In our last issue, we touched on the widespread concern (and anger) caused by the Internet Archive’s creation of a National Emergency Library that makes ebooks available for lending without payment to authors or publishers. Now, a US Senator has openly questioned the legality of the library in an April 8 letter to the Archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle. Two days later, Kahle responded, defending the library on fair-use grounds and pointing out that no book published within the last five years is available in the library.
On April 7, Kahle wrote a post acknowledging the Archive did not “engage with the creator community” before creating the emergency library. While definitely not apologizing, he offered reassurance the Archive would comply with takedown requests as quickly as possible. He then offered insight into how the library is being used. Most books are borrowed for less than 30 minutes, and fewer than 10 percent are actually opened again after the first day. Kahle writes, “Our usage pattern may be more like a serendipitous walk through a bookstore or the library stacks.” We might suggest the usage pattern also fits that of the curious bystander who heard about the controversy and wanted to see what the lending experience was like—alongside mortified authors testing the system for themselves.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
