Thread: Did some thinking about the incredibly bad library article in yesterday's Globe, and thought I'd share some highlights on how lazy and intellectually dishonest it was.

Some I'll share as general musings, others I'll post a screencap and respond to something specific.

The piece, as a whole, is premised on the idea that it's library borrowing driving declines in the profitability of booksellers and publishers.

This is, on its face, ludicrous, as both made record profits during times when libraries were circulating more books.

Twenty-year share price highs for Indigo were eight years apart in 2018 and 2010, when Toronto Public Libraries circulated 30.1 million items and 31.3 million items respectively (physical and digital). It does not seem like library circulations is a key driver here.

It's also telling that Ken understands the bookselling business so well that he is able to dismiss the nearly-universal perspective of actual booksellers.

Ken is right, this is a tongue in cheek joke from TPL. Again, as Ken noted: people who actually make their living selling books (broadly) realize that libraries aren't their competitors.

(Ken goes on to reference a bunch of other similar little bits of PR from other libraries)

Here, Ken first shows his incredible misunderstanding of what "economic impact" of public services means. It's not the amount that should rightly go into the pockets of vendors, it's the benefit it provides to citizens.

Surely the economic benefits we get from plowing roads are greater than the total we pay for snowplows and operators. This doesn't mean cities and the province are stiffing snowplow operators.

This calculation is based on the ideas that:

1) library borrowers would otherwise have bought every item they borrowed at full price
2) no people who borrowed a book later bought it
3) people who own books never lend them to friends

All of these are obviously false.

Ken cites this piece to show that libraries account for only 1.3% of book sales: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/66106-the-case-for-libraries.html

For one thing, it's about cash-strapped American libraries and American publishers that sell world-wide.

It also contradicts Ken's position in the headline.

While I don't think that piece is particularly helpful, Ken did, then in HIS NEXT SENTENCE, he says what's in the screenshot, while the study points to Amazon as the threat to publishers and that "when it comes to books, libraries and publishers should be in it together"

This is a lie. Planned expiration for e-books has been in place for a decade. ( https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/harpercollins-sets-checkout-limits-on-library-e-books-1.992073)

Libraries also pay more for e-books than they do for print books, and more for print books than consumers pay for the same book. ( https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ebooks-digital-library-collections-big-5-publisher-business-model-1.5191941)

The rest of the article gets into the idea that publishers will boycott libraries, as though they've been forced at knifepoitnt to sell to them this whole time.

Of course, that's entirely untrue. Publishers have been squeezing libraries for money since time immemorial.

Of course, Ken doesn't explain why he thinks a change is imminent, other than that the publishing industry is hurting, but somehow I don't see publishers scaling back on library sales when libraries are paying more than ever per-copy when they're selling less elsewhere.

I'm not really an expert on libraries, and pulled this thread together from pieces I've come across through osmosis. If people who are actual experts have more to share (or if I've missed the mark on something), I'd love to hear it!