No Ink, No Paper: What's The Value Of An E-Book?

A colleague sent me the NPR article, No Ink, No Paper: What's The Value Of An E-Book?, on the impact that e-books are having on the publishing world. I found it quite interesting and think it brings up some interesting questions that will have a direct impact on libraries.

The biggest question is simply, if publishers become more e-book friendly, i.e. publishing more e-books, how will the library continue to supply these items? Current e-book providers (Overdrive, NetLibrary) are extremely clunky and restrictive.  However, once they catch up to e-book publishers and e-book reader developers, will there be a need for a library? Once e-books become ubiquitous and you can check out an e-book easily, what is the role of the library?  Print is not dead yet, but what happens when it expires?

Here is the article by Lynn Neary:

The growing popularity of e-books has raised a difficult question in the publishing marketplace that used to have an easy answer: What's a book worth?

Because they cost less to produce, consumers think e-books should be cheap. But publishers are afraid that if the price goes too low, they may never recover from the diminished expectations.  
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