The Publishing eBook Panic Machine: Fact-Checking the eBook Bills

Why the Latest Anti-Library Press Release is Pure Fiction

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors Guild (AG) have just released their latest collaborative work of fiction: a panicked, sky-is-falling denunciation of Illinois HB 5236. It is a familiar script that the eBook Study Group (ESG) has seen deployed in other states using our eBook model bill. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawai’i, New Jersey, and others have all heard this before. Whenever libraries demand fair terms that reflect their public mission, the publishing conglomerates reach for the same tired playbook of exaggerated warnings and shaky copyright claims.

Instead of addressing the reality that libraries are having their core functions eviscerated by predatory, non-negotiable, expiring digital contracts, they offer another fear-driven marketing pitch. (Overdrive did the same previously as part of an eBook hearing in D.C., see our review of their statement here)

Let’s look exactly at what the AAP and the Authors Guild are claiming, and use the actual text of the bill, and the law, to dismantle it.

Note: The press release is not publicly available online yet. I have a copy of it from members of the press that received it via email. I will quote from sections of it below, but here is the header and the opening section:

STATEMENT: Authors and Book Publishers Denounce Passage of HB5236

The following statement can be attributed to Association of American Publishers CEO Maria A. Pallante and The Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger:

“HB5236 is fundamentally flawed. This bill doesn’t help readers or libraries, but it harms everyone who creates the books that we know and love. It is a backdoor attempt to infringe on the rights of authors and creators across creative mediums and limit their ability to earn a living from their craft. Digital access thrives nationwide today, and this bill threatens to undermine, not increase, digital access for library patrons. When publishers cannot comply with the bill’s extreme and restrictive mandates, libraries risk losing access to digital books entirely.

“The premise driving this bill doesn’t hold up: ebook and audiobook expenditures represent less than 5% of Illinois library operating budgets. Authors, independent bookstores, and artists across music, film, and literature all depend on the licensing framework this legislation attempts to dismantle to protect them from piracy and safeguard the modest promise of remuneration for their work.

“These protections exist to reward creative investment while ensuring libraries and patrons benefit from a rich, diverse literary ecosystem for decades to come. HB5236 threatens this balance and the future of library access to digital books.”

Let’s review some of these statements and parts of the press release:

The “Human Shield” Argument

“It is a backdoor attempt to infringe on the rights of authors and creators across creative mediums and limit their ability to earn a living from their craft.”

This is the publishers’ favorite tactic: hiding massive corporate profit margins behind the sympathetic faces of working authors. Let us be brutally frank here. When a conglomerate charges a library six to ten times the retail price for a digital file that costs zero additional dollars to reproduce, that extra 500% “library premium” is merely a sort of “punishment tax” on the library’s public facing mission.

First, libraries do not pay authors directly for eBooks or audiobooks, and libraries do not set royalty rates. Author royalties and other compensation on are determined by private publisher author contracts, and publishers retain control over how authors are paid from publisher revenues, including revenues derived from library licensing. Libraries are not parties to those contracts and are not positioned to restructure or replace them.

What Illinois libraries do, and will continue to do, is license materials through publishers and their vendors using publicly appropriated collections budgets. Under this bill in Illinois, and every other state that has introduced the ESG bill, those dollars continue to flow through the commercial marketplace. Nothing in the ESG bill diverts funds away from publishers or rightsholders or creates an alternate payment pipeline.

Libraries also materially promote authors’ work through discovery and community engagement. Libraries recommend and market books, host author readings and talks, organize book clubs, and provide other author-focused programming that expands readership and visibility. The ESG model bill strengthens that ecosystem by ensuring public funds are not consumed by repeated churn-based re-licensing of the same small set of titles and can instead support broader collections; meaning more authors, more discovery, and more reading overall.

