The tale of libraries, e-books, and publishers is less a news story and more an album-length epic of prog rock. The TL;DR so far is: libraries say they are being asked to pay too much for e-books; publishers say they have to charge this much because libraries take away from retail sales; meanwhile, indies can set their own prices when they distribute to OverDrive and make our books a very attractive proposition.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
New Report Examines Library E-Lending
The latest installment comes in the form of a new report from the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers. As I always point out, consider who is funding the report alongside the results being reported.
The title is a rather neutral, dry-sounding “An Empirical Study of the Impact of Library E-Lending on the Book Economy.” The conclusion is somewhat less dry. With the study’s raison d’être rooted in current attempts by states in the US to make it easier for libraries to access e-books at lower prices, the brief version is “that would be a bad idea.”
Report Finds a Substitution Effect
Put starkly, it alleges decreasing the price charged to libraries for e-book licensing would “cause further harm to commercial markets,” including authors. The finding is that there is a substitutive effect. That is, more e-book library lending leads to fewer print book sales. It even puts a figure on this. Picking a quotation highlighted by the AAP, “[C]onsumer print sales decline by approximately 0.85 to 1.0 percent for every one-percentage-point increase in the share of e-books in public libraries, with adult fiction being at the upper end of this range.”
The Authors Guild is keen to avoid people drawing too many conclusions. It does not advocate for cuts to library funding, but it does argue against state regulation.
What This Means for Indie Authors
If you want to read all 71 pages of the report for yourself, you can download it here. It is clear, though, that the high-level fight between publishers and libraries is not going to resolve anytime soon. What we have as indies is the luxury of not having to take a collective decision. Our easy access to OverDrive means we can each position ourselves as we wish in this battlefield.
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