Up until quite recently, when I thought of pirates, I thought of pirates, with hooks for hands and mustachios and scurvy. Now that I’ve become an author, however, I’ve become acquainted with another form of piracy.
I know that piracy within the music industry has existed for a very long time, but I was never a music pirate. First of all, I was never technologically savvy enough to really get into piracy. But I am also entirely, completely bourgeois, and the idea of doing anything called “piracy” repels me. I’ve never shoplifted; I’ve never stolen someone’s credit card; I’ve never walked off with someone’s jewelry or iPod.
That said, almost everyone else I’ve ever known has downloaded free music off the internet. They defend themselves with the following excuses: that big music studios won’t feel the loss, that artists like Britney Spears can afford to lose a few bucks, and that they will buy other songs or albums from the artist’s they really like. In other words, the pirated album is like a taste test and once they decide they like the artist, then they will pay for future works.
I never really thought much about the fact of my friend’s piracy or about their reasoning legitimating their actions until piracy became very real for me, as an author.
There is lots of talk about piracy within the book world, especially now with e-readers everywhere and downloadable copies of our books so very easy to make and to dispense. I knew piracy would be an issue for me and, indeed, almost as soon as my debut novel, Tempest Rising, was published there were copies available online.
Most of these sites are very anonymous and very . . . piratey. In other words, when I find my novel on one of these sites, I can imagine a bunch of pantalooned men sitting around hawking into spittoons and chortling as they scan copies of novels with one hand, while ravishing wenches with the other.
Then I found a site for fans of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. It’s a pretty, pink site with links to authors websites and contests, along with reviews and lots of excited discussion of new series, or new books coming out, or old books recently discovered. In other words, it’s a pretty typical fan site for readers of my genre. Only with one difference: this website also offers our novels, free for download. The authors of this site even ask those who download a book to leave a comment, to let them know that “their work was appreciated.”
My first thought was, “Oh my God, how could you! You say you’re fans of our work and then you’d steal from us?” My second thought was, “Where is my downloadable form from Hachette’s legal department, so I can get their lawyers on this shit.” My third thought, after I’d filled out and sent the required forms, and cleaned my bedroom to cool off, was, “Okay, let’s say they are really fans of our genre, as they claim. That means they are not doing this piracy to hurt us. They don’t know what their actions mean.”
That’s why I’m writing this blog post: to let the sort of people who create or utilize such websites know what they’re really doing when they pirate one of my books.
The Assumptions
I imagine that when people pirate a book, or upload a book onto a pirate site, they are thinking some of the following things: that authors make the big bucks, that “big publishing companies” are untouchable, and that all they’re doing is taking a few bucks away from the fat cats. Maybe they think they’re even doing the publishing world a favor: that by offering our books for download, they’re increasing the size of our fan-pool; or cutting out some of the wheat from the chaff so that fans won’t waste money on authors who aren’t that great or that they don’t like, meaning they will have more money for authors they do enjoy; or trimming our salaries so we don’t become rock stars who pull rock star bullshit. Instead of going nuts, having babies, and shaving our heads, we’ll stay grounded and writing books, as we should be.
The Realities
First of all, publishing houses are not untouchable monoliths. DoubleDay, Simon & Schuster, and Random House all suffered huge losses over publishing’s “Black Tuesday,” with direct losses in terms of staff, budget, and, in some extreme cases, entire imprints. When a publishing company’s budget goes, that means they can’t pay their authors, they can’t buy new books, and they can’t offer new contracts to existing authors. When an editor is lost, that means fewer new books can be bought by that company over the following year. And when an imprint goes, that means that many of the series that imprint was sitting upon will be dead in the water, unless a particular series or author has such high sales number that a different publishing company will risk buying what amounts to a defunct brand.
