Kindle Library Books and my deep confusion
http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/21/amazon-kindle-library-lending/
I’m confused. I’ve been confused a lot lately, so I’m going to try to reason this out logically. Come walk with me.
Why do people check out books from the public library? To read books for free. Without public libraries, books would only be available to people who paid to own a copy (or paid for membership in a private library).
Why do people return books to the public library? Several reasons, actually, but in short: to avoid being fined. Again with the monetary incentives. But seriously, people return the book they got for free because if they didn’t, they would be charged a fine.
Why do public libraries need their books back? Because those books are limited resources. If a book is not returned, the public library must choose to replace it (which costs money) or to suffer without it.
So, Amazon recently decided to offer books from 11,000 public libraries for loan on Kindle devices/apps. This is terrific news, and I am truly happy to see this happen… I’m just confused.
Digital books are not limited resources. They can be reproduced so cheaply that the costs are negligible. In fact, every time you check out a library book on your Kindle, you’re getting a fresh new, never before used copy.
Amazon says that public library Kindle books will be free and they will have a loan period that does, in fact, expire at some point. That explains why you might still want to buy a Kindle book instead of borrow it: you want to keep it. But it completely overlooks the question of why you would want to return a borrowed book.
Again, you probably want to avoid getting fined for not returning a book on time. But while you were reading your brand spanking new copy of whatever book you borrowed, you weren’t preventing anybody else from borrowing a copy. In fact, the public library can lend out that one physical book an infinite number of times as a Kindle book. They don’t need your copy back. They even say this in their FAQ: you can check out the book whenever you want and have your bookmarks and notes just as you did before. So why would you choose to buy a book instead of checking it out forever? Convenience? To avoid paying a late fee? What’s the late fee for a book you can always renew?
You’re not paying a fine as a deterrent for being late to return your infinitely cheap book. You’re paying a fine because that copied-to-order content doesn’t belong to you. Well, it does (it was copied just for you); but you didn’t pay for it up-front. I’m all for paying content creators. But as a part of our economy, each work of art has a finite price (not value; price). If you never return your borrowed content, you would pay forever. But at some point, you will have paid the original price of the content, which should free you from future payments. Think about that VHS tape you never returned: eventually, Blockbuster charged you for the price to replace it and absolved you.
So where does this extra money go? It might go to the public library from which you stole a book they still possess. But being brokered by Amazon, I’d like to think that the longer you “borrow” that content, the more you pay its creator. I mean, you obviously really love that book. Otherwise, you’d return it. This sounds very nice, warm, and fuzzy. Imagine a utopia in which artists didn’t starve because the world kept them fed.
But my fear is that the cake is a lie. This is money, after all. And there are large distribution machines that need to be fed. I highly doubt that authors will get your late fees. Instead, I’m sure the money will go to nurse the wounds of the publishing companies that slaved over all those bits your Kindle copied in a few seconds.
What’s worse, once the Beast gets a taste of good life, we could see books go the way of music and movies: rent forever, no purchasing. Wouldn’t that be sweet for “Big Paper”? Except that then, all books would cost money. Libraries would become meaningless. Rent your book from Amazon or rent it from your city: it makes no difference. And then books would go back to being the luxuries of the wealthy. The wealthy with juicy, automatically debited, ample bank accounts.
