Hi, folks. Andi here. Over the weekend, I have spent a crapload of my time dealing with book piracy. I’ll be the first to say that pirates and pirate history is kind of cool. Book piracy, however, is not. Why? Because book pirates are screwing the very people they claim to support.
How? Okay, most of us in the lesfic community don’t make much money off what we write. It’s a small demographic, after all. But the royalties we do make help pay a few bills here and there. As some of you know, mine have been going to help pay for my dog’s medicines and healthcare. I know there are book pirates out there who have pets. So imagine if I came into your house, opened your wallet, and took a hundred dollars out and left, which means your pet doesn’t have the heart medicine he or she needs for that month.
That’s what book piracy is doing to me and my fellow authors whose books you are posting on free download sites. Basically, our writing is a second or third job. We don’t make much, but what we do make helps supplement our incomes and pays a few bills that our day jobs can’t.
Lesfic is a small community. Many readers actually get to meet the authors whose work they love. As many of you readers know, most of us writers aren’t driving around in BMWs, eating at chi-chi restaurants, or shopping on Rodeo Drive in LA. We are working stiffs, just like the rest of you. We personally don’t mind if our books are available at a library for your reading enjoyment, because libraries are legit institutions and the books are paid for. They get the proper permissions to stock the book and people take turns reading it. This is the best way to enjoy free books. And I personally don’t mind if you buy a copy of my books and share them with a few friends. A few. Not a few hundred or a few thousand. A few.
I do have a problem when you post my book online and make it available to hundreds or thousands of people. That’s a violation of US copyright law, it’s a violation of my intellectual property rights, and it’s screwing not only me, but my publishers, my fellow authors, and all the readers who acquire our books through legit means. Because eventually, some of us are going to stop writing. What’s the point? We keep getting screwed. And the publishers are going to have to stop publishing. Which affects small, independent bookstores that specialize in GLBTQ literature. After all, they won’t be able to pay the bills. And then an industry that helped so many women will suffer.
Most of us authors post things for free on our sites for people to read and get a taste of what we do. Most of us are more than happy to provide a print copy to people who are struggling financially or to community centers or whatever. We do this because we know what it’s like to not have much money and to love to read. We do this under the assumption that you, the readers, will honor our copyrights and intellectual property, and you won’t kick us in the teeth by posting our stuff online for free.
Some of you are “accidental pirates.” That is, you might find a site where, for a subscription fee, you get to download all kinds of lesfic (and other books). You might even think that these sites have legitimate permissions and publishers and authors are making money off them.
That’s not true. No. We are not. Those sites are charging YOU for the privilege of aiding and abetting piracy. That money goes right to the site admins/owners. So basically, these people are charging you for illegal content. These people are charging money for books they have not written, did not edit, did not design, did not publish, do not hold the copyright to. And yet, they are making money off me, my fellow authors, publishers, and you, the unwitting accomplice to piracy.
The only legitimate copies of lesfic ebooks are those that are sold through legit distributors: Bella, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bold Strokes, Moon Horse Books. Or those at legit bookstores. Or those that are sold directly from the author or an author’s site that directs you to a legit site like lulu.com. Some authors offer ebooks for free. Do them a favor and honor their intellectual property rights and rather than upload the efile to a piracy site, direct fellow readers to the author’s site instead. Keep this legit. Honor an author’s work. Honor her copyrights. And if you hate the work, leave it be. Honor the copyright anyway.
For more info on how piracy affects authors and the industry, Karin Kallmaker has a brutal, in-depth look right here. And here are some myths about piracy that Karin debunks. And her message to pirates. And here’s more of my take on it.
So what can you do?
1) Stop uploading copies to piracy sites. Just stop. You’re hurting more than authors. You’re hurting publishers and you’re hurting readers who pay for the work. The more stuff that’s pirated, the less that will be available because publishers will have to adjust budgets. So please. Honor an author’s work. Don’t kick her in the teeth by uploading to pirate sites.
2) Don’t scan a book and create an efile and upload it to a piracy site. See number 1.
3) For those of you who don’t upload, here’s one for you. Don’t download off piracy sites. Honor an author’s copyright. Don’t think “well, probably not that many people are doing it, so what’s one more?” One more is a few dollars authors don’t get, a few dollars publishers don’t get, a few dollars the industry doesn’t get to further advance lesfic. One more hurts. One more adds up to two more, to three more, to way more.
4) Don’t sign up for subscription sites that claim “content sharing!” Unless a book is offered through a legit site as I mentioned above, don’t pay money to anybody who makes content sharing claims. 9 times out of 10, that content is in violation of copyright laws.
5) For those of you who want to continue supporting lesfic and publishing as an industry, alert authors and publishers to piracy sites and pirates. It’s pretty easy to contact us at our websites and sites like Facebook and I will guarantee that all of us are extremely grateful to hear from vigilant readers who let us know about this.
6) For those of you who know people who are engaging in piracy (either uploading or downloading), educate them. Direct them to Karin Kallmaker’s blogs, to my blog(s), to any one of the authors they’re pirating. I am more than happy to engage a book pirate in a discussion about how piracy hurts us all. Education can help.