Secondly, writers are not Britney Spears. We are not rock stars. We are not even folk singers. If I were to tell you what my advance was for my three novels, it would sound like a huge amount of money. You’d be all, “Holy shit!” Then I’d tell you that money would be doled out over two years, not one. Then I’d tell you that my agent gets (a well deserved) fifteen percent, and that the government then takes exactly one third of that money. Then I tell you that although my publishing company is actually very good about publicizing its authors, I am still responsible for my own conventions, travel, swag, contest materials, etcetera.
In other words, what sounds like a great big sum of money becomes, quite simply, a very small salary. I estimate that this year I cleared from my writing, after taxes and all the expenditures (conferences, swag, etc), about 25,000 dollars.
Yes, my author’s salary for the year 2009 was about $25,ooo. For around $25,000, I wrote three books. Which means I wrote rough drafts, then did edits (in one case, grueling edits), copy edits, and final pass edits. I wrote back copy and front copy, and acknowledgements and dedications. I maintained a website, I blogged, I did copious interviews, I ran contests, I travelled and spoke at whatever convention would have me. I Tweeted, and Facebooked, and paid for a launch party, swag, and postage for review copies and bookplates.
To be honest, I had no idea writing was going to be this much work. And, for all of this work, I made about $25,000 dollars.
In the meantime, however, I am one of the lucky ones. I have a day job that allows me to write. As a professor, I have another salary on top of my book money. But don’t get too excited: I work for a state university in Louisiana. Which means, for all intents and purposes, I’m a Louisianan civil servant, i.e., not rolling in the dough. But I do have a salary. And, more importantly, it’s with a job that gives me time to write and, more importantly, gives me health insurance.
This is why most writers aren’t full time authors: until you are very successful (and there are only a handful of writers in America with this sort of success) you don’t make a lot of money. For keep in mind that an advance is just that: an advance on royalties. So I won’t make another penny on my first three novels until I pay back my advance. And that is going to take a very, very long time, unless a miracle (HBO series) appears on the horizon. Meanwhile, authors don’t get insurance through their publishers. We are independent contractors, meaning we get taxed out of the wazoo and if we want to see a doctor or a dentist, we pay out of pocket.
In fact, for the most part, any full-time author that you know about who isn’t Stephen King, Anne Rice, Danielle Steele, or the like is either a) married to someone who makes a decent living b) independently wealthy or c) okay with living as a starving artist.
Why Pirating Hurts Readers
Let’s say you don’t give a hoot about what I just wrote. Let’s say, for instance, you’re all, “I don’t care that author’s children can’t see a doctor, they get to be an author! that’s recompense, enough!” or “Whatever, so an author lives in a garrett and shops at the Salvation Army, s/he could get a day job! Nicole has one!” or, “It’s just one book, and I’m strapped for cash right now. One book totally doesn’t make a difference! I’ll buy the next one!”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Let’s take the “It’s just one book,” “the company can afford it,” or “the author can afford it,” excuse.
Firstly, as a new writer, I’m judged not on my literary merit but on my sales. Every single reviewer in the country could say I was a genius; that I deserve the Nobel prize. My fans could name their babies after my characters and move, as one, to Maine to start a town called Rockabill where they will squabble over who gets to be Jane for the day. But if my numbers aren’t good enough, my publishing company won’t buy more Jane True books. And not only do I need to sell books, but I need to sell my first book. Because I’m releasing on an eight-month schedule, we’ll be negotiating for more books based almost entirely on the sale of Tempest Rising. So unless you want my series to end at number three, my first book has to sell.
Secondly, most authors can’t afford to do this job. I read a lot of reviews of books where people talk about how “so and so is just churning them out nowadays, like she/he doesn’t even care about the quality of his/her work.” What readers don’t understand is that a lot of writers are on ridiculous publishing schedules not because they don’t care, or because they’re so eager to get that jacuzzi installed in their yacht, but because they have to eat. How many individuals (let alone families) do you know who could live off a $25,000 salary? Especially when that salary gets eaten up by covering the family health insurance, dental insurance, etcetera? Most authors cannot make ends meet on their book salaries alone, meaning that a lot of authors have day jobs that, unlike mine, are real nine to fivers.
