In Which HarperCollins Makes Statements that Make No [Real] Sense

BLOT: (12 Mar 2011 - 03:08:37 PM)

In Which HarperCollins Makes Statements that Make No [Real] Sense

Jean Ward tweeted about librarians boycotting HarperCollins. Almost everything in the article was exactly what I expected, except for a paragraph/quote from HC themselves:

Part of the reason this was unexpected is because it depicts what the librarians want in the light of destroying the book industry and depriving authors of royalties, and mostly because it either indicates that HarperCollins have no idea about ebooks nor libraries, or that they are willing to indulge in hyperbole and false dichotomies to justify and obviously money making maneuver.

Breaking it down looks something like [my notes, translations, and sarcasm in brackets]:

• Selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system... [how so? If you mean "ebook eco-system", there is no reason to think this would undermine the ebook eco-system any more than selling books to libraries in general undermines publishing as a whole (as opposed to helping books to get known and read by a much wider audience). If you mean "stops HarperCollins from making as much as the possibly can" then I'd buy it. No, for them to make such a claim, they have to show how making a book available from individual libraries (they are not attacking consortium deals right this second) actually disrupts the concept of an ebook, the sales of an ebook, and so forth...]
• ...hurt the growing e-book channel... [again, how so? Plus, yay for repetition for making an argument seem more valid. HarperCollins is wrong. You know how I know? Because they are incorrect.]
• ...place additional pressure on physical bookstores... [at this point, their argument has stopped even trying to make sense and become a failed-first-year-philosophy level slippery slope. Presumably, if you allow patrons at a library to check out an ebook, one at a time, forever, then obviously brick-and-mortar stores will dry up and crumble into dust...or, I suppose, HC's need to make tons of extra money will mean they will have to raise the cost of books, and it is your fault for daring to check out an ebook one at a time...]
• ...and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors. [translation: HarperCollins has never heard of libraries. Nor ebooks. But they did hire Timmy the Overreactionary Public Relations Junky.]

Even being generous, I can only read HarperCollins' statement as meaning "If you allow people to check books out, people won't need to buy books, and that will lead to less books being bought." Which is at least potentially a logical stance to take. You just have to be opposed to libraries as a concept to begin with. And if you harp on on their "in perpetuity" claim, then you have something like another logical stance, but it fails to note [at least] three big things:

1. Popular books are going to be bought in number, anyhow. A library's need for a book has both width and length. The sort of book which tends to have a width (lots of copies at once, say Twilight) does not have an extreme length. Books with a large length (say Catcher in the Rye), don't have a huge width. Since the 26 check outs is more a factor of length than width, this would essentially mean that HC will shoot its own perennial classics in the foot and focus on only pushing whatever bubbles to the surface as a popular meme of a book.
2. There is a HUGE list of choices between 26 and infinity. That number was likely reckoned on in actuarial circles as being slightly below the average number of circulation of popular HC titles, or was derived based on a "2 weeks per check out, 52 weeks in a year" mathematical equation. HarperCollins could have worked with libraries to find out a more logical number. OR, HC could have made the durability of ebooks a selling point, bragged about the new technology, instead of trying to simultaneously crush it and blame someone else.
3. Digital copies of book lack a number of features (due to technological considerations, or licensing ones) that hardcopies have. Things libraries cannot do with ebooks: (1) interlibrary loan, (2) sell them off in a Friends of the Library program, (3) have public readings of them [this is a factor of ebook rights, and may not be true for libraries], (4) make displays out of them, (5) encourage reluctant readers to pick them up by allowing casual browsing [oh snap! you just used 1/26 of your book up], (6) provide casual browsing opportunities [oh snap, another 1/26th!], (7) accept donations, or (8) transfer them to another system.

Ebooks, as circulated in library models, are neutered variations of print books. The only three benefits they have are (1) durability [including: can't be lost/limbo'd], (2) accessibility adjustments, and (3) they don't take up as much space (or require all the other elements such as shelf-rearranging, finding a spot on the shelves, and so forth). Since that third one is somewhat canceled out by the loss of having a physical book on the shelf, and now the first one is considered a flaw, you end up a with a book that auto-returns itself (presumably) and a semi-crippled (approved devices only!) version of #2. For that benefit, you get to buy a book over and over again for your patrons.

Maybe reporters have glazed over this, but I have yet to see any "meeting half-way" elements to this: no decreased cost [or added benefit] to make up for the loss of utility, no promise that if a book doesn't checkout 26 times that the library can recoup money, no offer of support services or deals for libraries that have high circulation numbers as part of a program. This was the time in history where HC was supposed to be selling us on ebooks, convincing people to go out and by those fancy ebook readers, convincing people to try and give the books a spin, to request them for their own library, not convincing us that we can't trust publishers.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: March 2011