Ken Whyte is doubling down on his inane attack on the concept of libraries, demanding someone, anyone, to please debate him on his argument that libraries are killing the publishing industry and starving authors. Well, ok, fine, I guess I’m a someone.

The broad strokes of Whyte’s argument are easy to summarize. The publishing industry in Canada is shrinking, and with it, authors’ incomes. Libraries, by allowing, and – merciful heavens – encouraging people to read books (and other media) without paying publishers for it, are exacerbating the problem.

It does seem like a logical conclusion, but it’s full of problematic assumptions.

Before I really dig into this, I have to address the fact that Whyte’s two recent diatribes on libraries are pitched as if they are merely defending the rights of low-earning authors to fair treatment for their works, but are overly preoccupied with the way libraries allow people access to the most popular books and media for free. It doesn’t go both ways. You can’t bemoan that the Toronto Public Library’s 90 copies of Fifty Shades of Grey are taking food out of the mouths of the poet who’s sold 500 copies of her chapbook or the non-fiction author who wrote a detailed history of 19th-century shoemaking in Southwestern Ontario that’s been borrowed once. But then, arguing that E.L. James suffers because of Big Library would be ridiculous.

Ok, let’s deal with the state of the publishing industry and the state of the author. Now, I’m not the head of a fancy publishing house like Whyte. But I have self-published a book, I have another book on the way, and I’m featured in a forthcoming anthology from a Canadian publisher. I’ve also been working as a freelance writer for nearly 15 years and I’m a heavy purchaser and borrower of books. So I have a tiny window of perspective on the problem.

Through that window it seems unlikely that the relatively recent collapse of the publishing industry and authors’ incomes has much to do with public libraries, which have been around for centuries. Here are some more obvious culprits:

• competition from other media, including self-publishers and social media (how many people do you see scrolling Twitter rather than reading a book on the bus these days?)
• the rise of Amazon, which decimated bookstores and squeezed publishers’ margins
• the decimation of the newspaper and magazine industry, which used to provide both great publicity for publishers and ancillary income streams for authors.

I suspect, but can’t be certain, that Mr. Whyte may have some useful perspective on that last point.

Whyte’s rebuttal to these charges is that, well, hey, at least Amazon pays publishers something, whereas libraries pay out “peanuts” to publishers and authors. To which I have to ask: how deep is Whyte’s Stockholm syndrome?

Blaming the free books at libraries for all the ills that descended on the publishing industry when Amazon arrived is the publishing equivalent to locking up the pauper who steals a loaf of bread while bailing out the bankers that collapsed the financial system.

Why stop at books? Libraries still lend out CDs for some reason in 2020. Are they to blame for the collapse of music sales in North America too?

Whyte refuses to see any benefit to the publishing industry from the free nature of the public library system (he does at least concede there is a social benefit to them). To statistics showing that library users buy more books than non-library users, he simply complains that they’re still getting books for free.

(I’ll cop to an early bias here: As a playwright, I’m not counting on sales of my physical play scripts for income. If someone reads my play in a library, great! If they decide to produce it, even better! That’s a much better income stream than the couple of bucks I’d get from a publisher for the book sale. But this doesn’t obliterate the broader point that libraries do foster paying readers. Seriously, any librarians reading this who wanna stock my books, please get in touch!)

He proposes some kind of subscription system for libraries, where heavy users are charged a fee, or people have to pay to borrow the most popular books and DVDs. It’s one of those superficially reasonable arguments that conservatives wheel out every so often only to be laughed out of the room by people who remember that a big company called Blockbuster once existed.

However, I’ll confess that I think there’s merit in Whyte’s idea of a subscription service for heavy readers. But why on earth should the public libraries be running it? Wouldn’t that be an even more egregious attack on the rights of publishers, to have the state not only directly competing with them, but drawing profit from their works?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for publishers to more aggressively target readers with their own subscription services?

Whyte notes that 80 percent of books “read” in Canada are library loans, leaving only 20 percent for the sales market. Let’s leave aside questions about how many of that 80 percent represent actual lost sales, as opposed to:

• books borrowed by the same person multiple times
• books that would have been informally shared between friends and relatives if bought
• books that were picked up on a whim because, hey, free, and then never read
• books that have long gone out of print
• books that were borrowed before later being bought because the borrow whet the reader’s appetite for more

If we really believe that 4/5 books in Canada are borrowed rather than bought, maybe that points to a price problem in Canadian publishing. I mean, look, I’m not a fancy economist. I’m just a voracious reader whose eyes bug out when he sees that hot new hardcover retailing for $39.95 CDN, or the 70-page play or poetry book that retails for $25.

Allow me to divert slightly to a segment of publishing that seems to be figuring this out: comic books. Over the last decade, much of the comic book industry has begun the transition to digital subscription services. Readers can access comics from most publishers through the Comixology app, though some larger publishers like Marvel and DC have created subscription services that open their entire catalogues for a monthly or annual fee. And of course, many of their books are in libraries or on library e-readers, too. Physical books have become (even more) targeted toward the high-end collector market, and publishers and comics shops are dedicating more space to related merchandise like posters, t-shirts, and toys.

And, ok, fair, maybe 2019 Giller Prize winner Reproduction isn’t gonna do killer in the action figure market, but Margaret Atwood is making bank on Handmaid’s Tale merch, and Etsy is jammed with custom Offred figures, signifying a gap in the market. Maybe book publishers just need to finally adapt to the new digital marketplace, to make their products more accessible, and better compete with *waving hands generally in the direction of everything else that draws attention in 2020*. That may mean a lower price point, or offering subscription services that more resemble the way consumers now readily consume music, video, games, and comics, which could ultimately bring in more paying customers.

The publishing industry is obviously wildly diverse and full of authors with wildly diverse motives. But generally, the thing authors crave above anything else is readers. And not just for vanity. Every reader helps an author generate income even if they don’t buy the first book they read. They might buy the next one, or spread the word to someone who does, or hunt down your next article in a magazine, or create demand for licensed products.

Bottom line: If you’re a publisher, don’t blame libraries for their success at courting readers. Ask yourself what you’ve done to drive them there.