Keeping in mind that my professorial job was created to give me some (if limited) time to write, and that last year I worked pretty much all the time with my two jobs, I can’t begin to imagine how someone with a “real” day job could write a book. Let alone if they have a family on top of everything. It just couldn’t be feasible, long term, for anybody. People will either stop writing, or they’ll start writing to make deadlines rather than writing to tell a story. And who could blame them?
In the meantime, I wish I was a rock star. I wish I had minions who I paid out of my overflowing bank account, stuffed full of the riches I earned from my books. But that’s a pipe dream. I mostly do the writing because I love it and to cut off my characters, now, would be like amputating a limb. And yet, I also need to pay my bills. At the same time, my publishing company has to know they’re not sinking money into a wasted cause.
Which is why, as a debut novelist, literally every book counts and is counted. And each of those books will add up to whether I get to write more about Jane True and her friends. So when someone reads her story, without paying their $7.99, Jane loses a vote. One vote doesn’t seem like a lot, but a lot of single votes adds up to a lot of votes, period.
And every pirated copy of my book downloaded illegally means one less chance I get to publish anything after book three. So if you enjoy reading and want to read more books, especially more debut novels by new authors, please don’t pirate. Not just for our sake, as authors, but for your sake, as a reader. For piracy skews numbers: it means that the “big” names will get bigger while less money is spent on younger talents. It means that debut novels that you enjoyed won’t be followed up by a second or a third book in the series. And it means that more authors will take on too much work, just to make a decent living.
In other words, if you have any love for books, don’t be a pirate. Or just buy an eye patch and a parrot and pretend, at home. That’s far more exciting. After all, someone will have to be the wench . . . 
Since I’ve changed from physical books to e-books I’ve been tempted to illegally download a book more than once. Not because of the money, but because of the availability.
As Austrian I don’t have legal access to many e-books (kindle and otherwise). They throw me in with British language rights, despite being living in a German speaking country. Over amazon.de I can get access to physical US and UK books without a problem, but not to e-books. It’s a nuisance.
Great article and explanation. I do limit my pirating to parrots and wenches the way God intended it. I do think that most people believe that its only hurting the corporations, and never really put a face to it. Corporations are mean, greedy items, and not people with kids and bills.
Do you get any reports from used book stores or resell shops? I was wondering as all the talk of piracy started, if they were a problem.
Good job! A real, down-to-Earth explanation (with some laughs).
Heather, corporations may be like that(I’m lookin’ at you, TorStar), but most individual publishers are not. Publishing is not a high-profit business, compared to something like consumer electronics. People should be careful rushing to judgement. So pirating books has a much more powerful effect on the publisher than people think. So, yes, it’s important that people remember authors need food, too, but they also need to realize that the amount of money going into the physical production of a book is not the majority of the cost; that cost is paying the people who provide the content and editing. Not only does it not “cost nothing” to produce a digital version as opposed to the lovable dead-tree version, the different in production costs is much smaller than these pirates want people to think.
Since I asked this question of Cherie Priest (after she blogged about it, but this was after I read your link on the League of Reluctant Adults), I thought it would be a good question for you, too.
e-Readers and their books often come with DRM, which is the bane of electronic formats, in my (working for those socialists, the library, and seeing what kind of blasphemous product our vendors provide us with) opinion.
There is probably a significant portion of the pirate population that will do such things because they object on principle or practice to the presence of DRM stopping them from doing with the electronic copy what they would do with the physical one. I think that hurts even library lending, when your choice of eReader or portable audio player dictates what kinds of materials you can check out from the library.
Not that you have any control over whether your digital stuff has DRM on it or not, and what kind of DRM it has, but what do you personally think DRM does for your sales to piracy ratio?
Awesome comments, everyone, thanks for reading and having questions. That said, a lot of these I can’t answer. The closest thing I know about DRM, Silver Adept, is Run DMC.
