Cheap books

Buying used books: A sin? Acceptable? Well, that depends…

This is a question that has more than one angle. Consider the comments a published author often hears: “I loved your book! I lent it to my mother and my sisters and they all loved it, too.” or, “Your book sounds so interesting. I’ve reserved it at the library.”

For the fan who lends my book to everyone in the family or at the office, my reaction is always something along the lines of, “That’s great.” Sure I’d be happier if she’d given mom and company their own copies for Christmas. But there’s always the hope that mom and company will like that borrowed book so much they’ll go out and buy my next book, or maybe even my entire backlist. It does happen.

The library-reserver gets the same, “That’s great,” although it’s less sincere. This is supposed to be flattering? Well, in a way it is. I’m flattered she wants to spend her time reading my story, and I realize most people don’t stop and think that an author depends on sales to be able to continue writing those stories. But sales to libraries are sales, and haven’t we all checked books out of the library? As a child, I never gave a thought to the borrowing vs. buying aspect. For one thing, many of the books I was reading were written by people like Twain, Kipling, and Dumas, who were long dead.

For most people, money is tight. I understand that very well. And it isn’t as if I never patronized a used bookstore. When I was living in Australia, I’d come to visit my mother every year and a half. During the interval, I’d accumulate a list of books people recommended, then visit the local used bookstore and buy enough books to send back to Australia book rate (they’d arrive in big canvas U.S. Mail bags). Most of those books were simply no longer available in bricks and mortar stores, and Amazon.com wasn’t an option. Through used bookstores, I found new authors I never would have tried if I’d had to plunk down the full price of their books. I also read dozens and dozens of losers who’d have enraged me if I’d paid full price for their turkeys.

But the situation has become dire with the arrival of online used bookstores. It is now as easy to order a used book as a new one. It isn’t exactly cheap—one still pays for postage and handling, which is where the online bookstores make their money. The person who doesn’t make any money is the author. And that’s why on-line bookstores make me red in the face.

What can be done about it? Well, one could theoretically make used booksellers collect a royalty payment for authors of books written within, say, the last twenty years. With the new scanning technology that is possible. But it would be expensive and cumbersome, and the legislation will never be passed. Which means that online used bookstores are a fact of life.

The repercussions, however, are ugly, and they’re daily making themselves felt: falling sales, falling printruns, falling advances, the continuing disappearance of the midlist author, the growing dominance of the “blockbuster” author. If the bestselling authors were also the “best” authors, I wouldn’t mind so much. But the sad truth is that “bestselling” usually means “fast-paced and shallow with pedestrian, assembly-line prose.” The only reason I read bestsellers is to study them in an effort to analyze WHY they’re bestsellers. I don’t read them for pleasure. In fact, I’ve read so many lately that I’m reaching the point I don’t enjoy fiction anymore. My friend Laura Joh Rowland said to me the other day, “I think you need to stop reading bestsellers for market research and go back to reading books for fun.” Reading for fun? What a concept!

I have developed a loose rule: If I want a book by an author I admire, or by a recommended up-and-coming writer, I’ll BUY the book. If it’s a book by a bestselling author I’m analyzing for research purposes, then I don’t care where it comes from—the remainder table at Barnes and Noble, the Friends of the Library sale, whatever. This isn't something I want to own, and I'm not reading for pleasure. If I were better organized and had more time, I'd get these books from the library.

I also shop sales to accumulate research books for my personal library that I simply couldn’t afford otherwise. But most of those are out of print anyway, and I buy so many research books at full price that I can do it without guilt. Plus, now that libraries have instituted that “use it or lose it rule” (any book not checked out in two years is thrown out), I find I need to keep a larger personal research library. In fact, since my local library started weeding out its collection, I find I rarely go there anymore. It’s just a waste of my time. Ah, for access to a university library.

One last motive for haunting library sales is my quest to find hardcovers of books I own and have enjoyed in paperback. This started one Christmas, when Steve tracked down first US edition hardcover copies of Dorothy Dunnett’s LYMOND series for me. Now I’ve decided to start replacing other paperbacks I know I’ll always want to keep. Thus, I’m accumulating a collection of hardcover Brother Cadfael mysteries. Would I buy them if I had to pay more than $2 for them? No.

I suppose we all come up with our own moral guidelines, and everyone draws the line someplace else. Where’s your line?