[Note: This is one of my trans­plant arti­cles from 2020 that is get­ting a fresh revi­sion and edit. But the actu­al events hap­pened about five years ago.]

Sto­ry­time!

Recent­ly, I post­ed a tweet encour­ag­ing peo­ple to use a library’s audio­book pro­gram instead of Audi­ble.

Right. With me so far? Great.

I got all the “Usu­al Sus­pect” responses—the good advice, like check­ing WHICH audio­book pro­gram your local library uses (they don’t all use Over­drive); the bor­ing-but-entire­ly-rea­son­able respons­es that fetishize the phys­i­cal book, like the smell or feel of paper, or the typ­i­cal “great taste/less fill­ing” argu­ments about own­ing vs. bor­row­ing; the all-too-pre­dictable breath­tak­ing­ly priv­i­leged com­ments that inad­ver­tent­ly inti­mate that only peo­ple with finan­cial means should be able to have access to books, usu­al­ly by com­plain­ing that a six-week wait for a pop­u­lar title means that libraries are less than use­less (rather than just crim­i­nal­ly under­fund­ed). And I’m a guy who likes me some instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, don’t get me wrong.

Keep­ing up? Won­der­ful.

There was noth­ing sur­pris­ing in about any of these reac­tions. I’ve been at this WAY too long not to have seen this all before. Some were the sort of good “drill down” nuance you get when you post almost any kind of tweet. Because even at its vast­ly improved 280 char­ac­ters, Twit­ter (now X) is where nuance goes to die. Oth­ers were basi­cal­ly what you get when you post any­thing encour­ag­ing peo­ple to use libraries. Some folks with dis­pos­able incomes don’t real­ize that not every­one is in the same boat and thus can­not actu­al­ly make the choice to buy books as fast as they read. Those kinds of com­ments are the cost of doing busi­ness if you want to talk about libraries.

No real sur­pris­es yet.

That’s when the wheels came off the bus. I also saw a new “genre” of comments—folks hav­ing a reac­tion I com­plete­ly DIDN’T expect.

“Or we could just pay the authors.” “Actu­al­ly, I like to sup­port the authors.” “It’s bet­ter for the authors if you buy it.”

Yeah, we should total­ly pay the… um—

Wait. What?

This isn’t just a weird take or a pre­dictably pro-cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ist take. It’s not your usu­al “If poor Jeff Bezos can’t be a tril­lion­aire while peo­ple die in the street, how will any­one ever be moti­vat­ed to keep the engines of our indus­try turn­ing faster than the com­mies’?” It is actu­al­ly SO far off the rails, I can only assume it is based on some kind of bad infor­ma­tion at some step in the process. So I’m here to give all of you the straight dope. Yes, we could pay the author, BUT…

Look at me. Look at me! Are you look­ing?

I love that you want to sup­port authors, but I absolute­ly pos­i­tive­ly promise you that libraries are com­plete­ly fuck­ing AWESOME for authors. Pinkie swear!

Either these peo­ple drop­ping these com­ments don’t know how libraries work, or they don’t know what a com­pa­ny like Ama­zon does to make mon­ey off the efforts of writ­ers. For­tu­nate­ly, punch­ing holes in this kind of shit is just exact­ly my wheel­house, as long as folks let me put on my snarki­est ces­tus before my pugilism of igno­rance-bash­ing begins.

Also my sweat­shop-cal­i­bre-over­worked metaphors.

Pay­ing the author is great, but libraries DO buy books from pub­lish­ers, which gets authors paid.

Libraries buy books. In fact, libraries do not buy books at the same bulk dis­counts that book sell­ers do. They don’t QUITE pay retail for most books, but it’s pret­ty close*, and they cer­tain­ly don’t buy at the 40%–70% dis­count that retail out­lets and book clubs get. They buy at least one copy of a book, pret­ty much if a per­son wants them to have that book. And any book that is going to have mul­ti­ple peo­ple want­i­ng to check it out every month is going to have a copy in pret­ty much every library in the Eng­lish-lan­guage world. More than one copy for pop­u­lar books. And every time a library wears out a copy of their book (unless the book is wan­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty and they can pare down to few­er copies), they replace it by BUYING anoth­er copy.

*Usu­al­ly, it’s more like the same dis­count a book­store employ­ee might get. Although for some books they pay full retail price—often they have a fund set up to han­dle requests from their patrons.

That’s poten­tial­ly hun­dreds of thou­sands of books these libraries buy. There are tens of thou­sands of libraries in the Eng­lish-lan­guage world (not includ­ing the spars­er, but exis­tent Eng­lish libraries [or sec­tions] out­side the Anglos­phere and school libraries [which are not FULLY pub­lic, but not pri­vate either]).

You know what a GOOD run is for a fic­tion book? 25k. 50k is real­ly good. 75k is spec­tac­u­lar. If a writer has a good enough book, JUST THE LIBRARIES of the world will great­ly increase an already “spec­tac­u­lar” run, as they all race to get ONE copy of this high­ly in-demand book. (And if they’re that pop­u­lar, they’re going to try to buy more than one.) Plus, all those read­ers who take a chance on some­thing they can bor­row instead of buy (but then MUST own their own copy) will buy the book as well.

