One of the big issues looming on the digital horizon is the role libraries will play with ebooks. A pre-emptive move earlier this year by the UK government has upset booksellers and shows that the industry here, too, needs to get involved in this debate.

So far, libraries’ digital activity has mostly been confined to research uses. The prevalence of the cumbersome PC as the main reading platform means the bread and butter of the book trade, fiction and general non-fiction, has barely been touched. But mobile reading devices and a surge in availability of popular ebooks are pushing libraries into the digital mainstream.

The few libraries experimenting today with ebook downloads typically have very thin collections. This is partly due to tight budgets but also stems from concerns by publishers and authors about how—indeed whether—libraries should lend digital editions of their books.

It’s the latter that has prompted the UK government to legislate so that patrons in libraries can download digital editions to their ebook readers without libraries infringing copyright. At the same time, it will issue an order under legislation “preventing libraries from charging for ebooks lending of any sort, including remotely.”

On the face of it, this looks like a big win for the reading public. Most people I speak to about ebooks get excited by the idea that they’ll be able to borrow them free from their libraries. And most people have a visceral sense that borrowing from a public library should be free to all. But this excitement is not shared as acutely by publishers, authors and booksellers.

Macmillan US CEO John Sargent put the industry problem succinctly when he said recently, “In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time … With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it … You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing … How is that a good model for us?”

For much of the public, politicians, and librarians, this seems like a perfectly good model which accords with the common view that the digital world should operate the same way as print. But it is likely to be bad news for publishers, authors and booksellers. The former might lose sales because libraries can lend ebooks more efficiently (they need fewer websites than physical libraries) and they don’t wear out or get lost. And publishers, authors and booksellers all potentially suffer if the free option is as “frictionless” to get as their more expensive paid editions. And there might be less desire to “own” an electronic file than a real book.

Perversely, libraries are likely to suffer too from the UK government mandate to lend all ebooks free of charge. Most will not be able to afford a serious ebook lending programme without painful cuts to other services. If no other measures are taken, the result will be a crippled ebook service with a very limited selection. Ironically, booksellers concerned about competing with free loans should probably cheer the unintended consequence of this heavy-handed move.

But let’s not cheer too soon. Faced with this outcome, the government might tip the balance in libraries’ favour by forcing rightsholders to make big concessions, effectively subsidising libraries and setting up an even stronger competitor for booksellers. Its planned copyright changes to let libraries lend ebooks with or without publisher permission shows it’s not averse to forcing rightsholders’ hands.

So what is a reasonable role for libraries and how do we achieve this balance of interests? To avoid the heavy-handed legislative approach we’re seeing unfold in the UK, we need to talk directly to the library sector and other stakeholders in our own part of the world.

And we need to consider how the ebooks ecosystem will evolve.

If we look at the film industry as a comparison, there’s an initial cinematic release followed by release to rental and sell-through channels, then pay TV, then free-to-air TV. Through this measured roll-out, the industry manages to extract value at every price point, including free, and sells through many channels to reach as much of the market as possible. About 80% of the film industry’s income is earned after cinematic release.

Ebooks need a range of channels and price points too, to properly service the market and maximise the value of our creative assets. And with books it’s not just an economic equation: we have to consider social impacts.

So which channels will open up for ebooks? We’re in the early stages of developing a “full price” channel and still have a lot of work to do selling the value of digital books to consumers. And we can expect that libraries will offer some sort of free channel, whether selectively or open to all. Other (legal) free-to-consumer channels might emerge, perhaps through ISPs—and might have to develop to stem piracy.

I personally would like to see a vibrant rental channel for ebooks. And I’d like to see both libraries and booksellers participating, perhaps with release dates delayed just as DVDs today follow cinematic release. This would be an interesting “back to the future” scenario for booksellers. Before the public library movement, they had a thriving book rental market and in their heyday, there were more than 1000 “circulating libraries” in mid-nineteenth century Britain.

A paid rental option could bring much-needed money into libraries’ strained coffers, resulting in a better service to patrons who can pay and, with this improved funding, a better free service for those who can’t. For publishers and authors, it offers the prospect of fair compensation for readership through libraries.

While booksellers might be concerned that libraries are straying into commercial territory, it will be worse all around if they are backed into a corner by politicians and a public with high expectations, while not given the resources to deliver on these aspirations.

We’d then confront two equally grim scenarios: a high quality free service competing aggressively with booksellers and largely paid for by onerous terms thrust on publishers and authors by legislation. Or a crippled public library service struggling with dwindling patronage and increasing irrelevance.

