I work in an academic library. Our ebooks aren't licensed like that, they're PDFs of text books (mostly), not popular stuff. But the way ebook licensing works really sucks. Literally, after 50ish lends, that copy of the ebook vanishes and has to be repurchased! Can you imagine where public libraries would be if The Twilight Saga books vanished after 50 lends? The Mockingbird books? Harry Potter? Etc.
Then you look at places like L.A. or NY Public Libraries who'll buy literally 100 ebook copies of the Newest Hotness to try to fulfill reader demand, and still end up with hundreds of people waiting for an ebook copy. They have huge budgets and still end up spending fortunes on ebooks. The publishers must drool when New Hotnesses release, just waiting for those two library systems to call.
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I work in an academic library. Our ebooks aren't licensed like that, they're PDFs of text books (mostly), not popular stuff. But the way ebook licensing works really sucks. Literally, after 50ish lends, that copy of the ebook vanishes and has to be repurchased! Can you imagine where public libraries would be if The Twilight Saga books vanished after 50 lends? The Mockingbird books? Harry Potter? Etc.
Then you look at places like L.A. or NY Public Libraries who'll buy literally 100 ebook copies of the Newest Hotness to try to fulfill reader demand, and still end up with hundreds of people waiting for an ebook copy. They have huge budgets and still end up spending fortunes on ebooks. The publishers must drool when New Hotnesses release, just waiting for those two library systems to call.