Of course, most peo­ple who aren’t Stephen King, she who shall not be named, or God nev­er in their lives write a book that EVERY SINGLE library on Earth wants to get its hands on, and non-tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers have the same mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion issues with libraries that they would with retail­ers, but libraries buy new books every day based on requests from those they ser­vice. So once an author has peo­ple who want to read their book ask­ing libraries to car­ry it, they make mon­ey.

And libraries pay licenc­ing fees for each use of elec­tron­ic media. Things like the audio file? The author makes some mon­ey. Same goes for e‑books. The authors get a tiny roy­al­ty for every elec­tron­ic check­out. And as e‑books do not wear out, their prices are often high­er for libraries to off­set a longer shelf life. But on top of this, they have to “repur­chase” the rights to them peri­od­i­cal­ly (usu­al­ly every year or every two years).

Fur­ther, though an author may need a book deal with an inter­na­tion­al legal sec­tion, in many non-US libraries, there is some­thing called a Pub­lic Lend­ing Right, and that means an author DOES make mon­ey (pen­nies, but still) every time their book is checked out.

Libraries are not pirat­ing books.

The argu­ments sur­round­ing the “or we could pay the author” rea­son­ing bear a strik­ing resem­blance to the argu­ments AGAINST pirat­ing.

I have to be hon­est here. I’m elat­ed, thrilled… OVER THE MOON that a new gen­er­a­tion of up-and-com­ing writ­ers knows to be very wary when they hear the word “expo­sure” used non-iron­i­cal­ly in their pres­ence; how­ev­er, they should also know that expo­sure IS actu­al­ly a thing. It exists, and it is good for authors.

Here’s the trick.

I’m going to explain the dif­fer­ence between a pirate/thief down­load­ing a book with a shrug of “I’m giv­ing them good expo­sure!” (or a pro­fes­sion­al for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion try­ing to get work for free out of a writer) and a library say­ing the same thing.

Ready?

Here comes.

The dif­fer­ence is if some­one is offer­ing to pay the author with ONLY expo­sure.

The pirate/thief down­load­ing Tor­rents (instead of wait­ing a week for a request to come in at their local library) who has con­vinced them­selves they’re screw­ing the big, bad pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny and not the author (it’s both), and that they’re pro­vid­ing the author with expo­sure (they almost nev­er are), isn’t pay­ing for even a SINGLE copy of that book that they have. The library IS doing that. And unlike the pirate/thief, the library is also actu­al­ly putting their copy of that book on dis­play and lends it out to pret­ty much any­one who wants it (rather than just eras­ing it from their hard dri­ve when fin­ished).

Now you’re talk­ing to a guy who will nev­er pub­lish tra­di­tion­al­ly because the big bad pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies real­ly ARE big and bad, and who puts all his stuff online for free and pass­es the hat because he knows a lost cause when he sees one. But don’t let the pirates/thieves con­vince you that they’re real­ly doing an author a great big favor. They just don’t want to feel as bad about pick­ing an author’s pock­et. They’ve got this idea that they’re going to go talk up enough peo­ple about that book that it’ll get the author more mon­ey than if they’d nev­er read it, but what usu­al­ly hap­pens is that they tell a few of their friends how THEY can pirate it. Their “expo­sure” myth is just what they tell the mir­ror as they brush their teeth for the evening, so they can sleep at night.

How­ev­er, that’s not what libraries do. They buy actu­al copies. Then they lend them out. Then they replace them as need­ed, which includes buy­ing more copies if the book is pop­u­lar. Then they noti­fy oth­er libraries of what’s get­ting checked out, and THOSE libraries start buy­ing copies. And the whole while, any­one who is legit­i­mate­ly check­ing out those books might devel­op an inter­est in hav­ing a copy for their very own or explor­ing the author’s back­list. Plus, the librar­i­an might be rec­om­mend­ing the book to peo­ple who come in ask­ing about “suchand­such” a genre with “soand­so” a style.

Now THAT’S expo­sure.

Pay­ing authors is AWESOME, but com­par­ing libraries with some ran­do just lend­ing books willy-nil­ly is a BAD anal­o­gy.

So you com­pare libraries to your friend who lends you a book but just assume they do it an extra thou­sand or so times, and total­ly screw the author.

Okay, right now, this anal­o­gy sucks. Let’s look at it like this.

Your friend lends out a book. If your friend notices that a lot of peo­ple are bor­row­ing this book, they are like­ly to buy mul­ti­ple copies of the book so they can lend them out to MORE peo­ple. Ten or fif­teen copies wouldn’t be unheard of for a very pop­u­lar book. Your friend also replaces any books that become too tat­tered, whether they’ve lent it out fif­teen times or once. Your friend also belongs to a net­work of oth­er book-lend­ing friends who will also buy mul­ti­ple copies.

NOW your anal­o­gy doesn’t suck.