In a nutshell, I know very little about anything. But I know enough to totally agree that obviously digital technology is changing the way we do, and should, publish. There will have to be changes in the way we think about intellectual property rights, in the way we publish and protect our art, etc. I have no doubt there are HUGE changes on the horizons. What I am saying is that in the meantime, piracy hurts the consumer as much as it hurts the artist. Until new laws are in effect, and everything gets sorted out, we have the system that we have. And I get it that some of you are leading the digital revolution. To be honest (and not that I don’t love you), but I’m not necessarily addressing you. I am addressing the people at the pink site who claim to love our books so much and claim to want to see LOTS more books just like ours. Those guys? Shooting themselves in their little tootsies. So yes, things will change. Yes, things probably SHOULD change. Yes, the system is ridiculously flawed. We’re all adjusting. But in the meantime, if people want more debut writers publishing the mass market paperbacks they know and love, piracy hurts all of us.
ALSO, as my roommate (and friend and all around much more commonsensical person) reminded me, I forgot to add that I was basically paid 2/3 of my advance THIS year. So next year? I won’t be making that much money. So if someone way less mathematically challenged than I am did the math, they’d probably have factored that in.
But I don’t add so good.
DRM is a mixed bag. On the one hand, allowing certain things you can do with a dead tree to be done with an e-book allows for you to do many things you couldn’t do with a dead tree. On the other, it’s rather inconvenient. I admit to not being an expert on e-reader DRM. I know Kindle has some odd features, such as download limits (which blows when you upgrade once every two years), but I don’t know the more basic issues. I think it should probably get the axe, but I’m not sure if it contributes significantly to piracy.
How do you feel about Cory Doctorow’s argument that the author’s real enemy is obscurity, not piracy, and that piracy may actually help sales by getting the work seen by more people who may never have picked up and paid for a copy otherwise, and who, if they like it, sometimes go on to buy a proper copy after all.
Angie: I really, really, really hope that happens. And I’m sure it does, sometimes. Everything happens. That said, most of the friends I know who illegally download music have stopped buying anything. Their attitude is, “Dude, you can get that for free!” They make fun of me for being old fashioned and buying my music.
Furthermore, my whole point is that the people who tell themselves, “I’m just going to sample the first. If I like it I’ll buy the second,” might not get that chance. If a debut novelist’s numbers are terrible, and they only have a one-book deal, they might not get to write a second book in that series.
Finally, there are other, none-piratey, ways to combat obscurity that also allow readers a sample. My blogging voice is very similar, in a lot of ways, to my fiction voice. I have the first chapter of my novel on this site, while Hachette has the first THREE chapters on their site. There are libraries, which we love. You can buy copies on resale for peanuts at second-hand shops. You can borrow the book from a friend. While these things are “free,” they are limited. Your friend isn’t going to loan out her copy of TR to 5,000 people; that second-hand book isn’t going to make it’s way through 5,000 transactions; the library not only bought a copy, but will buy more than one as demand increases and copies wear out.
I wish my friends did what Cory Doctorow suggested. I wished they said, “Wow, I like this, I’m going to buy it!” Instead, they say, “I’m so glad I found this for free, I wonder when the next CD will come out. Then I’ll download that one for free, too!” In my own experience, my friends who pirate pretty much always pirate. They even express some pretty extreme irritation for works they can’t find available on pirate sites, like the artist is being such a dick for not letting his work be stolen. And my friends aren’t criminal-types, they’re professionals, academics, etc. They just take it for granted that, nowadays, they should get stuff for free.
Thanks for a fascinating insight, Nicole. I’ve shared it to Facebook. Congratulations on your advance! I know of many publishing houses that only pay $1,000 to $3,000 in advances, depending on the genre.