7) Don’t post links to piracy sites on your sites or blogs or social networking sites. If you’re not sure something’s a piracy site, again, check in with an author or a publisher. We’ll help you make that determination.
8 ) If you know someone who is posting links to piracy sites on his or her sites/blogs/social networking sites, let him or her know it’s a piracy site and to please take it down. Or, again, alert an author or publisher and we’ll contact the person.
9) Speak up on your chatlists, forums, and social networking sites. If someone says to check out a site for some free downloads of lesfic, address that publicly on your chatlists or, if you’re uncomfortable doing that, contact the user directly or contact the site admin about your concerns. Silence aids and abets piracy. And site admins–take a stand on piracy. If you have a listmember who is engaging in it (either knowingly or unknowingly), contact them and direct them to Karin Kallmaker’s blogs about this topic. Tell them it hurts us all. Take a stand. Silence aids and abets.
10) Keep reading our work. But please do so legitimately. If you can’t afford a book, borrow it from a friend. Buy it used. Request that your local library carry it. There are myriad ways to read a book legitimately. Please do so. Help us all keep lesfic as an industry thriving and healthy.
Thanks.
Happy Labor Day.
Women and Words
Jove Belle
Andi Marquette
Clifford Henderson
Georgia Beers
Sandra Barret
Patty G. Henderson
Larkin Rose
Moondancer Drake
neneadams
Carsen Taite
R.G. Emanuelle
sacchigreen
[...] No, it's not cool to steal people's work. « Women and Words [...]
Andi, fabulous blog about a difficult subject. I struggle with simply sharing e-books with friends. I don’t do it because it’s not like a hard copy in that there will always only be one copy. With an e-book that isn’t encrypted (like most lesfic), one copy could turn into ten. However, it doesn’t bother me when friends share books. I borrow and lend books myself. I’m a supporter of the concept of a library, be it institutional or less formal.
But these pirate sites are truly disturbing. I love the example you gave of someone breaking into your house and taking money out of your wallet. In my mind, it goes one step further. I imagine the person who took the money standing just out of reach (like sites that are hosted in Canada to avoid American copyright laws) and waving it in your face, bragging that they took it. And then coming back for more to hand out to anyone who asks.
It’s hurtful.
So true, Jove. That’s what some of them do. “Lookit me! I took your money! Nothing you can do about it!” It’s really, really hurtful. And yes, they do come back for more, and they brag about it, and keep handing it out. Hurtful. That’s a really good word for this.
That was Andi, by the way, in that last comment.
I will support you and others in any way I can. Tell me how to find these criminals and I will sick the dogs.Your work and talent should not be passed around by those without morals or decency.
jeanne
As a publisher, we appreciate Andi’s diligence. There is very little margin of error for small publishers. Our success depends on the ability to stretch a budget a long, long way–what we call creative stinginess.
One book sale for us is probably equal to several hundred books sales to a large publisher. It doesn’t take much of a decline in sales for us to feel the hit.
As we said in our own blog (at Binkie’s Blog on the Bedazzled Ink website) on this subject:
“If we don’t sell books, we can’t stay in business to produce more. It’s really that simple. If you like a book, support the publisher or the author by recommending it to friends, so they can also support the publisher or author by purchasing a copy.”
Brava and well said!
I went through the site that Joan pointed out to us and found other authors with whom I’m friends, and I told them too, so they can get their publishers onto it.
Piracy’s cool in the romantic theoretical, but in the actual practical, it’s awful. Thank you for helping educate.
Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not condoning copyright violations in any way, but I’ve been reading a few blogs like this over the summer and I want to ask if you ever wonder if you might be fighting a loosing battle?
I think that publishers and writers alike need to reconsider their business plans.
I’m not a business major so I really don’t have an idea for an alternative way to make money from writing lesfic’s or any other fic’s for that matter, but those of you with an imagination good enough to keep us all entertained through your writing ought to put your minds together and find a new way to make money from your work.
I my opinion there ought to be a way to use the internet platform and the existing interest in online lesfic available at the free web-archives to generate paying traffic. But hey what do I know ?
I hope to see new business actions from publishers and writers in the future. So you can continue to make a little money from your writing and I – for one – can have a little light entertainment for a rainy day.
UK
There not pirates, they’re parasites.
They’re not pirates, they’re parasites. and my grammar stinks.
Greetings, all–UK, how great it would be to try to make lemonade outta lemons. Would that we could.
There are lots of sites that offer free content. A lot of us have posted, for example, on our own sites, at Academy of Bards, at the Athenaeum. That includes novel-length works. In terms of lesfic, does that free content generate sales for work we have under contract at publishing houses?
No. Karin Kallmaker points out on her blog why that is: MYTH: “It helps the author because someone tries them for free and then buys all her other books.” No. According to Karin, “Only the rare (wonderful) reader will eventually pay for a book, and then it may be only for those books that can’t be found free. (See The Amazon Conundrum.) What actually happens is that most people who get a book for free will go on looking for more books for free. A fraction might tell friends and encourage them to buy copies, but most will tell their friend about the great book they got for free, and show the friend how to get it for free too.”
