I want to make something clear up top—the Authors Guild does really important advocacy work and provides lots of demystifying information. They’ve been instrumental in supporting authors regarding the Bartz vs. Anthropic lawsuit, they’re staying on the ball when it comes to keeping authors up to date on issues around generative AI and copyright and how to avoid publishing scams; they have a huge author resource library, including resources for fighting book bans. 

But tangentially related to that last point, I have some concerns about a recent positioning choice they made—and I’m not the only one.

At the beginning of June, the Authors Guild released a study conducted in 2025 about reader behavior. To oversimplify before things gets complicated: the study looked at how many people bought books in a particular format in a particular month, or, if they didn’t buy them, how they got access to said books.

This study was completely different from studies they released in 2018 and 2023 about author earnings, which they reported as in decline. But those studies, particularly the 2023 one, mostly focused on the differences between how much self published authors made versus traditionally published ones.

Now this is important: there is no data that actually ties the reader behavior survey to those author earnings reports. They are separate studies conducted years apart. However, in their recent post—the way they summed up this report to people visiting their website, the Authors Guild specifically tied the 2026 Reader Behavior study to the perceived decline in author earnings.

When you do this—when you release a statement about declining author incomes along with bar graphs about how many readers are borrowing rather than buying, you’re making a pretty clear statement: it’s the reader’s fault that author incomes suck more now.

And furthermore, they made a very interesting choice to highlight how many people who “should” be buying books are borrowing them instead. If you listened to my last episode, you know that libraries pay, and pay dearly, for the ebook and audiobook licenses that are in such heavy usage by the populations reached by this study. But there’s still an implication here that these borrowed books generate zero income for authors.

So, one of the major conclusions the Authors Guild seems to have reached is that the problem with author earnings is that people use libraries too much.

Yes, really. In the year of our recession 2026, it’s those pesky libraries and those stingy readers who are ruining authors’ careers.

And yes, there are problematic trends in reader behavior (pirating among them) but this might as well come out and make some whiny 2010s era “millennials are killing the diamond trade” article. But more than anything, it’s the fact that authors and publishers are coming for libraries at this particular point in history that absolutely blows my mind.

It doesn’t take a ton of research to see why a report like this would be positioned this way. There is heavy influence from the Association of American Publishers, which has been butting heads with libraries for years over digital book pricing (we’ll get to that). And any author or publisher can tell you how hard it is to sell books in our current environment.

But that positioning, who it’s coming from, and who it’s targeting right now, at this point in history, is pretty damn off-putting.

What the Study Said

Right at the bell, they come out swinging for readers; the headline for the article posted on the website is: “Only 25 Percent of Readers Paid for a New Copy of a Print Book or Ebook Read in the Previous Month.”

Here are their key findings:

• Only 36 percent of people who read a book or listened to an audiobook in the last month bought a new book or audiobook (or obtained one through a paid subscription service) that generated royalties for the author in that time. Nearly two-thirds purchased nothing new.

Text Formats

• Only 25 percent of books (ebook and print) read in the last month were bought new or obtained through a subscription.
• Just 19 percent of books in text format (print and ebook) read in the prior month were bought new.
• 6 percent were obtained through a paid subscription such as Kindle Unlimited (which pays much less to authors).
• 10 percent were bought used.
• 29 percent came from public library borrowing—both print and digital.
• 16 percent were borrowed for free from other sources (including piracy) and another 19 percent were from personal collections.

Audio Formats

• 36 percent of digital audiobooks consumed were either purchased new or accessed through paid subscriptions like Audible. 37 percent of digital audiobooks were borrowed from libraries.
• 27 percent were acquired from other sources (including pirated copies).

For those curious about the methodology—all this information was gathered through an online survey of participants that were recruited at random from a “national consumer panel”. The survey was fielded from October 21 to November 6, 2025, looking at past month book readers who read 1 or more books in the previous month and more than four books in the previous year.

So, rigorous, comprehensive data of trends over time and absolutely not a snapshot of discretionary spending after back-to-school and before Christmas in highly turbulent economic times.

The Libraries

A Reminder about Ebook Costs for Libraries

Over the years, there’s been notable tension between publishing companies and libraries regarding digital books. If you’ve been following this sort of thing as long as I have, you might remember back in 2018–2019 there Macmillan tried to place an eight week embargo on new ebook releases to libraries, the idea being that readers would get too impatient to read that new release and buy it instead of waiting two months. The stated concern was that a higher number of readers would switch solely to ebooks because they could “get them for free.”

