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1. Embed this notice
   dB Cooper (coolerpseudonym@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 13-Jul-2026 12:25:15 JST dB Cooper

   Public library ebooks are basically a thing of the past.

   Libby is bleeding the libraries to death, sucking tax money straight to private equity. (KKR owns it).

   For that cost, you get very little, beyond hockey-playing-vampire romance novels and other dumb bestsellers.

   If your experience with Libby is still good:

   1) You live in one of the few remaining cities in the US with a well-funded library

   2) It won’t last. Libby is a parasite that’s indifferent to its host’s long-term survival 🧵

   • Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     dB Cooper (coolerpseudonym@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 13-Jul-2026 12:25:29 JST dB Cooper

     in reply to

     My sort of back of the envelope figure is that one borrowing of an ebook costs the library system on the order of ten times as much as one borrowing of the physical book.

     A common contract for an ebook via Libby is a two-year rental that allows 26 circs, for—depending—something like a hundred bucks. That’s a few dollars per circ.

     Hardback books cost about a third that much and circulate many more times. Probably tens of cents per circ or better.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     dB Cooper (coolerpseudonym@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 13-Jul-2026 12:26:06 JST dB Cooper

     in reply to

     Librarians, being good public servants, will tell you to borrow books without guilt. You’re a taxpayer, or the child of one, and library material is for you; in any case, the library can advocate for realistic budgets based on what the patrons actually use.

     I think this is a kindly lie. Library budgets are shrinking, never increasing, and the opportunity cost of these huge ever-growing Libby contracts is severe. They’re strangling everything else the library might do.