Net Library is a library that lends out digital books. It treats a digital book like a paperback copy. It charges libraries per book per copy and gives publishers a cut of the total income. From the consumer's point of view, this means that if more than five people want the latest Danielle Steel romance novel, other people who request that book will get a message saying the title is unable to get. Many publishers seem to have embraced its model. More than 350 publishers gave the company rights to hand out their digital works, and McGraw-Hill Corporation and Houghton Mifflin Corporation have put money into the company. The California public libraries and about 1,800 others across the US are trying out the Net Library service. Some librarians criticize the Net Library model. Stanford University librarian Michael Keller argues that the company is creating an unnatural fear of digital works, which is contrary to the ideas of the Internet. Keller and some other librarians argue for the e-book vision set forth by Brary. Brary is starting a service that lets us users read books for free. But it will charge about 25 cents a page when a person tries to point out material or copy and taste it into a different file or tries to download a copy onto a computer. Christopher Warnock, chief executive of Brary, believes most consumers won't want to buy entire books, only the parts that interest them. "There is not really a lot of good owning an electronic file and having to store it and manage it. It doesn't make sense," he said. How do publishers get money from the Net Library?
They get money from selling their books to the Net Library They get money from the readers. They get money by cutting the cost of the books. They share the money with Net Library.