[trcf22]

How different is it from going to a public library?

[Mindwipe]

Almost every country in the world apart from the US pays authors for library lending.

[morsch]

I wasn't sure how it works where I live, so I looked it up and apparently in Germany (according to Wikipedia) public libraries pay 3-4c per checkout to a central private body which redistributes it somehow.

So unless the book is checked out a thousand times over and its lifetime, buying it still dominates overall.