LINK: http://blog.kallmaker.com/2010/07/ye-olde-myths-of-piracy.html
Why would you tell your friend to BUY a book if you could download it for free? After all, you downloaded it, right? So why would you encourage someone else to purchase it legitimately?
Like Karin says, free content doesn’t really make people want to pay for books. It makes them want more free content. Now, there are a few people out there who will read an excerpt of a work and want to read the whole thing and they might go buy that book. But if they find the whole thing for free on a piracy site, chances are, they’d rather get it for free and not pay at all. Ever. Hey, free stuff is kind of cool. But I know how free downloads damage industries and artists, and I personally do not engage in that. I purchase all my books and music through legal sites or bricks n’ mortar stores. It’s a conscious decision and I’m willing to do it because I personally know how piracy can affect an artist/musician/writer.
All that said, there are also a few mainstream authors who will make an ebook available for free prior to print/official ebook release. Cory Doctorow is one of them. However, most publishers who publish lesfic are small, independent houses, like Bedazzled Ink. Carrie from BI posted here in the comments section. They’re not big houses like Tor, which publishes Doctorow’s work.
Also keep in mind that lesfic is a very small community of authors and readers. I’m sure I’ve signed copies of books that someone is right now scanning and uploading to distribute to whomever wants them. That’s how small this community is. Doctorow can afford to give an ebook away because his books sell in the thousands every year. That’s simply not true of most lesfic books, which, on average, sell 2000 over the course of 3-5 years. A very small percentage of women who identify as lesbian actually read lesfic as put out by houses like Bold Strokes, Bedazzled, Bella, Bywater, Regal Crest, and Intaglio (forgive me if I forgot someone). That’s why every stolen lesfic book hits us in the community particularly hard.
I don’t discount your thoughts. But I’m not sure what other way there is to make money off books. You sell a book, you make money, regardless of the platform. In order to make money off a book, it has to be a book, right? Regardless of platform. It has to be written, edited, designed. It has to have a cover designed, as well. An ISBN is assigned, book distributors are alerted, and the files go to printers, or they’re converted for ebook usage. If the publisher chooses to warehouse its books, that means it prints out a set amount and then puts them in storage, which it pays for. If a publisher chooses print on demand, it has to deal directly with printers. It doesn’t matter how you convey the book to the public. There’s a ton of work that goes into a book behind the scenes. I don’t think readers realize how much work. And whether it’s an ebook or a print book, the same amount of work goes into a book prior to publication in the creation of files for either ebook posting or print.
I’m willing to consider all viable alternatives, here. But even if we offered free content somewhere (which we all already do), what’s to stop people from taking that content and disseminating it all over the web? And how would that get people to buy it? Seriously. I’m really interested in how something like that would make people want to pay. Because we’ve got all these other sites offering free content and the piracy continues. As soon as a book is out, it’s pirated. So free content is clearly not generating sales. In fact, it’s generating more pirates.
I don’t know what the answer is. Publishing is changing. We all know that. More and more is available as ebooks (which I think is a good thing). Business models are changing, rights and copyrights are shifting to accommodate digitization, authors are offering some ebooks for free–most of those are mainstream with mainstream houses.
So please, share your ideas. What would a business model look like that would discourage piracy? I’m very curious. Because this is a situation that is affecting me personally, every day.
Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.
–andi
In response to UK. I find this statement interesting:
“I think that publishers and writers alike need to reconsider their business plans.”
I can’t speak for writers but publishers have one basic business plan–to publish books and to sell them. Books are products, just like televisions, Oreo cookies, and Jeeps. Nabisco makes Oreo cookies for no other reason than to sell Oreo cookies. Publishers publish books for no other reason than to sell books.
I know that sounds a little cold but people forget that publishing is a business, not just an entity that exists solely to package your favorite lesfic in easy to read formats.
We’re an entity that provides covers, edits, typesets, ISBNS, distribution, marketing, promotion, etc. for an author’s work that we then package in easy to read formats. That’s an investment of time, people, and money and, is also a gamble, because we never really know how a book will sell.
Publishers can’t rethink their business plan without impacting the others who are in the book business–agents, distributors, wholesalers, booksellers . .
.
From UK:
“I hope to see new business actions from publishers and writers in the future. So you can continue to make a little money from your writing and I – for one – can have a little light entertainment for a rainy day.”
If you want some other way to acquire books that still puts a little money in writers’ pocket, then that’s something for writers to tackle without a publisher.
Publishing, after all, is one of many choices writers can make for getting their work to readers.
The simple solution is encryption. But I’m assuming that software is cost prohibitive. I’ve never researched it, so I can’t be sure, but if it were cheap, it stands to reason it would already be in use at even the smallest publishing house.
to a certain extent, i agree with UK’s comments.
i think technology is going to force publishers change the way they price, sell and distribute, in the very same way it changed music publishers to change their business model.
napster was a piracy site and got closed down eventually, but it did force the music industry to find alternate cheaper ways to price and distribute.
in fact, these days, the major music acts make more of their money from live shows than from the cd/mp3 sales.
my big issue with ebooks is their cost. i struggle to understand how glbt ebooks can be priced at $6-12 depending on author, with very little price differential between print and ebook.
yes, i know the standard arguments to this, that it costs the same to market ebooks as it does to print, but for me that argument doesnt stack up, since at the end of the day, the cost of distributing ebooks should be lower than that of print.
