Matt Briggs linked to this KOMO story on Twitter over the weekend. It seems that while Seattle Public Libraries was expanding their e-book collection at a pretty rapid clip, the rising price of e-books means that they'll have to pull back on their e-purchasing:

The library has built its e-book collection to 100,000 and demand is growing. But Random House delivered a major blow when it recently tripled its e-book prices to public libraries.

"The library e-book and the lending privileges it allows enables many more readers to enjoy that copy than a typical consumer copy," Random House said in a statement to KOMO News. "Therefore, Random House believes it has greater value, and should be priced accordingly."

The price hikes will mean fewer available for check out.

Most of the major publishers don't even sell e-library books because they can't figure out how to make tons of money while doing it. This is the kind of moronic, regressive thinking that could sink the entire industry as we know it. Publishers should acknowledge that libraries are amazing things: They're a government-sponsored program that gets people hooked on publishers' products. Do you know how many industries would die for the kind of goodwill that libraries produce? They should be selling books to libraries at a fucking loss, as far as I'm concerned.