I didn't read this whole story, only found this quote, but let's assume for five minutes that I know what I'm talking about:
Steven Galloway (author of Ascension, available used from Amazon.com for nine cents):
On how Canada could make even better writers:
"You could stop signing my books out of the freaking library, then telling me about it. Writers don't get paid for library books. It's like Napster. It's worse than Napster. We should burn down the libraries because they're stealing from us."
Maybe you should tell him that that you sat around in Chapters reading his book for free then spilled an aromatic, robust African coffee all over it. What's his royalty from that?
And maybe he should kill the Amazon reseller who dares to discount his work to a value less than the paper it's printed on (9¢ from seller "xxxxxx" on 8/6/07) -- should we tell Xxx to watch out for Steve?
From what I can see on WorldCat, there are about 650 libraries (or systems) that admit to owning this book. A few may have purchased multiple copies, so libraries bought anywhere from 650 to 2,000 copies of his book.
So what does that mean? Either libraries helped to expose readers at 650-plus libraries to his work, or what? I don't understand how 650 libraries buying his book is worse than 650 individuals. Don't authors get royalties from books sold to libraries?
Or maybe he's only mad at Canadians.
Um, does anyone have a problem with that?
[note: see second part of this post here.]
