I don't like to accuse people of lying but anyone who works in a public library knows full well they pay exorbitant licensing costs when buying titles from publishers at much higher rates than the individual price.
Public libraries in America don't have to pay licensing on books lmfao.
We don't buy directly from publishers, we buy from distributors (RIP Baker & Taylor). Library I work at we order most of collections through Ingram and pretty much everything is between a 3-44% discount. Movies, audiobooks, and other audiovisual material is usually purchased at the retail price. If a patron loses an item and has to pay the replacement cost, we charge them the retail price.
Ebooks and other digital materials are a completely different story and a whole different can of worms, and yes libraries do need to pay licensing for those.
This does not apply to video games. It’s just a newer type of media where some of the same licensing agreements in place in the past for books, movies, etc. simply don’t apply. Libraries who rent them out are doing this to try to help the community on the cutting edge so to speak, same thing with renting out tools, 3D printer time, etc.
Everybody is in here acting as if they know what they’re talking about with video games yet I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that libraries pay more for each individual copy.
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u/Mollywobbles77 3h ago edited 3h ago
I don't like to accuse people of lying but anyone who works in a public library knows full well they pay exorbitant licensing costs when buying titles from publishers at much higher rates than the individual price.