That doesn’t happen in the US. They get their regular royalty and, as one author posted on Quora, publicity from the people who check it out, book clubs, etc. And a larger audience, hopefully, leads to additional sales.
In a similar situation some years ago my wife found out the the Charlotte NC library would provide a library card for $35 per year for the entire family. We’ve had the account for about 15 years and even though our current residence has a much better library it’s always nice to have options.
My wife prefers audiobooks while I usually prefer ebooks except for long drives.
I bet you are within driving distance of the Charlotte NC Library. As I said, In my area there are 3 local libraries, one in town, one 10 miles away and one about 40 miles away that are part of our library system in the county. NONE of them can get books from other libraries, even within the shared system in place in Colorado, without paying huge fees to ship, to and from, insurance and a charge for said loans. If it’ not local I can’t get it.
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Nope, it’s currently 330 miles way. Prior to our current residence we were over 600 miles away. We only get ebooks and audiobooks from them. We’ve also had access to Lynda and some magazines.
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I already have saved the books I have bought, but maybe others are still planning to get their stuff downloaded.
I was speaking of getting actual physical books via inter-library loans. Which is what always gets suggested when I complain about lack of library services in my area. The answer is that they are expensive and unaffordable.
As for getting loans of ebooks, I’ve never found any of the ebooks I want for research purposes available for loan in any library in Colorado.
I don’t do any audio books. I hate listening to anything I can’t concentrate if I am listening to stuff I have a very strong preference for reading for all input. I can’t even tolerate any sounds or music when I am working.
You just described my life with the Commodore 64 when I was a kid. Until K-Mart started carrying software I had nowhere to get games and their selection was limited. 
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Libro.fm sells audiobooks without DRM. A Libro.fm subscription costs about the same as an Audible subscription and your credits never expire. And, your local indie bookstore gets a cut of your purchases. It carries most of the titles that Audible does—not Audible exclusives, of course, nor free membership titles.
I switched to Libro.fm because my Audible subscription really didn’t offer anything additional of value to me. Many of the free titles were available from my library and although it’s easy to strip off the DRM (“There’s an app for that!”) I’d rather not have to bother. If there’s an Audible exclusive title that I absolutely must have, I just buy it and move on.
I’m as picky about my audiobook reader as I am about my ebook reader, which is why I remove the DRM in the first place. Booksellers’ proprietary apps feel like cluttered storefronts to me—I prefer apps like BookPlayer that open up to the library of titles I’ve put there and nothing more.
Note: BookPlayer is available in the App Store, but I’ve linked to its GitHub page.
Libro.fm is awesome but as a purveyor of Star Wars fiction Penguin Random House refuses to let them sell their books DRM free.
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Specialized reference books can be an issue. There have been some that I couldn’t find in ebook format much less that a library would have them, even in print.
I’m lucky to live in a town with a university (William & Mary) that provides library access to residents. I doubt that they have much material related to sheep farming.
Some audiobooks on libre.fm were costlier even with the membership discount when compared to Audible. I still prefer liner.fm for owning instead of a license 
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This topic brings so many issues to light; DRM, zoning, tragedy of the commons…etc
DRM never stops the mass counterfeiters, (live in Asia) for digital or even other products it only impedes the generally decent consumer who wants the ability to lend their digital book to a friend or family member or put it on a device of their owning for convenience.
Zoning another tool, means that books, movies available in the US can often not be purchased for use in Australia or parts of Asia, or you have to buy the special zoned copy. This is done in the name or market protection (let’s call it a tariff) but generally only benefits the big players who can afford all the lawyers and accountants to bend the rules. (I am looking at you Google Australia which doesn’t pay a single cent in Australian taxes).
Jared Lanier who is credited with coining the phrase “virtual reality” in his book “You Are Not A Gadget” rales again the appropriation of the digital commons, which was supposed to support and allow the individual authors, musicians to get their creative product out to the market. Instead the mega tech companies have swallowed the minnow. “The lords of the clouds" (now called Tech Bros I believe) —as he phrases them are people who, more by virtue of luck rather than true innovation, manage to insert themselves as content concentrators at strategic times.
Anyway am veering off topic. Perhaps its time to return to paper books… Insert image from the Simpsons of “Old Man Shaking his fist at clouds”…
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I have a modest Kindle library of < 200 titles so decided to download my books and get going on Calibre. I did the first half yesterday, managing to download the azw3 files without trouble. Turning to the second half this morning, Amazon is no longer letting me get to the downloads. The right click via ‘More actions …’, and ‘Download and transfer via USB’ now gets me this:
Is anyone else having this issue? Logout/login, or alternative browsers make no difference. Temporary hitch? Are they shutting this down?
Yes, they are. That’s where this whole thread started. You’re supposed to have a couple more days however, so hopefully it will pop back up quickly before it’s removed forever.
Right you are, I should have said 'Are they shutting it down NOW (before the announced date of 26 Feb). Fingers crossed it comes back. Thanks!
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I only really got into Kindle because my wife does not leave the light on in bed and I would rather not use my phone. But when I can I’m team paper.
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Until I saw this article I hadn’t thought about running the Kindle app on an android tablet. But maybe that would be an option for some people?
I decided to go for Kobo both (a) as a focused reading device and (b) Onyx gives me pause as a Chinese company.
I’m interested what the benefit of that arrangement would be over a Kindle?
Different screen? More bells and whistles? Now that Amazon has copied Apple and is creating their own walled garden, could an android tablet offer something not available on a Kindle?