Earlier this summer, I worked with the American Library Association on their Authors for Library Ebooks project — which is asking authors to call on their publishers to offer ebooks to libraries at a fair price. Right now, libraries pay several times more for ebooks than people off the street — up to six times more! I recorded this video explaining why libraries and authors are natural allies.
In this video Doctorow says, “There’s only one powerful voting block out there whose only interest is in promoting authorship, books and knowledge to the exclusion of things like shareholders or Kindle e-book sales and [platform] lock-ins, or ad sales, or the invasion of privacy, and that’s libraries.”
He also acknowledges the key role that librarians play in fostering a love of literature and building an audience for authors, “…who takes that one-book-a-day kid who’s going to be the 20 percent that reads 80 percent of the books, and when they walk in says, ‘Here’s a book you’ve got to read.’ If it’s not a librarian, who’s going to do it?”
Cory Doctorow on E-books in Libraries: ‘Libraries’ and writers’ interests are closely aligned.’