These are tough issues with far-reaching impacts. Time to start talking and find a way through this.

The REDgroup owns Whitcoulls, Angus and Roberston and Borders in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore giving it a similar dominant position in this part of the world that Shortcovers’ owner Indigo Books has in the Canadian market. The service will offer 200,000 paid ebooks (30,000 expected in the downunder version) plus more than a million free ebooks.

Following the spin-off and new investment, Indigo’s share of the venture will be 58%. Its new partners are REDgroup, Borders Inc and Hong Kong conglomerate Cheung Kong whose subsidiaries include Hutchison Whampoa. Among its other areas, Hutchison is a major telecommunications provider.

Shortcovers/Kobo is an impressive platform, now complemented by an impressive line-up of partners. One of them, Borders, has just announced that it plans to develop its own ebook reader for the service though the service will maintain its position as a device-agnostic platform supporting many mobile devices, a definite strength.

The plan to launch an ebook store (or stores) in Australia and New Zealand will certainly add some sizzle to the REDgroup as it toys with a possible public listing and exit for its private equity owner, Pacific Equity Partners.

It’s very good news for the nascent digital publishing market downuder as the possibility of high profile retail channels opens up for local digital content. Given the Kindle’s arrival in Australia, and its (we presume) imminent arrival in New Zealand, consumers will be offered some enticing options.

In the press release, REDgroup retail group managing director David Fenlon said:

“… we’ll soon be able to offer our customers a broad selection of eBooks and other content for download via our websites. In particular, I’m pleased that we’ll be in a position to make local content available by working with Australian and New Zealand publishers and authors to enhance the Kobo range … Kobo’s content will be accessible from eReaders, iPhones, Blackberrys, Palm Pres, Androids and PCs, making the products very versatile.

It’s timely for another reason. It’s looking increasingly likely that CES 2010 (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas on January 7-10 will see a number of launches that will start to see more digital reading-friendly gadgets arriving to tempt consumers.

• Among the rumours, Dell will be launching an Android-based tablet.
• Start-up e-paper supplier PixelQi has confirmed it will be there. “We can now announce that the first units are going into specialized tablet devices with multi-touch … Pixel Qi will be at CES in Las Vegas in early January supporting our customers. We can’t yet announce with whom we will be showing but hope to shortly,” says CEO Mary-Lou Jepson.
• Plastic Logic will finally launch its business-oriented QUE e-reader, a much-praised device that might finally herald the arrival of the paperless office.
• There’s also some really interesting-looking stuff from smaller players in the show’s Ebook Techzone.
• And, of course, a slew of Android devices will be on their way, many no doubt seeing the first light of day at CES 2010.

Welcome to 2010, another Year of the Ebook.

[Update: 16 Dec, 11:47am. REDgroup which has Australian and New Zealand book chains A&R, Whitcoulls and Borders ANZ, is a minority investor in the new company formed for this initiative.  They expect to launch an ebook store using Kobo by May 2010. See story: Whitcoulls, Borders, A&R to launch ebook store by May 2010.

Also, Borders Inc is an investor and have announced an ebook store on the Borders.com site powered by Kobo. The broad geographical spread of the partners should be a big plus in sourcing content and dealing with territorial restrictions.]

Since it launched in February this year, the unit of Canadian bricks-and-mortar bookseller Indigo has done an impressive job of building its ebook offering, concentrating on the smartphone opportunity rather than waiting for the somewhat glacial development of the dedicated ebook reader market.

In his blog posting announcing the name change, Indigo vice-president Michael Serbinis focuses on the site’s international aspirations, claiming the new name “is a name that will appeal to readers around the world”. I didn’t think the old name was too bad but it was presumably too closely tied to the bookseller’s early, misconceived, plan to offer ebooks as part-works sold by the chapter. Thankfully they rapidly figured out this wasn’t going to fly and changed tack to put together a more conventional and increasingly credible offer. It includes their own ebook reading application, originally launched for the iPhone but now available for the Blackberry, Palm Pre and Android.

Accessing the site from New Zealand, I can buy a few titles but most are still blocked by territorial restrictions. The Kobo team are quite upbeat about their prospects for getting more international territorial rights and Serbini’s blog posting states they’re planning to offer more currencies. So it seems this name change really is part of a larger push to become a serious global ebook retailer.

Given the scale of the announcement — the move will make the Kindle, previously only available in the US, accessible to readers in 100 countries — the details are still unfolding. In my haste to get the story out, I initially picked it wrongly myself and thought New Zealand was in the first wave. It wasn’t.

