The E-Book Saga Continues: On Defending Libraries From An Author

Noted author David O. Stewart has submitted a statement to the Montgomery County Council opposing a resolution asking for libraries to have equitable access to e-books at reasonable prices. While I respect Mr. Stewart's work (and that of his wife, Councilmember Nancy Floreen), I am deeply disappointed that he appears to misunderstand the role of libraries in our society.

Libraries do not exist for the benefit of authors. That's what bookstores are for. Libraries exist for the benefit of everyone. Access to books should not depend on whether you can afford one. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough said, "The most readily available resource for all of life is our public library system." Consider the experience of a youthful Robert Redford: "I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book."

In fact, libraries benefit authors in their work. Samuel Johnson wrote long ago, "The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book." I wonder what it would cost an historian if he or she had to buy each book used for research. Quite a bit, I would think. Wander through the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress some time. I suggest you will find quite a few scholars working on books of their own, using this largest of public libraries to do research.

Libraries do not exist through the goodwill of authors, who, in Stewart's words have a "largely sentimental wish" to support libraries, even though through the goodness of their heart they are foregoing the income they are giving up by having someone borrow the book the author has written. Authors labor under the misapprehension that any loan of a library book is a lost sale. Maybe yes, maybe no. If an author wants to expose his or her writing to the public, the library is the best place to do that. People can sample works and then buy that book or another by the same author, if they like what they read. Research shows that happens.

Libraries exist as a benefit to their communities. They are a social good, like public schools which don't charge students for books. For the record, libraries do not, as Stewart put it, "give away" books. They loan books. Physical books are returned to the library. E-books simply disappear from a library customer's e-reader when the loan is up. I don't see where "the lending of e-books for free" is a problem.

Instead, the problem might be the nature of e-books themselves. Writers are harmed, we are led to believe, by e-books that never degrade. First, they never degrade if someone buys them, so that's no different from a library. Second, books degrade at different rates. Wander through a library, particularly the hardbacks, and you will find any number of volumes that are in fine shape. Not all books become "too tattered" to loan. Some do, some don't.

But publishers have taken it upon themselves to set arbitrary standards and policies for e-books than for physical books that have nothing to do with authors. In that case, those representing authors might be best served by signing contracts barring their works from being distributed in electronic form rather than charge libraries five or six times the cost of a physical book or limiting the number of check-outs. Those policies hurt libraries by inflating their budgets, which in turn hurts authors by limiting the distribution of their work.

Finally, Stewart's article lands us in the Constitution, but he leaves out a crucial phrase. In quoting Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 which provides for a system of copyright protection, he left out the part about securing rights to authors and inventors only "for limited times," as Framers recognized that ideas and discoveries should pass at some point into the public domain. That part of the Constitution was not written to protect authors; the goal was "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Instead, that part of the Constitution has been stretched to unrecognizable dimensions through copyright extensions which benefit authors, something Stewart also doesn't mention.

If the fate of the book culture is to "shrivel and die," as Stewart puts it, the cause won't be libraries. Just the opposite. If anything, it will be our libraries which keep "the book culture" alive.