The more, the better – this is the motto of the brand-new „Initiative Fair Reading,“ which unites a large part of the Spiegel bestseller list – from Johanna Adorján to Juli Zeh. At the weekend, it published double-page advertisements in the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Süddeutsche Zeitung – and simultaneously launched reports in the „Spiegel“, the „Heute-Journal“ and many other media. No wonder: the initiative is backed by the campaigning German Publishers and Booksellers Association.

Anyone reading through the open letter under the title will be surprised: it is not Amazon’s dominance or the disastrous paper shortage at Christmas that is the target of the urgent appeal, but lending libraries. „Today, we are concerned that politicians are putting the basis of our work at risk – through efforts to force digital lending at low prices along with access to literature,“ it says.

One is even more surprised when looking at what „politics“ is actually doing: in the now-expired coalition agreement, the SPD and the CDU/CSU had at best announced vague improvements in e-book lending. The Bundesrat finally wanted to oblige publishers to grant a right of use „on reasonable terms.“ And failed. Libraries are still only allowed to buy e-book licenses at higher prices when publishers offer them. The fact that libraries pay considerably more than ordinary citizens and are not allowed to lend a copy of an e-book twice at the same time was not even up for debate.

Whether there would have been a new edition of the law initiative is anything but certain. Of the traffic light coalition members, only the Greens had included e-book lending in their election manifesto. With the new campaign, the stock exchange association has achieved exactly what it actually wanted to avoid: The demands of libraries to offer at least individual readers bestsellers on the day of publication were given new publicity – exactly at the time when the relevant Bundestag committees are constituted. The new MPs and the negotiators of the coalition agreement can now consider whether they want to listen to the Spiegel bestseller list or the 7.4 million Germans with library cards. Torsten Kleinz