Also, for an author who has to buy her own advertising, enter contests (fees usually $50 or higher), buy copies of her novel to send in to contests (usually 5 copies is the minimum, and they have to be autographed), ditto for review copies, and maintain a website and a newsletter and a special email address for publication (so that if pirates spam bomb you as a punishment for daring to complain about piracy you are not completely wiped out) and for printing postcards and flyers and posters, and conference-going… you can easily spend $30,000 or more a year, just on expenses.
HI THERE
NICELY WORDED
POSSIBLE TO SHARE THE ARTICLE FOR MY READERS ON MY SITE
THANKS
I too shared this link on facebook. This was very cogently and clearly expressed, and I have run into this strange sense of entitlement in some readers myself…. I want to read it, and that justifies me stealing it. Not only that, if I was a real writer, it wouldn’t be about money, it would be about writing the story. Well, yes, writers must write — but must they pay to publish, so other people can read it? No.
Thank you, I’ve shared it on Facebook, too. Thanks, Rowena?
I hope Cory is right, too, and that people do get things. I will say that I was a much bigger advocate to buy Little Brother having been able to read the whole thing beforehand, and the library did buy multiple copies for many of our branch locations, so in this case, I think he’s got a point.
For debut authors, though, that’s not as easy a thing to swing, and so I can understand a reluctance to release their material for free, willingly or otherwise.
Atsiko, I can only guess, as the plural of anecdote is not data, but from the amount of complaints I get about the obtuseness of using DRM’d material, as well as the restrictions and hoops it requires for you to do just about anything, there are a lot of people who could be pirates because it’s easier and more convenient to get a clean copy of a work than to have to fight for one’s right to use material purchased as one wishes, or aren’t getting on the digital bandwagon for much the same reasons.
Dead tree copies are still a good way of going about things. Too bad authors also don’t get control over where their price points are, either. I’m betting a lot of new authors could get readership they wouldn’t otherwise have if their books were released at a lower price than established authors who can command a slightly higher price point from their base.
Nicole, I’m going to point out something it seems like you’ve missed: pirating music and pirating books are not the same thing. When I buy a CD the first thing I do is rip it to my computer, and then I generally toss the CD itself because I have no use for the physical copy. When you pirate music you skip the intermediate step because (most people) have no use for the physical object holding the music.
OTOH, there’s a difference between the physical copy of a book and the data included therein. Most of the people I know (some of who do pirate books), have houses that are filled to the brim with books because the physical presence of a book, the weight of a book is something that isn’t just incidental to the reading of it. It seems to me that people who download books are more likely to buy a physical copy, because the physical object of a book is actively useful in a way that the physical object of a CD isn’t.
Rowena: You have a very good point. Advances are ALL across the board (and high advances are not always a good thing as they take longer to earn out). So many (most) debut authors make a lot less on an advance than I did. That’s a very important point, thanks, as is what you have to say about how expensive it is to promote our books. Thanks!
Ragini: Absolutely!
Silver Adept: Orbit does offer a lot of books for very cheap downloads, to get people to buy the rest of the series. Again, though, like you’re insinuating, that’s a decision on the part of the publisher, made for the benefit of themselves and the author. It’s not just yanked out of their control by pirates.
Linds: I’m not saying that downloading books or music and pirating books or music are always the same thing. I download from iTunes all the time; that’s not piracy. Downloading something from a pirate site is piracy. As for your preferring books, I do too! I like having them and holding them and I’m not worried about dropping them in the bath as much as I would something electronic.
As someone who has struggled, off and on, with finishing not just one, but 3 different books……it was a very eye opening piece. I will continue to battle my way through, but at you stated, with a “real nine to five” it’s not easy……. and thank you for casting a more accurate light on the industry.
S.R. Michels
I’ve bought some e-books, pirated a few (fewer than bought), and there are two factors that lead me to pirating:
1. almost all of the ones I pirate are of books I already own in dead-tree format; I just want to be able to tote them around conveniently. In that sense I feel like I already own the book (rationalization, I know); it feels akin to copying a record to tape. Er, I mean, ripping a CD to mp3. (I’m dating myself….).
