[ducttape12]

I don't get the point of book stores when there's libraries.

My local library let's me reserve books online, and if they don't have a book, they usually have it at another library in the county and will ship it to my local library and hold it for me.

And this all costs me $0 (yeah, okay, taxes, but you know what I mean)

[majos]

I get this logic, and it would fit better with the rest of my personality if I treated books this way, but I don't. Instead I have maybe 100 books, 90% read, even after culling stuff I don't like about once per year. And my default is still to buy books. Some reasons for this are:

1. Books are pretty cheap. If you're looking for something more than 15 years old, you can probably find a cool-looking used paperback on eBay for $4-5 shipped. This isn't as cheap as "free at the library" but my book habit still sets me back <$200 a year or so, with the cost dominated by a few expensive new books.

2. Some people (including me) like books as aesthetic objects. Maybe there is some element of "mmm, I am so smart" when I look at my bookcase, but it's also just a nice wooden case with a bunch of colorful objects in it. I like having it around.

3. It's fun to look at your old books and remember what it was like to read them. My books are physical objects that I actively thought about, held in my hands, and carried around for a week or whatever years ago, so it's a surprisingly effective way of conjuring up time and place.

4. Giving away books to friends is fun and makes it more likely they'll actually read the thing.

5. As a kid I loved big shelves with lots of books, they suggested so much possibility and I'm glad my parents had so many. If I ever have a kid I would enjoy providing them with a similar environment.

So buying books doesn't make much sense from a pure information acquisition standpoint, but there are some more idiosyncratic benefits.

[xnyan]

just a few reasons not to use the library:

1. New popular books take months or even years (looking at you harry potter, got a call from my local branch 2 years after I bought the book that it was ready to pick up) to become available. I know a lot of people can wait, but maybe you need to read it sooner so you can talk about it with your friends while it is in the zeitgeist. Maybe you don't want to wait half a year only to have it for 2 weeks before it goes to the next person with a hold

2) You mention interlibrary loans, every library can do that but every library has different polices and because there is a cost (somebody has to pay to have Dan Brown shipped from Kirkwood to Albuquerque) most place limits on how often, fiction vs non-fiction, etc. It won't help you at all with 1) because if's nationally popular, every branch is checked out.

3) Can't markup a library book, which to me is one of the only advantages of a paper tree-killer vs my e-ink reader.

[thepaulstella]

I think you need to think of the bigger picture.

If there were no outlet to purchase books, very few people would want to write books because libraries couldn't replace the revenue stream from booksellers.

Libraries benefit from booksellers and vice versa.

background: I'm the partner of a librarian who's also a writer.