This item from Bookseller UK casts light on one key issue: Did Amazon rely on global rights for the titles it will make available or will it respect the mesh of territorial rights that make the book business so complex. The answer, it seems, is that territorial rights are safe and secure. From Bookseller:

Publishers have been assured by Amazon.com that territoriality will be respected following the international launch of its Kindle e-book reader this week.

… Amazon said a safeguard has been put in place to respect territorial rights. A spokesman added: “When a customer first buys Kindle content, they identify their region or country. In order to simplify their browsing experience, we then display the appropriate catalogue for the customer. When they travel, the content available to a customer is determined by their home country, not by the country they are travelling in.”

This is good news for those of us who think this long-established practice is as important in the digital age as it has been in the print world. It will be interesting to see if it remains the norm or is just a legacy issue to deal with the past. But even a short period will serve a useful purpose in allowing country and regional markets to get established in the face of large, global competitors.

On the subject of New Zealand which, along with Canada, Singapore and a range of other territories, will be Kindleless next week, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this. It was especially surprising given that Australia will be in the initial launch group and, in terms of territorial rights, are very similar. See this excellent round-up of who gets what over at Blog Kindle.

Major publishers I spoke to here did not believe the issue of rights should have stopped New Zealand customers from accessing Kindle ebooks. If it’s a telco issue, it will hopefully be resolved soon since Amazon’s network partner AT&T has data roaming agreements with two mobile operators in this country.

[Update: 10:30am. This story from Chris Keall at NBR confirming rumours that telco issues are causing delays. Vodafone has confirmed it's in talks with Amazon about bring the Kindle here.]

It’s probable, given our small size, that any complication, no matter how minor, will see New Zealand pushed back.

In the meanwhile, booksellers and other industry players can knuckle down and work on bringing their own ebook plans forward, ahead of the Amazon juggernaut. Witness this amazing statistic, just provided by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to Wired magazine: Of books available on Amazon in both paper and Kindle ebook formats, 48% now choose the Kindle format. That statistic is well up from the already-impressive 35% figure he gave earlier this year.

[Update: 1:37pm Just had a call to tell me that Amazon is not presently able to ship to New Zealand but will ship to Australia. Have amended story.

Update: 9 October 2009.  See story: Details still unfolding.]

And if you don’t want to buy a US$279 Kindle from Amazon.com, you can still access it from the free Kindle app for the iPhone. The international wireless support comes via the AT&T wireless network. Outside the US, AT&T uses the common GSM system supported by operators such as Vodafone, Telecom and Hutchison. Amazon will add a US$1.99 surcharge for each ebook download from outside the US to cover wireless charges.

Among the publishers supporting the Amazon move with global rights, making their ebooks available for sales to non-US territories are:

Atlantic Books, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber and Faber, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Penguin, Profile Books, Quercus, Simon & Schuster and Wiley.

A notable absence, Random House, is still in discussions with Amazon.

As well as books, more than 85 newspapers and magazines, including many international publications, are now available for subscription on the Kindle.

For those among who would have liked less global and more local in the territorial rights issue, it’s time to put that debate behind us and work with the new rules that will clearly be predicated on global editions. This will impact on English language titles and many other geograpahically dispersed languages such as Spanish.

• For publishers in all territories, it’s now time to do deals with Amazon, not just for international sales but for an early shot at early adopters in their domestic markets.
• For Amazon competitors in the ebook reader space such as Sony, it’s time to put the leisurely pace of global roll-outs behind them and crank into high gear. Let’s hope New Zealand and Australia are at the front of the queue now.
• For Amazon’s bookselling competitors, it’s time to get started because if they don’t build brand awareness in this space fast, they won’t get into the game. There’s only going to be room in customers’ heads for a tiny number of sites when they think where to go and shop. Booksellers at the country level will need to differentiate on the basis of local prices (Kindle sales are still $US but that will change), local title availability and local promotion.
• Expect to see the global rights issues sorted out pretty soon by early global e-booksellers such as Barnes and Noble‘s Fictionwise and the recent Canadian entrant with global aspirations, Shortcovers.

Amazon is already a major global presence. In the press release announcing this, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos refers to the “millions” of existing international Amazon customers. Certainly, a lot of them wil reside Downunder so we’ll expect a lot of Kindle users arriving here pretty smartly.

