Comment by nekusar
8 hours ago
Exactly. All libraries are worthy of being supported and grown. I make no distinction between a physical dead-tree library and a digital library.
The only reason we even have dead-tree libraries at all is because 100 years ago, that was what John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie put forth to whitewash their horrible capitalist behaviors across the USA. And because it was done by those generations' billionaires, public libraries because acceptable.
If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries.
> If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries.
I wonder why nobody created a Netflix-like subscription for digital books
Amazon maybe? Kindle Unlimited. In some ways Audible with audiobooks. Which actually has lot of entrants though they tend to limit listening time on large part of their portfolio.
Libby very much exists, you just need to sign up through your local library.
The problem with Libby is finding a local library that has a good selection. Mine does not, and my state does not have the feature of being able to get a library card from any library in the state. I would have to buy a membership to a non-local library, which can be surprisingly difficult to do if what you care about is a large selection of ebooks.
I believe you can get access to a lot of digital books with a library card online. Not something I have personally done, so can't really give details.
Kobo Plus: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus
The reason I don't subscribe is it takes me a lot longer to finish a book/audiobook than a movie. I just get them from the library/Libby - even if it's a 4 month wait, there are plenty of available books to read while I wait.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_(company)
There was already one that existed in the web 2.0 era. Founded in 2012, raised a $3M seed from Founders Fund and a $14M A. Completely failed though and was acquihired by Google to have the founders lead Google Play Books.
Amazon now has Kindle Unlimited but I think it's mostly romance slop and self-published books. Seems like publishing rightsholders were just too inflexible to let the business model take off.
Yeah I like reading somewhat obscure history books- no public library carries those and they're extremely expensive if you can find them.
Usually funded by universities and foundations anyway because there's no real commercial market.
Because you have to pay a ton more for a lot of digital copies of books if you're doing any kind of lending and you're competing with existing libraries. So you both have higher costs (e.g. you have to pay more for a digital file that may have DRM, be required to self destruct after a certain number of uses, doesn't allow multiple lends at a time, etc.) and your prospective consumers have a free option so convincing them to pay is going to be difficult.
The economics aren't there.
Public libraries lend DVDs and Blu-Rays yet Netflix still exists.
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I consider libraries, public schools and maybe even public fire departments in the list of things that could never be proposed today if they didn't already exist.
Public libraries pay for their books