When you take a book out form the library and read it, you get to read the book for free so you would not need to buy a copy. That would mean that the author would lose money as you did not buy the book.
So when a library buys a stock of books, do they have to pay a licence or subscription to the books authors to make up for the lost money?
There is such a thing as Public Lending Right (PLR) . It is the right for authors to receive payment under PLR legislation for the loans of their books by public libraries.
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They buy a single copy. So they’ve paid for it, no matter how many people read that single copy. So there is no lost money. You aren’t paying to read a book, you’re paying to own a copy. It is a linear process, reader followed by reader. A digital version that is copied repeatedly is not linear, there is not a single user at any given point in time.
No different than a DVD, you aren’t charged for each person that watches a DVD, just for the one copy.
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No… as far as I know the Libraries purchase the books from the company that sells them so they have in essense paid for them and are allowed to put them out for public use. Plus since the Library doesn’t CHARGE for loaning books out they aren’t making any money off of these books. It seems that if one is making money off loaning the books then the authors and publishers have a right to a percentage of that monies. But if there isn’t any money then they have a percentage of nothing which is nothing.
If this wasn’t true then every person out there who buys a book and lends it to a friend would owe money to the author or publishing house since their friend wouldn’t have to buy the book to read. See what I mean…..No monies are exchanged so… no money to anyone. at least that is the way I understand it.
Thanks for the question….
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I’m not a librarian. However, as I understand it, they buy the book just like everybody else. If you loan a friend your copy of a book for which you paid, it’s the same thing as a library. The concept relies on being able to loan the book to only one person at a time.
This model does not apply to e-books, simply because once a book is posted on a web page, any number of readers can read it at the same time. It’s like making photocopies of the one copy that you purchased and giving them out to friends. That violates the author/publisher’s copyright.
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No–a library pays for a single copy and then lends it out, the same as any private purchaser can do. You don’t have to pay the publisher if you borrow a book from your friend and read his or her copy. Publishers for this reason do not give libraries discounts when they buy a book or multiple copies of a book. Libraries get around this sometimes by buying boks through big jobbers–Brodart, Baker and Taylor, for instance–that do give them discounts. Publishers may sell to these places at 55% off retail. The jobbers pass the books on to libraries at (say) 20% off retail, pocketing the difference.
Publishers are worried about free circulation of electronic copies of books, of course, because if a file can be extracted from a device on which it is read, it can be freely circulated on the internet and downloaded many times, as music files often are now.
References :
There is such a thing as Public Lending Right (PLR) . It is the right for authors to receive payment under PLR legislation for the loans of their books by public libraries.
This answer was provided by Enquire, a 24-hour, live question answering and enquiry service offered by public libraries across England and Scotland in collaboration with partners in the United States. If you liked our answer and would like us to help you find another, you can chat with one of us right now by clicking on Enquire on the People’s Network site at
http://www.peoplesnetwork.go.uk
References :
http://www.plr.uk.com/allAboutPlr/whatIsPlr.htm
http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/publications/3616.aspx