Kindle prices competitively i have to say and their pricing model is in stark contrast to those of Bold Strokes and Bella.
for me, till the time pricing becomes more aggressive, piracy will flourish.
realistically, piracy will never die, but a very competitive pricing model will reduce it.
Isn’t there a way to go after the site owners themselves? The site owner’s server hosts? If this is illegal — and it is — what happens when lawyers get involved? Is the FBI doing anything about this? I also wonder why the big pubs don’t use their clout (and money) to attack this. I’m sure there are logical explanations — anyone know what they are?
Amy,
It’s definitely illegal, but if the hosting site is in…Brazil, or Canada, or Spain, or… you get the idea. How do you prosecute that?
As for larger publishing houses, if you look at the sites, they don’t typically include authors from larger, mainstream publishers because of just that. Also, keep in mind that larger houses use encryption, a preventative that minimizes the need for action after the fact.
Andi can, I’m sure, expand on this further.
Actually, Jove, if you go to wattpad.com, you’ll find a lot of books by major publishers including the complete Percy Jackson series, the Twilight series, the Time Traveler’s Wife, The Lovely Bones, My Sister’s Keeper, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . . .
Twilight has 38,323 reads–if this was a mid-list book, even a large publisher would feel the impact of lost sales for the percentage of these readers who never bought the book.
The people posting the books to wattpad have gotten creative in disguising the entries for the books they’re posting–especially for books like the Twilight series–to prevent immediate detection.
Carrie,
Good insight. Thanks. I admit, the only torrent links I’ve looked at are directly related to lesbian fiction. I made a broad assumption based on my experience there. It’s disturbing to realize how much larger the issue is than I realized. Bummer.
Sorry I have to try once again with my thoughts of a new business plan to make money from lesfic.
The problems that writers and publishers face through copyright violations are the same as anyone else that make a digital product or a product that can be digitalized and shared online.
Some try to protect their copyrights by encryption. This might work for a while but encryption can be broken and encryption is a hinderance to the legal use of the product which is to say that it’s not really a solution at all.
Andi is probably right that giving your work out for free will only help your sales to a certain extent, and Carrie Tierney has a point, publishers publish books – so if there are no books why would we need publishers?
Through my job I’ve learned that the way to solve the unsolvable problems is to “think out of the box”
How do you make money off a local soccer team – you set up matches, you take money for people to watch, you sell food and drinks at the games and merchandise at a local fan-shop or online, you get businesses to sponsor your team, you invite you sponsors to special events etc.
How many of the above mentioned actions is really connected to playing soccer ? I would say that the total business model for a professional soccer team was originally made by – thinking out of the box.
How to make money from words ? You could offer words in a new format or a combination of formats, you could offer a different kind of access to your words – sell them, give readers access for a restricted period, combine access to your words with access to other related products – a new young business major could probably come up with some interesting ideas.
I for one would pay a membership fee to have access to an online library with edited lesfic, and I think that a way to make me sign up for such a membership would be trough a free online archive where I could test out the quality of the stories offered to the paying members. Well this is probably not really “thinking out of the box” – but I never said that I was a business shark!
And Andi please stop thinking: “In order to make money off a book, it has to be a book, right?” To make money you have to reinvent the book or invent a new product that can present your words – think out of the box!!
I guess if it was easy to find a new business plan to make money from books …. it would have been done already (!), but if you don’t look for a solution non will be found, and I’m quite sure that it won’t really help to complain about illegal file sharing online.
I hope someone with an imaginative mind will come up with a plan as I would like for you to keep up with your writing.
UK
Hi UK,
Everything you’ve suggested and more has already been tried and failed. Even subscription services.
I have a couple of questions about a subscription service where you pay a fee and have unlimited access to a library of books.
How do you pay the author royalties without,
first, turning it into an accounting nightmare (and paying royalties is already an accounting nightmare–there’s a company whose sole job is straighteningvout accounting errors on royalties paid out by the major publishers),
second, having enough money to pay all the royalties to the authors from the subscription fees? Let’s say you pay $20 a month for your subscription and you read 100 books, and the author’s contract with the subscription service states that they get $0.50 every time someone reads their book? Your fee isn’t going to cover the number of books you read.
It’s easier to rent the book for so much and do what libraries do with their ebooks — encrypt them for the check out period so they disappear from your drive when their due date is up.
Which brings us to another question about your subscription service . . . What kind of access privileges will you have? Will you only be able to read them while logged in on the site (which will cause problems for people who want to read ebooks on their hand held devises)?
This would be the only way to stop piracy. Because people can hack ebooks encrypted to disappear after a period of time.
I’m sorry to repeat my self – I didn’t say that I knew the solution to the problem and had a business plan that would work – this is really not my line of work!!!