It’s our job now to make sure they’re reading local as well as international books. In this regard, the announcement this week that New Zealand copyright collective Copyright Licensing Limited (CLL) will lead the charge to get New Zealand books digitised and licensed to groups such as libraries, booksellers and others, couldn’t come soon enough. I’ll be part of that through the work we’ve been doing with the Digital Publishing Forum and the 1000 Great New Zealand Ebooks initiative.

Publishers will increasingly need to work with trusted digital content agregators  to get their digital content into many places, to negotiate with large players, track their digital sales and make sure their content is properly managed. Rights organisations such as CLL are well placed to do this if they can adapt from their current print-based role to the digital environment.

This very timely blog from Mike Shatzkin speculates on the need for such a role for the US rights organisation, the Copyright Clearance Center. Following the lead from CLL in New Zealand, we’re going to see more of this.

We live in exciting times.

It’s a friendly shot, with a barb, as you’ll see from the full press release below. But, certainly as far as New Zealand is concerned,  it points to a further challenge for all of us, namely that Random House New Zealand doesn’t have a local ebookstore that they could supply, whether they wanted to or not.

I notice that ebooks.com, a Perth, Australia-based ebookstore, has The Lost Symbol for sale at US$9.95 but sales are restricted to the following markets:

American Samoa, Bouvet Island, Canada, Faroe Islands, Guam, Heard and McDonald Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Reunion, United States, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Virgin Islands U.S.

While I don’t have a problem with publishers selling directly from their websites, I do think it has to be in conjunction with fair, concurrent availability to online booksellers.

Random House New Zealand is excused at this point because it doesn’t yet have a New Zealand ebookseller operating (we hope that changes soon). But Australia certainly does and Random’s failure to supply, eg, eBooks.com or Dymocks Australia’s ebookstore, isn’t acceptable.

These moves will come back to bite publishers if they weaken the independent online bookseller channel with this sort of behaviour. Random House Australia missed a great opportunity to help develop the retail sector with this high profile ebook.

I also have no problem with territorial rights, by the way, as this recent stoush over at Teleread (and here) indicates. I think they are essential to development of a healthy mix of local and global ebook retailing. But I can see that this action by Random House will have a lot of people pointing the finger at territorial rights as the culprit here. They’re not.  It’s certainly a channel issue, though.

Here’s the full text of the Booksellers New Zealand press release:

22 September

Media Release

Traditional booksellers unfazed by arrival of e-books in New Zealand Market.

The direct  sale to consumers, in e-book format, of the latest Dan Brown blockbuster, The Lost Symbol and other Dan Brown titles by publisher Random House will be “taken in its stride” by the traditional book industry, according to Booksellers NZ Chairman, Hamish Wright.

“This is an expected event with the whole business of digitisation of book publishing and selling  providing as many new opportunities as threats for booksellers,”  said Mr Wright owner/operator of the independent  Wrights Bookshop in Cambridge.

He was commenting on the latest move by Random House Australia to make available three of the Dan Brown’s books, including the latest, online in the form of an e-book in the New Zealand and Australian markets.

“Disintermediation of the supply chain has been around for a while in other industries, such as banking and the movie industry, but it has not meant the much vaunted death of banks or cinemas, as it won’t for bookshops.

“There is a great deal more in the selling and buying of books than simply making them available; it’s a cultural and intellectual experience where relationships and understanding between booksellers and readers are developed over time and are highly valued within  local communities,” said Mr Wright.

“Digitisation in its wider form than just e-books or e-readers, offers much for booksellers and their customers, especially by overcoming supply problems for readers wanting to buy backlist copies or out-of-print books.

“As on-demand publishing facilities develop further in the Australian and New Zealand region, booksellers will be able to provide quicker turnaround for books, where sometimes they have to wait for weeks while publishers decide whether or not to reprint.  We would also hope that publishers will be willing in future to make e-books available for sale through booksellers. ” said Mr Wright.

Ends………….

For further information contact Hamish Wright, Chairman, Booksellers NZ: 027 621 2062.

• Books will be stored “in the cloud”, that is, they will reside on the internet rather than being a file sitting on your computer or mobile device. Google would like its own servers to be powering the cloud.

“I believe people want their books stored in the cloud…. For most people, your library is something that you don’t pull books off all that often, but when you need it, you want it to be there. That’s where a cloud really works. You’re not going to actively manage it, but you want to make sure that five years from now, [it's there],” says Clancy.

• Books will be accessible by a wide range of devices from e-readers, to computers, netbooks and mobile devices.

