I had a conversation about books with a friend of mine and we came into the subjects of buying books vs borrowing books from a public library. He said that he likes to support the author and prefers to buy the books he reads.
This made me think. The answer is pretty clear when it comes to buying vs downloading a pirate copy, but in the case with libraries it seems incorrect to say that I’m not supporting the author, but I can’t say why.
What do you think?
As a librarian, we support authors because we buy books that are in demand. The more people who reserve a popular title (e.g. yellowface recently) the more copies we’ll buy. We also buy books in bulk for book groups and sometimes we get free reign over what books we buy for our branches!