When was the last time you went to your local brick and mortar library?
As writers, I am sure we all...
When was the last time you went to your local brick and mortar library?
As writers, I am sure we all can agree as to the importance of libraries to what we do. The system of shared borrowing to shared ideas is something we all have benefited from for close to one hundred years. As a matter of geographic fact, yours truly, is about an hour’s ride away form America's first public library. Although it is true, on July 1, 1731, Ben Franklin and a group of members from the Junto, a philosophical association, drew up "Articles of Agreement" to form a library it wasn’t until the Town of Franklin, Massachusetts did it that The Franklin Public Library became America's first public library in 1778.
The reason I ask when was the last time you went to the library is that it’s all happening at the library. What we often times discuss in this writing community and I wish I could say it was all good happening there. The little good there of course, unlike some book retail outlets is that your town library is still open, for now. The bad that is happening there is that your librarians and you the taxpayer are paying $60-80 per book, or more, to publishers to include current release titles in their collections. You know the same publishers who blame eBooks for The Black Death, or The Black Plague of publishing in general.
I like to call it what it is. I like to call it The Bluebonnet Plague. I could not come up with a more sublime image than the iconic blue bonnet to counter the strategy of a carefully planned and placed, boo! Especially, when the strategy works so well for big publishing and startles you into looking in the other way, not at them.
If you have been to the library, lately, you may or may not know that e-books are only being lent to one library card holder at a time, meaning your libraries are trapped by the publisher into buying a dozen – or more – of these overpriced text-files. Libraries must buy these books with DRM on them. Your local library incurs further expense and must invest in expensive, proprietary collection-management software. Big multinational profit centers like publisher HarperCollins insists that your sweet and helpful librarian destroy their e-books after they are circulated 26 times. Hey, while their in your small town, why not go for the whole boat and pitch the parallel to the fact that many library books eventually disintegrate and have to be chucked out.
I'll let you read the link now and ask you, when was the last time you set foot in your public library and what do you think is really endangering the existence of your public library system?
I'll bet it’s not the eBook you have been working on or the eBook you put out there.
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/09/cory-doctorow-libraries-and-e-books/
As writers, I am sure we all can agree as to the importance of libraries to what we do. The system of shared borrowing to shared ideas is something we all have benefited from for close to one hundred years. As a matter of geographic fact, yours truly, is about an hour’s ride away form America's first public library. Although it is true, on July 1, 1731, Ben Franklin and a group of members from the Junto, a philosophical association, drew up "Articles of Agreement" to form a library it wasn’t until the Town of Franklin, Massachusetts did it that The Franklin Public Library became America's first public library in 1778.
The reason I ask when was the last time you went to the library is that it’s all happening at the library. What we often times discuss in this writing community and I wish I could say it was all good happening there. The little good there of course, unlike some book retail outlets is that your town library is still open, for now. The bad that is happening there is that your librarians and you the taxpayer are paying $60-80 per book, or more, to publishers to include current release titles in their collections. You know the same publishers who blame eBooks for The Black Death, or The Black Plague of publishing in general.
I like to call it what it is. I like to call it The Bluebonnet Plague. I could not come up with a more sublime image than the iconic blue bonnet to counter the strategy of a carefully planned and placed, boo! Especially, when the strategy works so well for big publishing and startles you into looking in the other way, not at them.
If you have been to the library, lately, you may or may not know that e-books are only being lent to one library card holder at a time, meaning your libraries are trapped by the publisher into buying a dozen – or more – of these overpriced text-files. Libraries must buy these books with DRM on them. Your local library incurs further expense and must invest in expensive, proprietary collection-management software. Big multinational profit centers like publisher HarperCollins insists that your sweet and helpful librarian destroy their e-books after they are circulated 26 times. Hey, while their in your small town, why not go for the whole boat and pitch the parallel to the fact that many library books eventually disintegrate and have to be chucked out.
I'll let you read the link now and ask you, when was the last time you set foot in your public library and what do you think is really endangering the existence of your public library system?
I'll bet it’s not the eBook you have been working on or the eBook you put out there.
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/09/cory-doctorow-libraries-and-e-books/
No comments have been added yet.
