Not even a month after Maryland passed a library ebook bill, New York has now passed one of its own; the legislation (which Governor Andrew Cuomo still needs to sign) guarantees libraries the right to license and lend ebooks available to consumers in the state. The Association of American Publishers is against the bill and considers it unconstitutional, but library advocates have garnered considerable support for the legislation. Don’t forget that earlier this spring, Amazon Publishing struck a deal with the DPLA Exchange to offer its ebooks to libraries for the first time under four different licensing models. Read more in Publishers Weekly.
Elsewhere, Nathan Newman at Slate looks at the ebook licensing issue and predicts that federal copyright law will make these library bills moot. He suggests Congress could fix the problem by extending first-sale doctrine to cover ebook sales for schools and libraries so that the licenses don’t expire. Congress considered such an action in 1998 but put off the decision pending maturation of the ebook market.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