I just suggested that you look at the problem in a new way, and I would love for you not to keep quoting all the things that have been tried and found not to work or which is difficult to solve. This will only make it harder to find the route to success.
So my suggestion would be to find a way to come up with new ideas and toss them around.
What I do when I need to think out of the box is to question the frame that I have set up for finding a solution – can any of the given things be changed?
You suggest that royalties and accounting is a problem – so I’ll ask if a different way of paying the writer can be found or if the fee paid by the reader really must be related to the number of books access?
Any new ideas???
UK
What’s frustrating is that they often don’t see why what they’re doing is wrong. And even if you point it out, they get defensive or even arrogant about it. Well, I guess what’s really frustrating is the fact that as soon as you shut one down, another pops up. And another. And another. But we can’t let it go and say, “What’s the point.” Because the point is that this is our art–and for some, our livelihoods–and pirates are stealing it from us, and we can’t give up the fight.
Okay, hold up–
I’m not sure I’m seeing where you’re coming from, UK. I spent 15 years in the publishing industry as an acquiring editor, a copyeditor, and a managing editor. You say you like to read books–well, don’t you need a book or a book-like entity in order to read said product? In order to make that book or book-like entity palatable for the public, it has to go through a lot of work. Writing, editing, prepping files, regardless of whether you put it into a print format or an e-format, regardless of whether you offer it as excerpts or complete books.That prep takes time, skill, effort. And the publishers or the author have to pay for those services. So in order to create a product that you can read, there’s money involved. Publishing is a business. And isn’t it the purpose of business to make money?
So I’m not following what you’re getting at. A book is a book is a book, regardless of the format it takes, or the platform it occupies. That’s the product. In order to create a nice, slick product, you’ve got to pay the help. That’s how business works. And then you sell that package to people so that your business can continue. Unless you’re perfectly content reading unedited drafts that an author just flings onto the web…? In which case, no harm, no foul.
It seems you’re talking about marketing when that’s not really the issue here. The issue here is a product that is being appropriated and illegally distributed. How does marketing and promotion make that stop? It doesn’t. A business model isn’t going to change the mindset of a thief. You are right–encrypting only works until it doesn’t, because someone is always out to figure out how to get around it. And Carrie’s right–subscription services don’t work. Except maybe for iTunes or Rhapsody. Different product, so that format/platform works. Books are different. We’re on the cusp here of a major shift in generations and how people perceive “rights.” The internet, as cool as it is, has also allowed an increase in theft and piracy. You’re right about that. People assume if it’s on the net, it must be legal. Publishing, like music, is behind the curve here, and it’s finally shifting, finally trying to catch up and offer more digital content, but the problem is, that only paves the way for more piracy.
But new marketing plans and new ways of promoting that product is not going to stop theft. It doesn’t matter how we offer books–someone is going to either digitize a print version or steal an e-file and post it to a piracy site. THAT is the crux of the issue. As long as that is happening, no matter what cool gizmos and ideas we come up with to encourage people to buy our stuff–to help offset the costs of creating that product–as long as it’s all out there for free on pirate sites, nobody’s going to pay for it.
Do you see? This isn’t about new business models. It’s about mindsets. And sadly, the net encourages a certain kind of mindset.
Regardless, thanks for taking the time to hash this out with us. It’s a difficult issue. I don’t have any answers, obviously, and you’re talking to someone who has spent a lot of years in and around the publishing industry, who’s taken lots of marketing chances, done some crazy promo stuff, pushed for new platforms since the early 1990s. And this one kind of stumps me.
Thanks, y’all, for participating.
I see that we are getting our wires crossed somewhere – probably in my less than perfect language skills – sorry!
I agree – a book in print or in digital format is a book and requires help from all the sources Andi points out to become … a book.
I agree that all the “help” and the writer needs to be paid.
On the other hand it seems to me that you do agree that making money off the book by using the “standard” business model is hard especially since file sharing takes away a lot of business.
My point is – you can’t stop the file sharing even if you bitch about it online at length.
So what do you do ? Do you sit back and wait for file sharing to kill your motivation for writing or for the publishers to fold ?
I surggest that writers and publishers alike think about making money on writing and publishing by offering the reader something that is connected to your main product – the book – but add an extra value to the book that the reader can’t obtain through the illegal file sharing!
You are probably right that this is a sort of marketing thing, and that it’ll cost extra money to make money this way! So maybe we just have to accept that only the real big publishing houses and the major authors can make money from their writing in the future? I think – not – but I guess it’s up to you the writers and publishers to decide if you want to try find an alternative way to make money off books.
Anyway I hope that all the “talk” on the subject of illegal file sharing will change people’s attitude towards this activity so you all can make a bit of money from your work.
UK
>i>My point is – you can’t stop the file sharing even if you bitch about it online at length.
So what do you do ? Do you sit back and wait for file sharing to kill your motivation for writing or for the publishers to fold ?
So — because people are stealing authors’ books and thereby their income, it’s THEIR JOB to change everything. The onus of responsibility does not lie with the thieves, or with those who facilitate them? Grrrrr!
