As the publishers tell it, the library boom now amounts to unfair competition that is helping to kill their business. Book sales in 2001 amounted to only 946 billion ($7.9 billion), down 13 percent from 1996, according to Tokyo’s Research Institute of Publications. After years of blaming their troubles on the rising popularity of videogames, mobile phones, music CDs and successful used bookstore chains like Bookoff Corporation, publishers and authors began looking for ways to get some of their money back. Now the publishers are asking libraries not to lend out popular new titles for a period of six months, and for authors to get paid for the books the libraries loan. Outraged librarians have called the proposal a commercial assault on an ancient sanctuary of free information and learning.
The libraries appear likely to lose. Publishers point out that Japan is, along with the United States, one of the few developed nations that has not fully adopted the idea of public lending rights. Based on the British system, these require the government to set up a fund that compensates authors for each time their work is borrowed from the library. In Britain, the rate per loan is a little more than seven cents, and the most an author can earn in one year is capped at $9,800. More than 17,000 British authors received pay under the plan last year. More than a year ago, famous Japanese authors like novelist Masahiro Mita began advocating for the British system, saying the current situation is “antidemocratic” and violates writers’ copyrights. Now Tokyo is signaling its willingness to rewrite the copyright laws.
It’s not quite clear how public lending rights would help the publishers, since the money goes to authors. And the biggest publishers have been silent about a proposal from one of their peers that would charge library users, rather than libraries, a rental fee for borrowing books. Masahiro Oga, president of Shogakukan publishing, has argued that the rental fees could be used to shore up the finances of both the publishing industry and the libraries. To critics who call this a direct assault on the principal of free public access to libraries, Oga points out that a scattering of libraries in the United States are already charging a nominal fee (typically about 25 cents) for popular new books and novels.
Indeed, Japanese libraries appear to be specializing in the big hits. Last spring, 11 of Japan’s largest publishing houses asked 126 major public libraries for data on the most frequently loaned books. Only half of the 126 responded, but the results showed that libraries often hold multiple copies of popular titles. “Copycat,” Miyuki Miyabe’s million-seller mystery, was lent out 18,000 times at 51 of the surveyed libraries in 2001. The publishers, in cooperation with a nationwide mystery-writers’ group, now plan to ask libraries to refrain from lending surefire hits for six months after publication.
Behind the debate over free libraries is “the new awareness of intellectual property in Japan,” says Akira Nemoto, a University of Tokyo associate professor. Before, writers had been happy to take their 10 percent royalties on book sales and otherwise ignore copyright issues. But as new forms of publishing like e-books began thriving, says Nemoto, it was natural for authors to begin looking for copyright income from these new sources, too. It was then a short, logical step from the free Internet to free libraries.
Librarians, however, worry that paying fees could halt the library boom in Japan. Despite the recent growth, there is still only one library for every 47,000 Japanese citizens, compared with one for every 17,000 Americans and every 6,000 Germans. “Japan doesn’t even have enough libraries,” and public lending rights could only make their difficult situation worse, says Kaname Matsuoka, secretary-general of the Japan Library Association. The question is, who ultimately will pay the cost of public lending rights? The national government seems unlikely to be generous in a time of economic gloom. And if the financial burden becomes too onerous on local authorities, publishers may have to worry less about billing libraries than finding them.
