[cian]

HansTWN:

A library is an advertisement for the author/publisher. And they decide if they want to sell to libraries or not. It is like giving away some copies for promotion. The point is: "the copyright holder decides to sell to a library and allow them to loan the book". Not you, the copyright holder. And the library doesn't print their own additional copies.

Publishers have no choice, at least in the UK. I suspect if they had the power to do so, most publishers would ban libraries. Libraries happened long before modern ideas about intellectual property really existed, and so when IP laws were enacted they were adapted to deal with the existence of libraries (and the objections of authors). There are many good arguments for libraries, but I don't think the financial benefit (either directly, or indirectly through promotion) is one of them. And if that is an argument, it would apply equally to the "piracy" of ebooks (if piracy is the right word for an activity that doesn't financially benefit anyone involved).

HarryT:

But libraries (in most western nations) pay authors every time a book is borrowed - the "Public Lending Right". In the UK, for example, an author gets paid about 6p every time one of his or her books is borrowed.

The amounts involved are tiny. If you're a very successful author you're looking at a few thousand, tops.

PKFFW:

I don't think anyone argued that libraries are somehow profitable to authors. Merely that there is, generally, an agreement between authors and the library in which some sort of royalty is paid to the author per lending. Regardless of the profitability of libraries, the key factor is that there is an agreement for the lending of the book. That is what makes it different to downloading a free copy from the internet.

But when libraries were first created these agreements and royalties didn't exist. These things came quite a while after libraries existence was an established social fact. The only difference between early libraries, and modern darknet sites, is the fact that technology prevented easy copying. If it hadn't, they would given away copies. Given how rampant piracy was in the C19th (particularly in the US), the author may not even have gained a royalty from the purchase of the book.

Now libraries are seen as legitimate, and some kind of (tokenistic, really) redress is made to authors for the loss of income. But that's a later society choosing, for whatever reasons, to do so. Libraries existence and legitimacy does not rest upon these things.