This is why we NEED libraries. Your friend would have to be out­ra­geous­ly wealthy and gen­er­ous to pull this off in a non-sucky-anal­o­gy way. The col­lec­tive resources of a com­mu­ni­ty are the only way to cre­ate some­thing like a pub­lic library with­out every­one hav­ing their own per­son­al mul­ti-mil­lion­aire friend invest­ed heav­i­ly in their ongo­ing lit­er­a­cy.

Ask work­ing authors what they think of libraries. NONE of them dis­like libraries.

I am pret­ty sure you would be hard pressed to find even a frac­tion of one per­cent of work­ing authors who have some­thing neg­a­tive to say about the way libraries affect their bot­tom line. Authors LOVE libraries. Even the most hard-line, mer­ce­nary, busi­ness-nosed author knows that they prob­a­bly sell more copies of their book because of libraries than they ever would with­out them.

In a world where every­one had mas­sive dis­pos­able income, an author (who I guess doesn’t have the same mas­sive dis­pos­able income as every­one else for some rea­son because that’s what’s required in this sce­nario) might pre­fer if every sin­gle per­son to ever take a chance on one of their books did so by pur­chas­ing their own copy, but giv­en the world we live in where there are peo­ple who can’t buy books or only a cou­ple at a time as a treat, pub­lic libraries exist pre­cise­ly because books should not belong only to those peo­ple of suf­fi­cient enough means to have their own per­son­al libraries. Pub­lic libraries exist to democ­ra­tize lit­er­a­ture and infor­ma­tion as some­thing that all human­i­ty (not just the wealthy) deserves. And they are part and par­cel of the rea­son the mod­ern-day writer can be “the mod­ern-day writer” instead of hav­ing a wealthy patron among the courtiers.

The ones treat­ing authors poor­ly are EXACTLY who you would expect to. And they aren’t libraries.

If authors aren’t mak­ing enough in late-stage cap­i­tal­ism, I hate to say it, but it’s not the LIBRARIES that are to blame*. (And it’s cer­tain­ly not all the plebs who used the library rather than buy­ing every book they read brand new.) If you want to see who is mis­treat­ing authors, look at Ama­zon (and don’t for­get the pub­lish­ers). Price fix­ing, deny­ing authors their “com­mis­sion” unless the Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion came from a cer­tain URL, slash­ing roy­al­ty rates, deny­ing more and more mon­ey to the author, whether you go big-five or inde­pen­dent, because the entire indus­try land­scape is dot­ted by var­i­ous dis­tri­b­u­tion monop­o­lies. They’re Kai­ju try­ing to smash each other’s mar­ket share, and authors get tram­pled under­neath.

*Con­fes­sion time: I didn’t hate to say this at all, real­ly.

But it sure as hell isn’t LIBRARIES hurt­ing authors. If you want to see a library con­tribute some scrill to an author, it’s as easy as walk­ing up to the desk and ask­ing them if they will order that author’s book. I think they also make you fill out a tiny lit­tle card.

Very few donat­ed books end up on a library’s shelves.

Some of the con­fu­sion seems to sur­round the book dri­ves libraries have. And while I can’t speak for the shoe­string bud­get of every small town library in the world, most do not need two hun­dred copies of Fifty Shades of Grey (espe­cial­ly not the ones where some of the pages between 318 to 329 are extra tat­tered). Libraries are gen­er­al­ly lim­it­ed by space. That’s why, unless you have a PRISTINE copy of a book they were going to buy any­way, they usu­al­ly turn around and have a book sale, using the mon­ey to buy more books… from authors.

Libraries are not stop­ping you from buy­ing books.

We nev­er vot­ed as a soci­ety to have book­stores OR libraries, and the effort to edge out libraries is com­ing from book­stores, not the oth­er way around. It’s true that libraries are a sweet lit­tle drop of social­ism in our late-stage crap­i­tal­ist cof­fee, but if you are brim­ming over with con­cern for the plight of the poor work­ing writ­ers, I can’t tell you enough how much try­ing to get uni­ver­sal basic income or a fed­er­al “artist stipend” for work­ing writ­ers (or just giv­ing us mon­ey) will help more than attack­ing libraries. Ama­zon and oth­er book­sellers are the ones who want you to think libraries aren’t good for authors, and gee, I won­der why*?

*I don’t real­ly won­der. It’s because they’re lying greedy fuck­waf­fles lying through their lying face-holes to secure a big­ger mar­ket share.

As if pay­ing authors OR enjoy­ing libraries is what’s real­ly on the table when cor­po­ra­tions like Ama­zon are doing every­thing in their con­sid­er­able-PR-spin pow­er to destroy any com­pe­ti­tion they might have, includ­ing call­ing for the end of libraries. (That link is to those pinko lib­er­als over at For­tune mag­a­zine who even think that’s a pret­ty shit­tas­tic idea.) And hon­est­ly… fuck them for try­ing, because this entire post is JUST about authors mak­ing mon­ey; it doesn’t even touch on every­thing else pub­lic libraries do, like help­ing with gov­ern­ment forms, job appli­ca­tions, com­mu­ni­ty gath­er­ings, or just kick­ing ass for free speech.

Libraries are good.

Libraries help authors.

Libraries BUY authors’ books.

Libraries are not the ene­my.