Furthermore, HB 5236 is not a copyright bill, nor is it a backdoor attempt to seize anything. It is a straightforward consumer protection and contract bill. It does not force a publisher to license to a library. It simply dictates that if a publisher voluntarily chooses to enter the Illinois market and accept taxpayer dollars, the contract they offer cannot be unconscionable. It uses the state’s long-established police power over commercial contracts to ensure that public funds are not drained by predatory terms.

Lastly, libraries are the greatest discovery engine for authors in the world. By capping unconscionable pricing, this bill actually allows libraries to afford a wider diversity of authors, rather than blowing their entire budget on a handful of artificially inflated bestsellers.

The Deceptive Math of the “Operating Budget”

“The premise driving this bill doesn’t hold up: ebook and audiobook expenditures represent less than 5% of Illinois library operating budgets, so the argument that e-books are straining library budgets doesn’t seem to hold any water.”

This is a masterclass in deceptive accounting. Comparing digital book costs to a total library “operating budget” is a deliberate sleight of hand. An operating budget includes keeping the lights on, fixing the HVAC system, running the bookmobiles, and paying the salaries of every librarian and janitor in the building. To suggest that book prices aren’t a problem because they don’t eclipse the cost of the building’s electricity is absurd.

If you look at the actual materials budget (the money specifically allocated for building collections!) digital costs are a skyrocketing, unsustainable drain. Why? Because of the subscription trap. Publishers force libraries into licenses that expire every 24 months or 26 checkouts. Imagine if a library was forced to re-purchase every physical book on its shelves every two years just to keep them from disappearing? That is the infinite repurchase cycle that HB 5236 is designed to stop.

The “Unfettered Access” Ghost Story

“Unfettered access to digital materials threatens the viability of independent bookstores... Creators in industries as diverse as music, film, literature, and software all rely on a licensing framework to provide access to and protect their digital works from piracy.”

The publishers want lawmakers to believe that a digital library loan is the equivalent of uploading a PDF to the open internet. It is a spectacular misrepresentation of the law.

There is absolutely zero “unfettered access” in HB 5236.

The bill explicitly codifies the traditional “one-copy, one-user” lending model. Section 5 of the legislation legally defines a loan as a discrete event requiring the deletion of the copy by the library upon the expiration of the loan period. If a library has four licenses, only four people can read that book.

Moreover, Section 10(1)(B) of the bill specifically protects a library’s right to use Technological Protection Measures (TPM). These are the exact same type of digital locks (TPM, DRM, etc.) that publishers use to protect their retail eBooks on Kindles and Nooks. The bill does not dismantle security; it specifically relies on the publishers’ own industry-standard encryption to ensure a library book cannot be copied, shared, or kept past its due date. To call this “unfettered access” is simply a lie.

The Empty Threat of a State Boycott

“This legislation will likely have the opposite effect that lawmakers desire: when publishers aren’t able to bend to the restrictive and extreme demands dictated by this legislation, libraries may lose access to new releases or be prohibited by the state from licensing ebooks and audiobooks altogether.”

Ah, the ultimate threat: give us what we want, or we are taking our ball and going home. They are threatening to cut off the 12 million residents of Illinois if they aren’t allowed to continue dictating unfair contract terms.

We have heard this exact bluff before. When the eBook Study Group helped draft similar legislation in Connecticut, which was signed into law as Public Act 25-9, publishers issued these exact same apocalyptic warnings. We know that for-profit publishing conglomerates like making money. Illinois is the fifth-largest economy in the United States! No major publisher is going to abandon one of the most robust, well-funded library networks in the world simply because they are being asked to engage in fair contracting that respects the library’s unique mission.

The “licensing framework” that the publishers are fighting so desperately to preserve is not a shield against piracy; it is a mechanism for permanent institutional debt. Libraries are not asking for a technological free-for-all. They are simply asking for durable, fair contracts that allow them to perform their centuries-old mission of preservation and lending without being punished for it. It is time for lawmakers to ignore the fearmongering, see this press release for the fiction that it is, and join Connecticut and several other states, and pass HB 5236.