The Kassandren have taken position and are loudly demanding to be heard. After an initiative in the Federal Council stipulates that publishers should make their texts available on the publication date for e-book lending by the libraries, writers, publishers and booksellers started the #fairreading initiative just in time for the book fair. Your skepticism is justified. After all, the 185 founders, including Sibylle Berg, Daniel Kehlmann and Sven Regener, have the upheavals on the music market in mind that the licensing system caused. Spotify spread. Instead of selling albums, which is still bearable, today – entirely in the interests of individualized consumers – sales are achieved with individual songs, often in the pitiful penny range. If this de facto devaluation now also affects the book industry, many small publishers and authors who are already at the poverty line would lose the necessary income, and on the other hand the copyrights of private sector actors would ultimately be curtailed.
So what right does a state have to do so? Probably an important one that the German Library Association can refer to, namely the book as a general cultural asset. By giving everyone access to intellectual property, public institutions contribute to a large extent to equal opportunities and accessibility in the education system. The variety of the written word is available to everyone. Certainly one should not overestimate this fact from an economic point of view. Because, as the interest group states in its statement, only around ten percent of the population even have a corresponding reading card. The number of active e-book users is even lower. In addition, the license to be acquired from libraries is limited in time. These arguments also turn out to be legitimate.
And yet, in this symbolic debate, one cannot avoid repeating the immense work behind every single work and defending it with verve. The fact that the German-speaking region has advanced to become one of the most productive literary locations is primarily due to the property rights that apply here. How often has fixed book prices been up for grabs? If we want to preserve the uniqueness of our creative landscape, good conditions should be important to us. Especially since advancing digitization and changes in collecting societies alone have shaken the book market badly enough.
The question of whether a book should ultimately be available online in a library on the date of publication or whether a time delay would make sense in the interests of the manufacturer may initially appear marginal. However, it stems from the fundamentals and re-initiates the discourse about the correct remuneration of cultural certificates. The Internet was once associated with the idea of spreading knowledge across the board. But what happens when the electronic media paradoxically lead to this treasure disappearing? The novelist Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Today we know the price of everything, the value of nothing” – it could hardly be more aptly spoken about books at the moment.
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