Offline Book Lending Costs Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion

From Go to Hellman, a blog I think I will be adding to my daily reading list: Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion. Man, I wish I'd made this post.

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that "publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy" comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were "loaned" last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

Psst... He means libraries.

Seriously, why didn't I make this post? It's hilarious.