2. it seems to me that most e-books are vastly over-priced, for a product that has very little manufacturing overhead. Unless I’m truly hot for a new book, I wait for the price-drop that (sometimes) coincides with the paperback release to come out before buying it, and even then I grumble about it. A couple of times I’ve been able to find & download a title before buying it, but because I do value paying the author her due, I buy it later when the price drops. (I suppose this parallel is checking the hardback book out of the library while waiting to buy the paperback.) I might feel differently about the higher profit margin implied in the (to me) inflated price if I thought more money was flowing to the author thereby, but from all I’ve heard, most authors get the same (or less) $ per book whether it’s paper or electronic.
Hey atsiko (hope I spelled that right), I just saw your comment to me. You’re preaching to the choir. I know how hard it is to self-publish. I’m an indie author. (Though at the same time it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, so I’m not complaining about it.)
I also wasn’t justifying piracy. Piracy sucks. My point was simply that should a publisher ever drop you and you already have an established readership you can self-publish.
And self-publishing fiction is arguably easier (or so I’m told) for those who have a built-in readership already.
And no, SP isn’t right for every author or even most authors, though at the same time, the major issue with SP is building audience. Or, just not wanting to do all the things inherent in self-publishing.
It’s not terribly difficult if you’re willing to educate yourself and do the work, to end up with great cover art, good interior layout, and good editing. And if you’ve already been published and built an audience it’s clear you know you can write. The last boundary there is audience. Not saying a midlist author who gets dropped and self-publishes is going to get rich and famous, but at the same time, if they’ve been keeping their readers plugged in, through a newsletter and blog, then they have the means to reach out to that audience and keep selling their work.
And if it’s not really about the money ultimately to that author (or even if it is), once you have a fan, that person will be your fan no matter who your publisher is.
Zoe, don’t misunderstand. This is a discussion on piracy, not self-publishing. I responded to your comment in a way that was relevant to the discussion and was in no way preaching to you about self-publishing. For the purposes of this blog post, I don’t care about self-publishing one way or the other.
Dane- Yes, e-books don’t cost a great deal to create and copy. But what you are paying for is more than just the material cost of the book. Sellers need to make their cut, and so do publishers. Then the author and the agent need to be able to get some money. Say a give e-book took a year to write. The author sold the rights for a $5000 dollar advance. The author has now made a profit of $4,250. For a year of work. Now say the e-book sells for $10 a copy. Say it sells $10,000 copies. The bookseller less than the usual discount because they don’t have to hold the copy or invest in copies that might not sell. Let’s say they get 25% off the list price of $10. That means the publisher is making about $7.50 a book. The author gets a royalty of say, 25%. (Yes authors have gotten more, but for the sake of argument…) That’s $1.88 a copy sold. Having sold 10000 copies, they make $18,800. But, you subtract out the $5000 for their advance. They have now made a total of $13,800 for that book. (I’m ignoring the royalty schedule here for convenience.) That’s a pretty low salary.
Silver- They don’t pull prices out of thin air. A lower price means lower profit for everyone, and in an industry where profits are already pretty low.
atsiko,
I never said you were preaching to me, I was not defensive in my reply to you. I am not in any way insecure about SPing. Yes I realize the topic wasn’t self-publishing, but IMO the topic of the original post at root isn’t really about piracy either, it’s about the effects of it for the author, in particular the possibility of losing a contract. I was not, nor am I now, trying to get into any type of “debate” on the issue of self-publishing.
Yes, I recognize that often I see the SP angle in many things but that’s just because that’s the angle I’m coming from. So when someone says: “Oh noes, I could lose my contract and then couldn’t write stories anymore” my reaction is… “yes you can… you could always SP.” It’s not meant to start a debate or hijack or derail, just to comment and say something to the author. No one else has to jump into it if they don’t want to.
