12:22 p.m.
Washington Post skriver om att Amazon ökar den digital klyftan
Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/10/amazon-library-ebook-m…
15 oktober 2019 kallades American Library Association till en
kongressutfrågning rörande konkurrensen
på den digitala marknaden
http://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/mediapresscenter/C…
ett klipp
The worst obstacle for libraries are marketplace bans: refusal to sell
services at any price. Amazon Publishing, now a large publisher in its own
right, ranks as the fifth largest publisher for eBooks by dollar sales.
Among Amazon Publishing clients are high-profile authors Dean Koontz, Mindy
Kaling, and Mark Sullivan. The eBook titles from Amazon Publishing are not
available to libraries for lending at any price or any terms. By contrast,
consumers may purchase all of these titles directly from Amazon. This is a
particularly pernicious new form of the digital divide; the Amazon
Publishing books are available only to people who can afford to buy them,
without the library alternative previously available to generations of
Americans. A related problem is the delayed release of eBooks to the
library market.
The Big 5 publishers control over 80% of the trade book business in the
United States.5 One of the Big 5, Macmillan Publishers, recently announced
an eight-week embargo of new eBook sales to libraries, to take effect on
November 1, 2019.6 For a new release, a library may purchase only a single
eBook copy, and then must wait until the ninth week before purchasing
additional copies, 7 regardless of the size of the library community. A
single eBook is made available to serve the people of the Providence (R.I.)
Public Library, or for the entire New York Public Library system of 92
locations.
Jan
--
Jan Szczepański
F.d Förste bibliotekarie och chef för f.d Avdelningen för humaniora,
vid f.d. Centralbiblioteket, Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek
E-post: Jan.Szczepanski63 at gmail.com