MemeMachineGo!

The sometimes brilliant Tom the Dancing Bug had this cartoon portraying the publishing industry reacting to libraries per the record industry's reaction to Napster a year and a half ago.

In a valiant effort to close the irony gap, and a remarkable display of short-sighted self-interest, a British author proposes that libraries shouldn't buy current books because they cut into book sales. Meanwhile, he describes that he spent lots of time in libraries as a child, sneers at the high valuation people put on libraries, and volunteers that he pirates music from LPs borrowed from libraries.

This year, 17 years after my first novel was published, I received my first public lending rights payment and account. In the past, for reasons that remain obscure (envy?), writers who lived abroad were not eligible for the payment, which amounts to a handsome 2.67 pence for every book lent. So I at last discovered what my fellow UK authors presumably already know: that the library press release is right, that my, our, books are more frequently lent by libraries than sold in shops (to the ratio of 3-1 in my case).

Mm-hmm. And he made no money from the library sales themselves. And everyone who borrowed his book would have bought it in hardcover -- especially people previously unfamiliar with his work would as readily have shelled out fifteen pounds for a new hardcover as borrow it from the library. And none of them enjoyed it so much they bought it to have a copy to reread, or bought it as a gift. And none of his sales derived from word-of-mouth from his library readership. Nope, those damned thieving libraries have just got their hands deeply in his pockets. And all this in a country where writers are paid something for library withdrawals.

(Via Moby Lives)