Ebook Prices are Hiking — And Libraries are in Trouble
I used to beg my mother to take me to the library when I was young. I didn’t own very many books, and my school libraries appeared to have been stocked in the 1960’s and then left alone from there. However much my mother might have wanted to take me, she couldn’t. The nearest library was around a forty minute drive away, and like many rural Ohioans, we were poor — that gas money could be spent elsewhere.
Now, libraries increasingly are offering a wide variety of digital services: Libby and Hoopla for ebooks and audiobooks, and numerous research tools and online learning courses. Ebooks make books accessible, which is ultimately more important than a book’s physical aesthetic qualities. Ebooks help people with disabilities and those living in remote areas access information, and libraries make these ebooks affordable — and affordability is another common accessibility issue.
Large publishers are now changing the way libraries buy ebooks, so that they must renew the cost of the book every year. Ebooks are expensive for libraries already. Speaking in Bones, a bestselling novella, cost a Colorado library $16.46 for a print copy. The ebook price? $84. Print copies need to be replaced occasionally due to damage or loss, but they still circulate a long time. The high prices libraries must pay for ebooks is excessive considering their extreme restrictions.
Macmillan is now only allowing libraries one e-copy at publication, banning further sales for eight weeks. Rural libraries are small and often share digital resources within a wider network. In Ohio, 170 library systems get their digital services through the Ohio Digital Library. Imagine patrons of 170 library systems waiting to read the newest, high demand releases, with only a single copy available.
Macmillan Chief Executive John Sargent claims libraries are “cannibalizing” their ebook sales. This is capitalism at its worst, greedily restricting information to make a larger profit. Besides being morally wrong, this is a shortsighted view. Libraries make reading accessible and encourage a desire to seek out new information and new books by favorite authors. In Canada, a study found that library users bought more books on average than non-library users, and that more visits to the library correlated with more books purchased. These restrictions aren’t just late-capitalist greed, they also seem to be bad business.
The cost factor is even worse for libraries, who may have to forego other services to keep up with the ebook demand, which is now higher than ever. Libraries may be forced to use all their allocated materials funding to purchase multiple “copies” of a set few popular titles to keep up with demand, leaving other materials behind and limiting what can be accessed by the poor. Wait times will be longer, and there will be less resources overall. The New York Public Library system recently dropped Kanopy, a movie streaming service, citing high costs. Kanopy is a valuable resource that provides access to hundreds of high quality films, documentaries, and lectures, but the wider issue is who this affects.
New Yorkers were so upset about the loss of the film streaming service (and Kanopy at the loss of their business) that it made national news. Friends here in Ohio thought Kanopy had gone under, it was such a widely reported story. But people living in the country, often poor, go without these resources as a matter of course.
It’s time to analyze who we really care about, and why. Around 46% of libraries in the US fall under the rural category. Why do we feel that it’s okay to let these people — who are more likely to face access issues — wait months on a waitlist to read the newest ebooks, but feel it’s sad for urban library users to lose a film streaming service? Both are an unfortunate consequence of pitifully low library funding, but one seems more tragic.
This is about who gets to be a part of the larger conversation. By restricting access to ebooks, rural, disabled, and low-income people do not get the same level or quality of information as the rest of the country. They are then missing a level of communication with their peers, and it becomes easier to marginalize the marginalized. That private companies can indirectly control who sees information should be terrifying to everyone. That they can indirectly control the allocation of public funds is a failing of capitalism.