In my experience, though, UK’s response is pretty typical. The general lesfic reader’s attitude seems to be that authors owe readers books; authors owe readers free content; readers will buy some works if they get others free; if piracy is cutting into authors’ profits then it’s up to authors to change the system, without negatively impacting readers.
And I honestly can’t see why lesfic authors continue to write. Seriously. I don’t. I don’t write novels, so I’m not affected, but if I did, I’d have switched to writing for a market other than lesfic by now.
I have to admit thought that I like Silver Publishing’s method. In every e-book they sell, they embed into the text the purchaser’s name and credit card number details. That way if the purchasher “shares” the book on a torrent site or whatever, she’s also giving away her credit card number. It’s happened once already, and I find the schedenfreude utterly delicious.
Now give me a break – I’m not condoning illegal file sharing I’m just suggesting that a fight against file sharing is a fight that can’t be won!
And I’ve got to ask – do you think that the thieves or those who facilitates them will stop their illegal work – just because someone blogs about it?
Anyway I’m real happy that lesfic writers haven’t switched to other storylines – yet!
UK
UK, I do think blogging about it helps, because quite a few readers really have no idea that by downloading from a torrent site they’re doing something illegal, or that they’re stealing from the publisher and author. Of course, many know perfectly well what they’re doing and don’t care, but many also are honourable people who will stop doing it once they’ve learned what it actually means. The average reader, understandably, has little knowledge about how publishing works, since publishing is a specialised industry with its own very odd set of rules.
To date, authors and publishers have tried a multitude of ways to prevent the theft. Not much works. Every code gets cracked. In the music industry, it’s had less impact because artists earn a lot more from their live appearances from their CD sales, so file sharing doesn’t hit them in the pocket as bad. Computer game producers and moviemakers have more money to throw at the problem, and have done a lot of sophisticated digital protection coding for their DVDs. However, for e-books DRM is problematic because of the multitude of e-book readers and their mutual incompatibility.
What can authors and publishers do? I honestly don’t know. My first gut reaction is to that e-books will stop being produced. Pirating print books is too expensive, so it’s not a problem. My second gut reaction is that if publishers must continue to produce e books to satisfy market demand then the small presses will go out of business, leaving only the conglomerates who can afford sophisticated DRM and can afford to pursue pirates via the courts.
Of course, that will pretty much cause the end of lesfic.
So if readers care enough, then yeah, blogging helps. Because readers will see that they’ve got a vested interest in getting involved: in not downloading pirated books, in educating their friends to do the same, and in turning in pirates when they find them.
My $0.02, FWIW.
FranW–
The buyer is informed up front that this information is being embedded into the ebook (and not violate some kind of statement that they won’t share personal information)?
Also I wonder what Silver Publishing does when their ebooks are sold by other booksellers such as Rainbow eBooks or through Kindle?
Ebooks are like print books–publishers have to sell them in as many venues as possible to get maximum sales and then only venue they have complete control over is their own.
I’m not sure Silver has external distribution?
Silver Publishing ebooks are available through Rainbow eBooks and Kindle for sure and maybe other outlets I don’t know about.
Thanks, all, for the continuing discussion. I do believe that there is a bit of education that comes with blogging about a topic that obviously hits as many nerves as this one.
Like FranW says, I think that a lot of people downloading books don’t realize that it’s illegal content. After all, some of the sites they download from bill themselves as “subscription.” They’re led to believe that for a fee, they are downloading legal content. Well, they’re not. Just recently, a lesfic reader enlightened a friend of hers that the site she was downloading from was in copyright violation. That person was horrified, and then really pissed because she’d paid a fee to site, and she’d been led to believe that the content was legal and because it was ostensibly legal, the publishers and authors were getting a cut of it. Nope. She’s now going after that site and she purchased the books legitimately. So that’s the effect, UK, that blogging can have.
Will it change all behavior? No. But then again, César Chávez started small, too, and created a massive social movement that still resonates today. Every movement starts small. Starts with one person, sometimes. So you may call it “bitching” or “whining” but we’re having this discussion, we’re sharing our views and frustrations, and we’re educating people who maybe didn’t realize that they were downloading illegal content. And you may not see it here, but there are people perhaps coalescing into loose networks who are alerting sites that they’re posting illegal content. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, to be sure (thanks to Nicola Griffith for that), but canyons aren’t carved in a day, either.
Will it change minds? I can tell you it already has. Will it stop piracy? No. As long as there have been humans on the planet, there have been thieves. But that doesn’t mean communities just let them run roughshod over them. Some communities band together, others disintegrate, others shift, and sometimes punishments like cutting off the hand of a thief ensures a bit of social control. So yes, theft will always be part of human communities. But so, too, is the fight against it.
Thanks again, y’all, for the conversation.
cheers,
–andi
“I surggest that writers and publishers alike think about making money on writing and publishing by offering the reader something that is connected to your main product – the book – but add an extra value to the book that the reader can’t obtain through the illegal file sharing!”
charging the audience for book readings, linking author readings with big glbt events, promotions that combine books+glbt music?
the music industry changed and i dont see why the publishing industry cannot and unless it changes the traditional print publishing industry will increasingly end up being marginalised.
the problem becomes all the more vicious in a niche market such as lesfic, and with authors who havent made the cross over to address a mainstream audience.
