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?

  • Debbborra@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I had a friend who wrote an absolutely brilliant book. He published with a smaller publishing house. Perfect shitstorm of lousy agent lousy publisher. My imperfect understanding is that because it wasn’t added to the world catalog it would never be purchased by most library systems.

    I think being available in libraries would have gotten him more new readers. So, royalties on library books aside, the exposure from library circulation has value.