If you want to look into actual findings regarding libraries and wide access and availability of books, you can look at archived content from the Panorama Project. You should also go back and listen to Episode 55 of this little podcast called Hybrid Pub Scout where I interviewed doctors Kathi Berens and Rachel Noorda from Portland State University, who conducted research on book accessibility and reader behavior. That one reviewed a lot more data than from one month in 2025 and included 2020 reader data from a time where digital library use was intensely ramping up for people social-distancing in their houses.

But I want you to remember something specific about how libraries interact with digital books; they’re not the same things as pirates. They license a specific number of ebooks that can only be loaned a specific number of times or over a well-defined time period before the license comes up for renewal. For a single license with a set date of expiration, an ebook from a Big 5 publisher can cost upwards of $50, with an audiobook costing even more than that.

So when a huge book comes out with a licensing cost that is dependent on the number of checkouts, libraries are paying for multiple copies and having to renew those licenses multiple times. That adds up to thousands of dollars. You can read more details about the cost of digital books to libraries here.

And as an aside—there’s something very big tech “enshittification” about this whole thing. Every business person has heard that your best customer is the one that you already have. Libraries are some of the most regular customers a publishing company can possibly get, but instead they’re being treated like the fact that they make books available means that they’re devaluing them somehow. And this report seems to be posed as a big “told you so” and an excuse to lobby against libraries attempting to get fairer deals.

E-Book Bills Across America

Because libraries are public entities, meaning they serve the public good and are funded by the government, they’re attempting to mitigate their e-book costs through legislative means.

Connecticut and Rhode Island both have passed laws that restrict the types of e-book purchases libraries can make based on some of the terms I mentioned above. The idea is to make it so that, by law, publishers have to bargain with libraries in order to sell their books to them in the first place. So, publishers are threatening to completely pull their books from Connecticut libraries.

Anonymous members, and not so anonymous members, of the Authors Guild are protesting these laws because they’re afraid they’re going to suffer from those lower costs. The bad news is, in some cases they may be right. But the good news is, because of this study, we don’t have to guess which ones.

Big Name Authors, Library Costs, and James Patterson

One of the major findings of this study was that the authors whose earnings were most affected by library usage were what they called “brand name” authors. The survey looked at 25 of those bestsellers, including the big Book Tok authors like Colleen Hoover, the authors of the romantasy hits ACOTAR and Fourth Wing (Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros), Stephen King, and, of course, a poor little guy named James Patterson, who could fill an entire library with the number of books he’s written or had written under his name.

Patterson has been known for his support of booksellers, book workers, authors, and libraries too. It was also announced recently that he’s got a new book coming out with Mr. Beast! 

But, he wrote an op-ed coming out against Rhode Island ebook bill, complaining that it would force authors and their publishers to license digital books to libraries on whatever terms the states decide, resulting in “state government’s unprecedented power over how authors distribute their work and undermining how authors are compensated for their creative contributions.”

And I don’t know, maybe if James Patterson doesn’t go hard against this ebook legislation, Mr. Beast is going to lock him in the Backrooms until he turns into a cardboard cutout or whatever the hell happens to you in there.

I’d say most people are on my side, at least publicly, when it comes to libraries who have spoken out. Authors Alliance, ebook study group, obviously the American Library Association, I and blaming libraries in particular, and by extension readers seems more than a little short sighted.

Kicking Them While They’re Down

First of all—I recommend reading Jane Friedman’s well-researched analysis of why we shouldn’t be so quick to blame libraries for a decline in author earnings.

And now for my rant…

Libraries are an incredible resource, one of the few remaining public goods. They prioritize giving people access to books, not because these people don’t want to buy them. It’s because a lot of them can’t afford rent or food. Meanwhile, kids need help getting homework done, people without internet access—often because they’re unhoused—need help using the internet to access resources, and there are community events to host to provide some place for people to get together that doesn’t require spending money.

But really, this is one of those situations where, to borrow from the anti-woke movie critics: “You couldn’t make that today.” If you brought legislation asking to start a library—to create a place that provided that many free public services, they’d laugh you out of the room.

Netflix for books. Remember from the last episode? That’s what they want. Buy a subscription to your local library and wait for the price jack up as they slyly remove books from the shelves (and maybe even churn out some of their own to save money. Why not?).

Right now, according to the American Library Association there are sixty-three different adverse library bills across the US. Fortunately, a lot of them have been killed, but Moms for Liberty haven’t given up yet. There are people who literally want to make a law that would get librarians arrested for child sexual abuse if they carry sex education books. 

