In Europe authors get paid when their books are loaned by libraries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

To put this in perspective, in the UK (from http://www.plr.uk.com/):

The Rate Per Loan has now been confirmed and has increased for the first time in three years to 6.29 pence

£0.0629 is somewhat different to the £7.99 that the average paperback costs in the UK these days.

Also:

Over 23,000 writers ... receive PLR payments each year

Which seems a very small number to me.

A better comparison would be to compare that royalty rate with what the author gets from sales. A 'typical' rate would be 10% of what the publisher gets. If the retailer sells the book for £8 they'll keep something like 40% so the publisher will keep £4.80 and the author will get £0.48.

Not to mention that a single book can be loaned multiple times over the year. So, if you have a pay per loan rate of £0.0629, it would only have be loaned 8 times over the year to match the rate of one sale (for the author). Not to mention that they probably get the royalty from the first sale as well (or maybe not as part of the pay per loan agreement - I have no idea).

So, the pay per loan rate is probably pretty good.

There was a discussion in France, where the did not used to have a pay per loan system in the libraries and some people wanted to introduce one. I do not know however, what came out of it..

A related note: this is one reason why publishers like ebooks (obviously there are disadvantages for them, too). It's also why I don't like ebooks.

I guess I'm a cheapskate. Well over 50% of my personal book consumption comes from used or library books. Over 90% of my family's books come from such sources as well. I would absolutely love to dive into ebooks, if only to massively reduce the physical volume said books take.

But I can't, not without either severely curtailing our family's reading or increasing our spending by, probably, a thousandfold.

Nice satire.

Yes, but to be fair to publishers: libraries don't replace sales the way that piracy can. Borrowing requires a trip to the library, which has a limited number of copies of any book, borrowers have a limited time to read a book, they can't make notes in it, etc. Enthusiastic fans will often still buy. If they can get a permanent copy that's just as good as the paid version, without leaving home, for free, that's a different matter.

Not that piracy == lost sales in every case. But a pirated copy gives more of the value of the original than a borrowed book does.

I don't know that is true in all cases. For instance, if I were to pirate "ultimate programming reference book", yes what you say is true, i get far more value than borrowing it. On the other hand, if it is a novel I will read exactly 1 time, the difference in value transmitted is negligable.

Since online thieves are already called "pirates", we need a new name for these hooligans. I propose "rats"!

I propose "worms". As in bookworms.

Ninjas!

Eternal battle between pirates and ninjas... It will be interesting :)

Obviously what's needed here is for more publishing industry executives to move into top roles in government organizations that oversee these "libraries". Then they can work to sabotage and choke this piracy from within. It worked for the energy industry; I can't see why it wouldn't work here.