But that is exactly the issue. Publishers are what enables modern writers to make a living. And the publisher’s content is not being ripped off — MacMillan didn’t write the book, the individual writer did. It’s the writer’s work that is being pirated. The publisher is the system that enables books to be distributed.

And by the way– historically, the Spanish judges are wrong — in ancient days, only the wealthy could afford to hire scribes to create books for their private libraries. The first public library of the sort you are used to started in the 1700s. In ancient cultures, and in many indigenous cultures, the only literature that was shared was oral literature, stories and songs, which were taught and passed down through a closed guild of storytellers and priests. There was no mass sharing of written literature until the Guttenberg printing press was invented, and the majority of people even then were still illiterate.

More to the point of today’s brave new publishing world, here’s something that gets lost in the conversation. The system that compensates writers is breaking down. That system is calling publishing.

Writers are compensated less and less because publishers are selling less and less. The publisher gives writers ADVANCES — upfront money — to spend the next year writing the book, and then hopes to recoup that ADVANCE by selling more copies than the advance. For many publishers and writers, that may take many years, while the book is on the BACK LIST — no longer new, but still a steady seller. The writer relies on the advance in order to take the time to write the book. But if the book is put on e-readers and then “shared” with everyone, there is no way to make money off the backlist.

Libraries — hundreds of thousands of them — PAY for the copy or copies that they then circulate for free. Tax money or private memberships raise the money to PAY for the copies, which then compensate the authors and publishers.

On digital publishing, I can put a book on Kindle or Nook, but the writer absorbs the cost of finding a way to pay the bills while writing it. There are no advances against sales. If I take a year to write a new book, and I sell a hundred copies, and someone puts that book out there for free, there is no additional compensation to the author at all for all the downloads from that free copy. So I may make nothing for a year’s worth of work.
That’s great for authors who write books on the side, but not for someone making a living at it now.

If you share a library book, at least the initial price of selling those physical books to thousands of libraries provides compensation. But if your generation — I’m a boomer and we pay for what we enjoy either through our taxes ad donations, or through buying a copy — doesn’t understand that SHARING leads to NO COMPENSATION in the digital world, then the entire system collapses. Authors will have to find another way to make a living from writing. We’re all scrambling to do that. And some of us will figure it out. But the casualties of those unable to make a living in the next few years are all too real to those in the industry.

More worrisome is the long-term view that it’s okay to enjoy and demand to read someone’s book without paying for it.

Why is it that your generation just assumes that everyone — ie. writers — should be jumping for joy to spend months researching and more months writing books — textbooks take a long time to write — just so people can get it for free?

My husband and I are book writers. But after this year, I don’t think we can afford to do it anymore. The publishers aren’t buying, and what they are buying is for very low advances. For $15,000 I won’t spend a year researching and writing a non-fiction book. It just isn’t worth it. But maybe, you would like to be that altruistic.