Reflection

As an individual consumer, I am nimble: able to buy, borrow, or lease where I may; join or leave services as I please; take advantage of deals as they are offered. Libraries as buyers do not enjoy these luxuries, with budgets that need to remain  stable from year to year while serving diverse constituencies. As a consumer, I may perceive the problems of the library as separate from mine as an individual. But libraries are the only legal non-market alternative in this space and the choices I make are only as good as the options that I have afforded to me.

Digital has made possible pocketable libraries of ebooks and speed-boosting in-app audiobooks. These options have improved my reading life and as such I would never turn away the progress made here. But along with the good comes the less good. It is not a necessary condition that digital makes things harder for libraries, but it is a possibility. Just as it is possible for digital to make things easier for libraries, and better for library users.

When I reflect on my experiences in 2024, I can make out a profile of a reader. This reader has many desires when it comes to books and reading, such as supporting libraries, saving money, compensating creators, understanding ownership and usage rights. But at the top of the hierarchy of needs are concerns about the reading itself. Books need to be sampled. Books must become accessible within a limited period of interest. Books need to be put down without anguish. Books need to take as long as they take to finish.

Sir Francis Bacon wrote that “some books are to be tasted.” Sampling books (or tasting them) is amazing. But sample lengths are not always enough to tell me if a book is right for me or not. In a physical library, I can pick up a book and sample however much I need from any section. But if I want to read it, I have to then check it out. We have allowed counterproductive impositions on the structure of library leases that puts stress on book checkouts.

Limiting the number of checkouts that a library can purchase limits the overall number of people who can read a book at any given time. Making the cost for a library lease more expensive than for individual consumers limits library readership even further. This may make financial sense if you imagine that if a new release is popular, limiting the number of library leases will lead to those facing a long wait time will simply purchase it on their own.

This is certainly happening, but aren’t booksellers losing money on those direct consumer purchases which are less expensive than the library version? If the book is very well written, wouldn’t there be more money to be had in readers who borrow that book a second time, rather than simply re-opens the book they purchased? Does this come down to how bestsellers are calculated? If so, can we update that formula?

It pains me to think that if I want to peruse an ebook a little lengthier than the sample, and end up not even reading it, that this action eats up an entire loan.

Doesn’t it pain booksellers a bit to know that people walk into libraries everyday, sampling your wares, and it’s not monetized one iota?

In both of these cases, there is a binary “paid” or “unpaid” use. The Kindle Unlimited program and Spotify’s audiobook tier operate in a model that conceptualizes beyond this and look instead at pages or minutes spent in a book, with no limitation on number of books-per-user or users-per-book. Can thoughtfully-designed pro rata models be explored in more depth for libraries?

For individuals, ebook reading means never running into physical space limitations. The same is true for libraries, which is why I don’t totally understand the just-in-case model (as opposed to a just-in-time model).