“Our model is some people will read [our books] on a laptop, some will read them on the phone, some people will read on their netbook, and some people will read on their e-reader. And we’ll work with any reader provider that wants to make it so they can get their books from the Google cloud…, ” says Clancy.

• Bricks and mortar booksellers will still have a place:

“[P]art of our model is to figure out we’re going to syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in bricks and mortar stores as well,” says Clancy reassuringly.

In Google’s world as Clancy sees it, “we’re trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition.” He wants to see lots of booksellers competing and lots of devices accessing books from the Google cloud. But he doesn’t see the booksellers’ role extending to managing those cloud-based libraries. “The consumer needs to trust that the person who’s providing the cloud will be there,” say Clancy. “So you don’t trust the cloud to some new startup that you’ve never heard of, or some small local bookstore, that you love to go to.”

Thanks to TeleRead for pointing out this link.

[Update 3 August] Here’s another interview with Google’s Clancy, this time from the Boston Globe. It includes reaction from some worried librarians and others, concerned at just how big this is becoming and the potential for a Google monopoly.

The trouble started when Amazon withdrew an ebook version of Orwell’s novel after it found the edition infringed copyright. But its hamfisted method of doing this — dipping into its customers’ Kindles without them knowing and removing the offending work — has unnerved a lot of people. It also prompted an embarrassed, almost grovelling, apology from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

But as this New York Times story shows, critics are quick to use the issue as an attack on Digital Rights Management (DRM) as well as civil liberties.

The civil liberties issue is clear enough: If Amazon can withdraw a purchased ebook without consent from its owners’ Kindles, what could a ruthless government or censor do to remove material causing offence for other reasons? In this respect, it’s hard to miss the irony that it was an edition of Orwell’s 1984 that has prompted this fear.

The connection to DRM, widely hated and seen many many as infringing consumer rights, is an interesting turn in this argument. It looks like it was Amazon’s DRM system that was used to remove access to the offending file. Campaigners are now using this incident to attack Amazon’s overall use of DRM.

The legal problem comes from a related issue. An awkward aspect of US copyright law called the First Sale Doctrine could well create problems for Amazon and its publishers. The First Sale Doctrine is a US legal statute that essentially states that once a person buys a copyrighted item, the copyright owner’s control over how the new owner uses and transfers that item largely ends. So for instance the legitimate purchaser retains their right to resell, lend, rent or give the item away. Other jurisdictions may have a similar principle to contend with so the issue is by no means confined to the US or to works sold into the US.

In a possible attempt to circumvent this legal principle, Amazon’s terms of sale state that the ebook is licensed rather than sold outright. This is probably news to a lot of Kindle owners who feel like they’ve bought ownership of their ebook with the same rights as a p-book.

Personally, I think Amazon and publishers should be able to limit transfer of ebooks. But Amazon’s problem here — legal as well as public relations — is that it’s creating the appearance that its ebooks are sold outright rather than on some sort of royalty-free license-to-use basis.  This point — that if it looks like a sale, it probably is a sale in spite of what your terms of sale say — caught out software maker Autodesk a couple of years ago in a case that you could imagine would share a lot of similarities with ebooks if a disgruntled Amazon customer decided to challenge Amazon’s or a publisher’s post-sale behaviour. In the Autodesk case, an eBay trader was selling used copies of its software which it argued were only sold in the first instance on a license-to-use basis. The judge didn’t buy this argument, in spite of Autodesk’s explicit terms of sale, because it gave the appearance of being an outright sale.

The industry, and Amazon, needs to start an education process to make this issue much clearer. And they really need to do some soul searching about whether they can, in fact, have a bob each way on this issue. It’s understandable why Amazon, and no doubt many of its publishers, are being a bit ambiguous on this point. Who, after all, will want to pay close to the full price of a p-book for something that is essentially a long term rental?

But if they don’t come clean, there might be some unpleasant and unexpected consequences. If First Sale rights, or a similar legal doctrine, is recognised in case law or statute as covering ebook sales, there could be interesting consequences, particularly if DRM is also challenged on similar grounds. For instance, a second hand copy of a paper book is generally much cheaper than a new one, doesn’t travel widely, and gets less valuable as its wears out. But what value will a “second hand” ebook file have? If it doesn’t wear out and it travels well, a library or rental store can lend it continually for years with no discernible lessening of quality and no further payment to the author or publisher. And hey, let’s not forget how sociable the web is these days. It’s easy to imagine your favourite internet book club becoming a vast channel to free loans from your large network of online “friends”. Sound familar?