Again, not trying to start an argument or a debate. I replied to one portion of Nicole’s post. You replied to my mention of SP, I replied back to you. These things happen. Conversations tend to be organic and not always stick to one rigid subject matter.
Gotta love the internet.
I didn’t mean to imply you were being defensive, Zoe. It’s just that the conversation was veering more into the advantages and disadvantges, and I wanted to stay more on track.
You’re perfectly correct that dropped authors could go the self-publishing route.
This is a great entry, Nicole. I’m thinking I need an icon that has an anti-”Yarr” somewhere along the line.
LOL atsiko, yeah the Internet is hard! hahaha. Glad we were finally able to understand each other!
Your article has been a BIG eye opener. I have to admit that I have read many books I got online. In my mind it was not pirating. I honestly did not think about of it that way. It was more like when you borrow a book from a library or from a friend. I have never downloaded songs for free because I knew that was wrong, but books- that’s what they are for, to share them.Right?. Well, now I know different.
See, I barely discovered the UF and Paranormal Genre. I did not even know there was one or that books in this genre were good. I used to think that most books written after the 1940’s were not worth reading. Boy was I wrong. WHen I did discover the genre I devoured them like Jelly beans. Sometimes I did not know which books or authors to read next, so somehow in my research I found websites where you could download the books for free. I sampled authors and if I liked them I bought the books and complete series. Hardcover, full price if necessary just to find out what happened next. So in my opinion, this websites actually helped me discover authors I would never even considered before. Many first time authors, like Ms. Harper from the Nice Girls series.I have all of her books now and like them so much, I have shared them with my sisters and friends. THey in turn like the series so much that they have pre-ordered from Amazon or borders the next book. So in my personal case I feel like these sites have helped instead of hindered the ability of authors to make money.
I do not use the sites as much, because to me electronic books are not the way to go. I want to carry mine around, turn the pages and get that smell. After your article I will definately not even try to download books for free. I want new authors, I want new stories.Even if I have to give up my MOchas to afford the book.
Stephen: It is hard! Good luck! I wish I could say it gets easier, but I’m starting to learn that the pressures never fade; they just increase as things get bigger and less and less within your own control. But it’s worth all the frustrations! Keep writing and keep reaching for your goals!
Dane: I don’t know what to tell you. Again, I think the system for a lot of digital publication is probably flawed and will need to be overhauled as systems, reading habits, and technology change. And that’s great you wish we got more money, as authors, from digital publishing. Unfortunately, when you pirate, we get no money and, as importantly for you, no “credit” for your sale in terms of our sales numbers. So that next book in the series might not be available at all, paid for or pirated, because we were never contracted to write it.
Alana: I love the idea of Anti-Yarr! LOL
Atsiko and Zoe Winters: Awww, group hug . . . come on, then.
Jade: That’s great, Jade! I mean, not great that you pirated without knowing it OR that you might have to give up mochas (they’re full of empty calories anyway . . . I’d stick to whisky). But I can absolutely understand your circumstances. Like I said, I never really thought about this issue, myself. And I think you’re a good example of why piracy needs to be cracked down upon, at the source. You were doing it for all the “right” reasons, not knowing the books were stolen in the first place. But you were doing it because you wanted to know what to buy. That said, most authors have really good ways to “test drive” their product, and libraries are also a great place to try out a new series for free. But I can understand how, if the opportunity is presented to you by a pretty pink site like the one I found where the books are presented as legitimately “free,” you’d look no further and hit the “download” button. So I’m really glad you found this post and read it and do please share it around.
And I’m also glad you found UF! I’m an english prof, and the classics are GREAT. But what’s wrong with a little paranormal romp every now and again? I think it’s good for the soul. Thanks for posting!
Atsiko: It’s really bad that profits are down for everyone, and that lack of profit is driving prices up and people away from buying books. I have no solutions there. The way things are going now can’t be helping, though.
Nicole, I’m coming into this debate late because I’ve only just found it, so all I can add is this – well said and I’m off to tweet.