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Richard, you're a brave man doing an experiment like that! It's quite depressing, but not surprising that you've had those results. I would point out something though about people's internet habits. People will grab way more than they need, in the way of downloads. I suspect many people have downloaded your books and haven't bothered reading them. People who would not have paid for them anyway. The thinking might be along the lines of "Well, no I probably won't read or buy these, but I'll grab them anyway, since it doesn't cost me anything".
As far as the library is concerned.... perhaps we've evolved past the need for our taxes to provide a public library. Certainly with electronic books I'd say that may well be the case. I'd instead like to see a national electronic book library, funded by subscription, in the same way as our TV license works. And I guess DRM would be essential there, since if it wasn't then people would be people. Someone had already linked one somewhere that was, I believe, charging 30 dollars a year for access, and allowed you to have 3 books at a time, and change them once every 3-16 days. I can't fathom how that would be enough to support authors, so perhaps it'd need to be a fair bit more.
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