LIBRARIES ARE THE NEW PIRACY
Feb. 19th, 2013 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: Children’s author Terry Deary causes a stir by saying libraries are irrelevant in the 21st century and – even worse – are killing the book industry and depriving authors like him of money by giving away their work repeatedly for free.
Indeed, he says, libraries are responsible for putting the silly idea into people’s heads that no one should have to pay to read a book:
Also, libraries are killing the book industry:
As you might expect, many other authors don’t agree with him, starting with Neil Gaiman.
As you also might expect, Deary has since responded to all the criticism, claiming that everyone completely missed the point he was trying to make.
Anyway, anti-library sentiment is nothing new. In the US, libraries have become the bane of conservatives who think libraries are a waste of tax money becausethey can’t stand the idea that liberals are taxing them to pay for an elitist liberally biased cultural center we don’t need them thanks to bookstores, the internet and Amazon.com and Kindles and whatnot.
I’ve written about that before, and what I said then applies here.
As for Deary’s specific complaint that libraries are killing the book industry, it’s a ludicrous premise. For a start, libraries have been around longer than the modern book industry. If the “free books” model was an industry killer, there would be no book industry to begin with. Bookshops may be closing down, but that’s more the product of the entire business model changing as people buy books online, whether in dead-tree or e-book formats.
As for Deary’s claim that libraries deprive authors of income, see the above point about the book industry in general surviving the “free book” model. Now, as an aspiring writer myself, I get that authors ideally want to be able to make a living from writing. And I fully admit this is an issue for authors who scrape by with small audiences, as opposed to authors like, say, Gaiman and Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer who sell tons of books and have movie-rights deals for good measure.
The problem is Deary’s faulty logic that every freeloader who checks books out of a library is someone who would otherwise pay for them in a bookshop. The same logic has been used by record companies to argue that file sharing should be illegal. In both cases, it demonstrates a really poor understanding of why people opt for free media. Maybe they lost that book or album and don’t want to buy a replacement copy to read it again. Maybe they don’t want to blow $10 to try a new author/artist to see if they’re worth reading. Maybe they actually can’t afford to spend very much on entertainment.
In any case, preventing someone from reading yr books for free will not necessarily change them into a paying customer. Meanwhile, letting someone read one of yr books for free could lead to sales of future books if they really like yr work.
So all up, Deary’s argument doesn’t wash. Even if his point really was to get a debate going about the role and relevance of libraries in the 21st century – which is a valid topic and one that should be addressed – he didn’t quite succeed, seeing as how people aren’t debating library reform so much as they’re debating whether Terry Deary is greedy, dumb or both.
Checking out,
This is dF
Indeed, he says, libraries are responsible for putting the silly idea into people’s heads that no one should have to pay to read a book:
"Because it's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that …"
Also, libraries are killing the book industry:
"Books aren't public property, and writers aren't Enid Blyton, middle-class women indulging in a pleasant little hobby. They've got to make a living. Authors, booksellers and publishers need to eat. We don't expect to go to a food library to be fed." […]
What other industry creates a product and allows someone else to give it away, endlessly? The car industry would collapse if we went to car libraries for free use of Porsches … Librarians are lovely people and libraries are lovely places, but they are damaging the book industry. They are putting bookshops out of business, and I'm afraid we have to look at what place they have in the 21st century."
What other industry creates a product and allows someone else to give it away, endlessly? The car industry would collapse if we went to car libraries for free use of Porsches … Librarians are lovely people and libraries are lovely places, but they are damaging the book industry. They are putting bookshops out of business, and I'm afraid we have to look at what place they have in the 21st century."
As you might expect, many other authors don’t agree with him, starting with Neil Gaiman.
As you also might expect, Deary has since responded to all the criticism, claiming that everyone completely missed the point he was trying to make.
“No-one is even reading what I’m saying. I never attacked libraries, I said we need to think about people’s access to literature.”
Anyway, anti-library sentiment is nothing new. In the US, libraries have become the bane of conservatives who think libraries are a waste of tax money because
I’ve written about that before, and what I said then applies here.
As for Deary’s specific complaint that libraries are killing the book industry, it’s a ludicrous premise. For a start, libraries have been around longer than the modern book industry. If the “free books” model was an industry killer, there would be no book industry to begin with. Bookshops may be closing down, but that’s more the product of the entire business model changing as people buy books online, whether in dead-tree or e-book formats.
As for Deary’s claim that libraries deprive authors of income, see the above point about the book industry in general surviving the “free book” model. Now, as an aspiring writer myself, I get that authors ideally want to be able to make a living from writing. And I fully admit this is an issue for authors who scrape by with small audiences, as opposed to authors like, say, Gaiman and Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer who sell tons of books and have movie-rights deals for good measure.
The problem is Deary’s faulty logic that every freeloader who checks books out of a library is someone who would otherwise pay for them in a bookshop. The same logic has been used by record companies to argue that file sharing should be illegal. In both cases, it demonstrates a really poor understanding of why people opt for free media. Maybe they lost that book or album and don’t want to buy a replacement copy to read it again. Maybe they don’t want to blow $10 to try a new author/artist to see if they’re worth reading. Maybe they actually can’t afford to spend very much on entertainment.
In any case, preventing someone from reading yr books for free will not necessarily change them into a paying customer. Meanwhile, letting someone read one of yr books for free could lead to sales of future books if they really like yr work.
So all up, Deary’s argument doesn’t wash. Even if his point really was to get a debate going about the role and relevance of libraries in the 21st century – which is a valid topic and one that should be addressed – he didn’t quite succeed, seeing as how people aren’t debating library reform so much as they’re debating whether Terry Deary is greedy, dumb or both.
Checking out,
This is dF
