It feels as if every half-decade or so, another bleak report or angry open letter takes up a familiar refrain: A writing career doesn’t pay what it once did. But the natural followup question – why? – often refuses to yield a simple answer.

This past week the Authors Guild, a professional association for published writers in the U.S., took a swing anyway: The big conclusion from its recent reader survey is that readers just aren’t buying books like they once did either. That’s not to say they’re not reading, just that they’re not reading the kinds of brand-new copies one typically sees in window displays. According to the Guild, about two-thirds of respondents said their latest reads came by other means: libraries, subscription services, used bookstores, piracy or good old-fashioned sharing among friends and family.

Now remember, this is just one study, and the survey results didn’t include details about how it was conducted, so it’s wise to take this with a grain of salt. That said, the results do provide a good excuse to discuss the conundrum ourselves. Why are authors making less and less these days? Reasonable answers abound. Maybe readers, faced with soaring inflation and their own stagnating incomes, just can’t afford to buy and/or store every book they’d like to buy. Maybe publishers are bogarting the fruits of the digital reading revolution with unfair e-book and audiobook royalty policies and licensing agreements, as authors and public libraries have alleged. Maybe a readership feeling stifled by modernity is finding relief in the comforting musk of yellowed pages.

Maybe it’s all of these things; maybe it’s something else entirely.

Which leads me to why I brought this up in the first place – to put a question now to you, our motley newsletter crew. How have you come by the books you’ve read lately, and why? I can start: I confess I can’t recall the last time I bought an honest-to-goodness new hardcover. My reading fodder is mostly found at the public library, in little free libraries around my neighborhood or during the occasional foray into a used bookstore. I’d like to say this approach is driven by thrift. Mostly, it’s driven by a legitimate fear that the hoarder’s heap I flatter with the label “personal library” will collapse on a loved one if I add to it much further.

OK, your turn now. Let’s hear about where you’ve been finding books. And do you have thoughts on what’s driving the decline in authors’ earnings and what, if anything, ought to be done about it? Let us know at bookoftheday@npr.org!