There’s a big furore going on over the cost of eBooks now that Apple has entered the marketplace. Amazon is fighting a big publisher, Apple is wanting to charge $15 a book. It’s the neverending story.
Ebooks present all sorts of opportunities for pirates – and new law suit opportunities for publishers and distributors.
But there’s a more serious game afoot that is costing publishers billions in lost book sale revenues every year.
Apparently there are these buildings operating in most cities where you can just borrow these books for free.
These so called “libraries” are running right under our noses – often under the auspices of governments. What’s with that. This blogger has a calculation of the loss publishers face (in the US alone) if these organisations are able to continue unchecked.
Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.
Comments
It is only publishers who lose out with libraries. Well, not entirely, because the library does buy at least one copy of the book.
Authors still receive royalties from libraries. It's worked out based on numbers of times a book is borrowed.