Library People, Strap in For a Fight With the Author's Guild

As regular readers of the blog know, I have been working on a bill going through the IL legislature to stop the publishers and their predatory pricing of eBooks and eAudio for libraries. You can read here about when I went to Springfield to testify on the topic at the State House, including my written testimony.   

The Author's Guild filed with the committee we were testifying for stating they were against our bill to control prices. 

We passed 99-0 in the IL State House and since then, they have turned up the heat and have been actively releasing "data" and lobbying against our bill.

Last week I had this post about larger library groups coming together to fight back against the Author's Guild slander. Go here to read that.

Now they are upping their fight against us by trying to make it look like libraries are part of the reason why authors are not making money.

Here is the news story on the "report" they commissioned. It does not explicitly say libraries are part of their problem but it does lay the gourd world for that argument. Combined with the statements they have made formally against the bills circulating throughout various statehouse (as reported here), their intentions are clear. They are trying to throw us under the bus.

They are not protecting authors here. As you can see in my written testimony, they are protecting the publishers. Authors do NOT get more money when the publishers overcharge libraries for digital books and audiobooks. Remember I am an author as well as a librarian. I understand this issue from both sides, as I wrote about here.

I posted this on Bluesky yesterday and many authors are coming to our defense. Library workers are calling out the fact that this is all th publishers fault. I cannot keep up with my responses. Here is what I said there when I posted this link:

You all-- I never thought I'd see the day, but library peeps, strap in for a fight. The Author's Guild is going after us as the reason why authors are making less money. I don't think they understand who they are dealing with:

Also, authors (of which I am one), the Author's Guild does a lot of good generally, but they are WRONG here. They are trying to turn against us. There are over 12,000 public libraries in America and they are one of the only places reliably spending money on books every single day of the year.

Don't fall for these scare tactics. The best route toward improving our income from writing books is hand in hand with the library.

There is no call to action here for today. But this post is a warning to you all. We need to be aware that the Author's Guild is building a case against us. It has been in the shadows of state houses until now. Slowly they are laying the groundwork to throw us under the bus.  Please be on guard. 

I will keep everyone posted as well.