The 700,000 titles in the Barnes and Noble eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks) appears to include half a million free ebooks from Google Books so this figure might be less impressive than it sounds. Nevertheless, it marks an important boost to the ebook market in the US.

This initiative provides a credible large player to counter-balance Amazon’s power.  The eReader software, already on the iPhone, Blackberry and PC/Mac, will give B&N an edge. It’s dubbed this its “every device strategy”. B&N also makes much of its support for the open ePub standard, another advantage it should have over Amazon.

At the same time, it has announced it will power the eBookstore for the much-anticipated Plastic Logic eReader that is due for release in early 2010 and aimed at the business market.

There’s no mention in the B&N information of plans for outside the US. As we’ve seen since it acquired Fictionwise, it has, if anything, been focusing more heavily on the US market.

This raises an important question for the book industry. Should libraries be able to lend ebooks? Right now, the libraries are focusing on digitising out-of-copyright works or material that falls outside of copyright such as historical documents. This sort of material, 50 or more years old, is mainly of interest to researchers. The general public’s idea of a library is more closely associated with borrowing commercially-available, new and recent books. This is no doubt what Rudman had mostly in mind with his suggestion.

There are several problems with letting libraries lend ebooks, but there are also opportunities that could be a big help to our emerging digital publishing industry. It’s worth looking at both sides. First, some of the potential problems.

If a library buys an ebook, how many times can it lend this ebook and under what terms? With a paper book, there is no limit to the number of times a single copy of a book can be loaned. The main constraint currently is the physical availability of the book — if another borrower has it, you can’t get it until it’s returned.

Notwithstanding the recent passing of the Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Act 2008 to partially compensate New Zealand authors, the library can continue to lend that single copy without any further payment for the book to the publisher, international authors, or other rights holders.

If the paper book is replaced by an ebook and that ebook is just a click away — no need to drive to the local library to borrow and return the book — it’s probable that borrowing from libraries will see a surge in popularity, especially if it’s free or a nominal fee. Terrific for literacy, educational improvement and many of the cultural benefits that accrue from books. But how can this be reconciled with the need for a commercial industry of publishers, booksellers and others who will have much more to fear from libraries when technology brings the local library to every home and mobile phone.

So, given the potential problems, let’s look at some possible solutions.

The National Library of New Zealand, Wellington

One solution is simply to keep ebooks out of libraries, other than for archival purposes. This is an option that the industry should give serious consideration to. After all, in this digital age, is there really any public good justification for making vast numbers of books available free, in an instant, especially when it has the perverse consequence of undermining the viability of the book industry (and other media such as magazines and perhaps newspapers if libraries go down this path)?

If there are sectors of society that, say for financial reasons, could not buy books, it would make more sense for the taxpayer and ratepayer to subsidise their book purchases than to pay for an expensive library system whose main purpose is to give the books away. Publishers, authors and booksellers would be better off, and so arguably would the public, including those most disadvantaged.

Another option is to severely restrict the terms under which ebooks are supplied to libraries to minimise the harm that can be caused. Examples would be to restrict concurrent loans, limit the number of times a book can be loaned out, and specify devices it can be read with and/or places it can be read. This is one area where DRM could be justified since it’s not just preventing copying, but enforcing a range of terms. Of course, it might seem odd or even pointless that you’d still have have to drive to a library to read an ebook.

On the payment front, instead of a one-time purchase at standard (usually discounted) retail rates, publishers could be reimbursed on a per loan basis, or via a much higher initial purchase price. If this happened sooner rather than later, libraries could, in fact, play a big role in developing the digital reading habit and financing a large part of the commercial sector’s early digitisation needs.

But if terms imposed on libraries were too lax — for instance by allowing a low cost or a large number of times that libraries could lend a book — then commercial booksellers would be undermined, an undesirable consequence regardless of whether or not publishers and authors are fairly compensated. The library sector, as a heavily subsidised competitor, may need competition regulations placed on it.

So, measures such as these could work to reduce the potential harm digital library lending could cause. But would this be reason enough to allow libraries to perform a similar role in the digital world that they perform today with paper? If they have to be so severely restricted, shouldn’t we just drop them completely? There will be plenty of commercial options to fill the gap.

My own feeling is that the lending library, except for specialist research and archival libraries, probably has no place in the emerging digital world. What public benefit would arise from maintaining an expensive digital library system when access to New Zealand’s, and the world’s, books and knowledge is so ubiquitous? Keep the specialised research and archival functions, the role of major libraries since the great Library of Alexandria. But that should be its sole digital function.