And the danger to libraries is not just about things like censorship and parental rights. It’s about the fact that we’ve created a cultural environment where providing something valuable for free sounds like complete gibberish. The Trump administration completely defunded the Institute of Museum and Library Services in March 2025, and it took over a year to reinstate that funding. And if you think that was the last attempt they’ll make…well, no you don’t. You can’t.

If you care about literacy in this country—which is not a given at this point—you need to advocate for libraries.

And I’m not under any illusion that publishing executives are by default invested in the good of the public. The way that a capitalistic system views a public good at this point is as a target and as an inconvenience. But nothing really brings that into sharper focus to me than making life harder for libraries during a period of time where they’re under ideological attack.

Frankly, if you’re coming for libraries right now as a publisher or author, shame on you. The shortsightedness of thinking that all that matters is a library’s ability to pay for a book over and over again won’t do publishers any favors. Because if your literate population tanks, who’s going to buy your damn books?

There are people we need to hold accountable for low author earnings. They run the companies that report higher earnings year after year, yet somehow that doesn’t reflect in how much money authors are making. If they’re making all this money, where is it going?

Alternative Reasons for Reader Behavior Changes

Now here’s a line from the article that really spun my bitch wheel:

“The survey also found that the readers most likely to borrow from a library instead of buying a new book are college educated, employed full-time, and earning more than $75,000 a year—not generally those who cannot afford to buy books.”

To which I say: please stand back. Like, stand back not from just the computer, the bookshelf, or the library itself. Stand all the way back across the street and remember that books are not the only thing people spend money on.

For many people, it’s not a choice between getting a book from the library or buying it in print. It’s a choice between reading the book or not reading the book at all. And that’s regardless of whether the person in question makes more or less than $75,000 a year. The implication that that particular number—which, in a lot of places, is barely over the cost of living—means someone is more free (and by extension obligated) to spend more money on bestselling authors’ books rather than getting them from the library is more than a little offensive to me.

And the people filling out the survey in the first place are already readers, so you’re complaining about how a small group of people who are likely already your best customers (aside from libraries) are choosing to not spend as much money as you would like them to rather than looking at the economy at large. 

The average price for a hardcover book is about $30. That means when you buy two books brand new, you’re spending $60. Meanwhile, the average price for gas is $5/gallon before taxes, a gallon of milk costs about the same, and average rent across the country is $2,000. If you’re listening to me right now, you likely don’t need me to tell you how tricky discretionary spending is right now.

Think about comp titles—the existing titles you use to take a stab at how well a book will do on the market. You don’t just compare books to other books when you’re pitching them. You compare them to anything else a person could be spending their time or money on. So that means other streaming services, or the main competitor of streaming services—sleeping! And at a time like this, it doesn’t just mean entertainment: it means groceries and rent and gas and after school activities. People are not just choosing between a book and a book, they’re not even choosing between TikTok and a book. They’re choosing between food and a book, or they’re choosing between buying their kid back to school clothes and a book. 

Greed

And if you want to zoom back in and just look at the book industry, we need to look at the sales platforms. Right now, royalties are pretty low, especially for these subscription services. That’s a choice. It’s a choice to pay authors so little. Spotify has increased their income from audiobook services and within the last year and is now raking in $100 million in recurring revenue from their Audiobooks+ program. I’m positive that the low author income and musicians has nothing to do with the fact that former Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has a net worth of $9.1 billion.

I’m sure lower author earnings has nothing to do with how much creators are being paid. If you want to see where all this is leading—look at what musicians are dealing with. Spotify is now putting AI-generated songs on playlists so they can keep even more streaming profits. 

(Don’t get me started on tropification, keywords, and AI-generated books. That’s a conversation for another day.)

I’m sure lower author earnings have nothing to do with the income of the executives of HarperCollins’ holding company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, or the rest of the Big Five owned by international media conglomerates and private equity. I’m sure that the income of the people who own these companies has nothing to do with author earnings. 

Don’t look up those salaries. Look at the people who are making $75,000 to $80,000 per year and not doing their part to buy expensive books during a recession! Look at the greedy libraries who want a little relief from ridiculously high book prices at a time their budgets are being slashed.

Don’t look at how funding is being taken away from public services and concentrated into AI companies like OpenAI, who totally didn’t lose $38 billion dollars last year then ask for more. Don’t ask about the glut of slop books made available partially because of Anthropic, who supposedly is settling with authors but also make them do fifty perfect cartwheels in a row to access that incredible $2,500 payout per book.

Our focus as a country on individual choices makes us lose track of the systems that are designed to help billionaires hoard wealth. It makes us fight over scraps, and the fact that people are allergic to systems thinking makes me want to bash my head against a wall. But I guess that’s just my opinion, man.

So support your local library while you still can—both digitally and in person.