Andi, I do think education will be the most effective effort. Heck, I know highly ranked professional people earning over $150,000 per year who, as part of their work, travel regularly to Asia, and over there they always buy movie DVDs to bring home. “Yeah,” they say, “I know they’re pirated copies, but they’re so much cheaper! And who does it hurt? Everyone does it, after all!”
And the more everyone does it, the more everyone will do it.
It’s hard to convince these people that hurting the movie industry will have an effect, because “Everyone knows Hollywood is sooooo rich!” And a lot of them extend the argument to books because they automatically assume that all authors are rolling in millions like JK Rowlings. But then I remind them that I am married to an author and, um, we’re not exactly living the lifestyle of the Rich and Famous. And then I break the news to them that the average professional author in the F/SF field earns around $5000 per year. And that kind of sobers them up.
[...] been following this discussion led by one of our authors, Andi Marquette, on the subject of pirating [...]
Andi,
Great conversation to get started. I’d really like to get your thoughts here.
Obviously the distribution of all media is changing rapidly. With institutions that have had a solid hold on distribution for the last 50 years, it’s not very surprising that the rate of adaptation has been pretty slow. Nonetheless, people aren’t going to wait for music, movie, and book publishers to catch up. Even with the threat of punitive measures, they’re not going to wait. The RIAA has been a perfect example of this, because anybody with a minor amount of know-how is not going to be dissuaded by threats. If anything, they’ll be more determined and more likely to treat it as a competition between them and the threatening publisher.
Now, what I think is really cool about the advent of e-distribution is that a lot of people have become aware of just how much the artist has to sacrifice to get their book/album/movie out to the public. For someone like me, the thought of paying 2-5 different companies along the chain to get to YOUR work, is pretty irritating. So what do you think about just putting up a donate button on your website?
I know it sounds a bit naive, but it’s not an unproven method. Plenty of open-source application developers make a decent bit of change doing just that, some more than others. The guy who created bittorrent distributed the code for free and kept the whole project open-source. And because it was free, plenty of people tried it out, and then discovered just how effective that technology is for downloading really large files. It went on to become incredibly popular and because somebody asked him how they could contribute to his application, he included a way for people to donate. His income is now donation-based and he doesn’t have to work for anybody else now. I don’t think all artists will be greeted with the same success, but as a consumer, I’d much rather put $1 in the artist’s pocket, rather than $9 to a bookstore just so that the artist can eventually get $0.40.
This isn’t an argument for or even against piracy. But from a computer dyke’s perspective I can say with 100% assurance that it won’t stop or lessen. The only thing that will definitively end media piracy is cutting the power, so trying to end it with punitive measures and appeals to morality aren’t going to be terribly effective. The anonymity of the internet will ensure that people keep downloading regardless of right & wrong or the slight possibility that they might get sued.
So right now, without considering complex questions about switching publishers or switching to e-book distribution, why not put up a donation button on your website so that anybody can support you without question?
Howdy, and thanks for coming by!
There are 4 issues with my doing that. 1, my contracts. 2, the actual cost involved with creating a book (based on industry standards and what I would pay professional editors and designers). 3, tax issues. 4, as skanky as traditional publishing can be, it does actually offer something.
First and foremost, the reason I can’t do this is because the work I make so little money on is contracted through a publisher (and remember, a book can cost at least 2-3K to produce — costs the publisher incurs). I cannot, per the terms of my contracts, accept donations for any contracted work nor can I, also per the terms of my contracts, sell my own work on my website.
If I were a self-published author, I could sell my work off my site, but taking donations involves a lot of tax stuff that I might not want to get involved with. I could, perhaps, say “for sale–pay what you want,” but taking donations opens up all kinds of tax issues. More on that in a minute.
There is a LOT of work and money that goes into publishing a book, whether through traditional venues or self-published venues. As a traditionally published author, part of the expenses that are covered in my contracts (that I don’t have to cover) include a reasonably professional edit, a typeset, ISBN numbers that I don’t have to pay for, distribution, and cover work. If I were a self-published author, all of that expense would come out of my pocket and all of that work would fall somehow to me. Unless I just wanted to slap a Word document up onto my website and hope it was worth a buck to donate. In other words, to make a product that someone would WANT to pay money for would involve an assload of time and money on my end that I just don’t have.
In addition, if I were to sell my own books on my own site, they’d be official books. They’d be typeset, ISBN’ed, and have covers. They’d also be professionally edited. And again, that’s money I don’t have. It costs about $2-3K to produce a book, whether it’s an ebook or a print book. A print book then incurs the printing and shipping costs (and warehouse costs, in some cases), but both a print book and an ebook cost the same to get it to that file that is print-ready. That doesn’t include the writing of it. And forgive me, but if it’s a well-written, well-produced book, it’s worth more than a dollar donation. If I’m going to spend $2K to get a book ready to sell off my website, I’m going to sell it for more than a dollar.
