It’s hard to read that publishers are giving libraries a hard time in trying to obtain books for the public to read, but the rise of e-books have put publishers and libraries at odds with each other.
All of the major publishing companies have different policies regarding the sale of e-books to libraries. Among the things that vary from one publishing house to another are how many of their titles are available as e-books, and which libraries have access to them. Budler says the price of an e-book can also vary, and some are very expensive indeed.
Because there is no standard policy of how publishers deal with e-books and the influence the Amazon and other e-book reader distributors have on e-books, the public who doesn’t have access to e-readers aren’t getting to experience reading e-books from a variety of publishers.
It may seem like a non-issue to those of us who access the library as a change of pace from our e-readers, stacks of books and magazine subscriptions, but for those who depend on the public library system for the internet and main source of book reading, we need to bridge the gap between e-books and publishers. The differencing in policies is making the digital divide is only widening with this unresolved issue.