I’ve gotten some interesting comments to my post about The Digital Audiobook Divide, most of them positive but also some questions about why audio ebooks are different. In particular, Sarah Houghton posted a couple of questions, to which I left some answers in her comments, but I thought I’d repost the major one here.

“Do you likewise check out CD players for your CD materials...or DVD and VHS players for your movies?  If so, great!  If not, there's a bit of a double standard at work.” [Librarian in Black]

This is the first time libraries have proactively purchased a format that not every device can play. You can put a DVD in any DVD player and it will work. Same thing with a CD. Heck, you can put them in any computer (with a DVD or CD drive) and they'll work. There's a reason you weren't buying Betamax *AND* VHS 20 years ago, right?

For the first time, we're buying digital content that doesn't work across every device, and we need to understand we're doing it consciously. We're deliberately cutting out patrons (taxpayers) who didn't buy what someone else deemed the "right" hardware, not just hardware. That's a very new philosophy for libraries and a dangerous precedent for us to set as we accelerate into the era of "the heavenly jukebox" and digital information.

Therefore, if you can help address that divide by buying a $50 player (and if you can afford the outrageous prices for these audio ebook subscriptions, you can afford at least $50), then I think you have an ethical obligation to do so. I don't think you can use the justification of "expensive" hardware anymore, because you could buy two players for the cost of one unabridged audiocassette title these days.

I hope that helps clarify my position.