The other issue about taking donations has to do with the tax laws. As an individual author, I’m not a non-profit organization, nor am I a charitable organization. Nor have I created any kind of opensource anything that fits the definition of something that needs donations. My books don’t fuel computer development. They don’t offer any kind of problem-solving for software. So I would most likely have to declare any donations I took for my work to the IRS (and subsequently get taxed on them). Alternatively, I could call them “charitable gifts,” but I have to meet IRS definitions of a group or organization that is qualified to accept charitable gifts. Here’s the IRS page on that: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#en_US_2010_publink1000229641
What you’re proposing, actually, is the end of traditional publishing.
Because if every author started selling his or her own work off his or her own website, then there would be no traditional publishing. And unfortunately, a publishing industry helps authors in unseen ways–that is, sets some bars for book awards. Sets some bars for royalty rates. Sets some bars for library sales. Sets some bars for copyright laws and intellectual property rights. It provides a canon. And, in other ways, it influences a whole lot more than people realize.
Without traditional publishing, I have no job as a freelance editor because traditional publishing sets the standards that dictate the industry of my skill set. Libraries need traditional publishing so that they can determine quickly and easily through Bowker, Books in Print, and other standards what books are just released, and what books they need to consider purchasing for their demographics. If it’s a complete free-for-all out there, a library can’t determine those things quickly and easily. They’re understaffed and they can’t spend weeks trolling websites everywhere looking for literature to fill their shelves. Traditional publishing provides buzz, marketing, and, again, a canon that we all use to set our own bars. Without traditional publishing, academia, too, suffers because if there are no traditional means to publish academic books and scientific research, then how does a consumer know that a book is a legitimate scientific study? Currently, a book published by MIT Press holds a lot more sway with me than something Joe Smith, a retired accountant, publishes himself on quantum mechanics.
Does that make sense?
As many problems as there are with traditional publishing, it provides a canon, and it fuels lots of other industries: book design, book printing, editing (all levels), marketing, public relations, literary agents, bookstores (indies included), magazines that specialize in literature, and, by extension, libraries. The death of traditional publishing means the death of that canon, and the death of those industries.
I know there will always be thieves. Sadly, technology makes theft that much easier. I know trying to establish an ethical code among people who feel entitled to steal is stupid. And I think that even traditional publishing is starting to figure that out. What will happen is anyone’s guess — publishing is in transition right now, but I’m seeing authors get a little more independence and a lot more money through royalties–especially ebooks. It’s an interesting time, a frustrating time, and an exciting time in some ways. If I could afford it, I probably would try a self-publishing route. But that’s a financial investment I just don’t have at the moment. And it’s also a HUGE time investment.
How was that for a convoluted answer? I think I’m going to blog on how much money it actually costs to produce a book. Perhaps that’ll help readers see that publishers aren’t necessarily trying to rip us off. It’s just that for a decent product, you have to pay for its production.
What do you think? Would that be useful info for readers?
And seriously, thanks for bringing this issue up. I have actually considered self-publishing, but as I’ve said elsewhere here, I just don’t have the time/money to do it right. Others are very good at it. I don’t think I’m quite there.
Thanks again!
–andi
I just realized that I’ve revived an old article here, so please accept my apologies. It’s just a topic that I find to be really interesting.
I think you’ve answered my intended question as well as all the derivative questions that may have popped up after.
I think I wasn’t entirely clear in that I wasn’t trying to push you towards a self-publishing arrangement.
The main thing that I didn’t (and probably still don’t) understand is the lack of a mechanism for authors to recoup some sort of loss. Basically, why is it not allowed for you to keep everything exactly as it is with the publishers, but in addition, open up a paypal account and add a button on your website that would allow people to donate whatever they wanted for whatever reason? For example, “If you’d like to support this artist, please consider donating here.”
It’d be the internet equivalent of an open guitar case. Surely taxes would have to come out of it to keep it legal, but it would at least offer an opportunity for someone to contribute anonymously and help minimize what is really a publisher’s problem of distribution.
I’m curious what the scope is for accepting money outside of the typical author/publisher contract, because it seems as though you can’t accept cash for a book that somebody stole from Borders, but certainly you should be able to accept cash from somebody who appreciates your work? To get even more specific, if I was to write a check to Andi Marquette for however much money, and write “Being a great author” in the “For” field, would you be violating the terms of the contract with your publisher by accepting it?
It’s pretty interesting (if not a little bleak) getting an insider’s view of the industry. Thanks for spending time on this discussion.
-Em
I probably would not be violating the terms of my contract if you were to do that, since no goods are exchanged, but I wouldn’t accept that check anyway because of tax restrictions. I have to declare donations to the IRS, and a whole bunch of donations “for being a great author” might raise some red flags.
Though historically, artists have had “patrons.” Hmmm. Interesting. I must ponder this.
But you raise some interesting points and I think I”m going to ask around and see what I can find out, and what the tax restrictions are and all that good stuff. I’ll let you know what I find out! Thanks for stopping by!
–a