On Mon, 8 Nov 2010 00:40:10 -0800, Karen Coyle said:
<snip>
rothman has been pushing this for at least 10 years, but I think he
doesn't understand the basic economics. What he wants is for there to
be one, big public digital library that lends digital books to anyone
for free. So... where would revenue for the publishers come in? He
thinks that some kind of monolithic fee system would satisfy the
publishers, but where would the money for a tempting fee come from?
</snip>
Well, I'm not so concerned about the publishers' revenues. I'm more concerned about the authors' revenues. But I know of an example of a reasonable "business model" for a national digital
library:
www.pim.hu/object.90867f8f-d45e-40f9-8a6b-fe0034f0db87.ivy
The Hungarian Government pays copyright fees to the most important contemporary Hungarian authors (including the Nobel Prize winner Kertész Imre) and publishes their oeuvre online (for free) !
Bravo, I would say !
Having my country (Romania) in mind, let's imagine a (much simplified) scenario.
Say: a successful contemporary novel: 3 printings of 5,000 copies each, $10 a copy, all sold, i.e. $15,000 revenue.
Say: 10% copyright fees, i.e. the author makes $15,000.
Now, suppose my brave government wants to offer the digital version of the book for free.
Say: it pays $15,000 to the author.
Say: it pays a publisher $5,000 for the production of the e-book version.
(All the numbers are exaggerated, I'm sure).
That is, for $20,000 the e-book could be offered to the public "for free". That is, for $1,000,000 the National Digital Library could offer 50 successful Romanian contemporary novels "for free".
(Or ten times more poetry books !)
How many copyrighted books could be offered with the public money spent for a bomber ?
Dan Matei
PS. It's "funny": in order to buy bombers, we never think of private money (foundations etc.). But in order to buy books for the public libraries (including the digital public libraries), the
private money comes to mind !
So, I could easily imagine an e-book offered for free, carrying the mention "Published with the generous support of Good Samaritan Co."
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Dan Matei, director
Institutul de Memorie Culturală - CIMEC
Piata Presei Libere nr. 1, CP 33-90
013701 București [Bucharest], Romania, www.cimec.ro
tel. (+4)021 317 90 72; fax (+4)021 317 90 64
www.cimec.ro
Received on Sun Nov 14 2010 - 16:03:58 EST