is wide-spread library ebook borrowing an inevitability? We don’t know. But it’s not happening any faster because of yesterday’s study.
1. Yes. It is. Clinging to the past does not mean BetaMax lives on.
2. Why the hell not?
Tags: Facts, Libraries, Reality Distortion field