Piracy
There's a lot of talk on writer loops these days about Internet piracy. As an author who is affected, I have to say up front that I am against it. It takes me a minimun of six months to write a book, which amounts to untold hours of sitting in front of my computer, then more hours making whatever changes my editor deems necessary, then reading galley pages, so you can imagine my chargin when I see people uploading my books and giving them away for free as if they had every right to do so, with no regard for the hours of hard work it took for me to write that book.
I know the lure of "something for nothing" is attractive, but people who give away that which they do not own are not only breaking the law, they are depriving others of their livlihood.
Losing a few thousand dollars in royalties may not mean much to mega-authors like Stephen King or Nora Roberts, who sell millions and millions of books a year, but it makes a big difference to me and to many other authors, many of whom have to work at a second job because writing doesn't pay enough to pay the bills.
In publishing, sales are everything. If an author's sales go down enough due to pirates stealing their work and giving it away, that author will soon find herself without a publisher.
I hope I haven't stepped on any toes here. I don't mean to offend, but this is a growing problem that effects nearly every author I know, and not in a good way.
For more info, you can read an excellent article published in the New York Times
Here.
Mandy
I know the lure of "something for nothing" is attractive, but people who give away that which they do not own are not only breaking the law, they are depriving others of their livlihood.
Losing a few thousand dollars in royalties may not mean much to mega-authors like Stephen King or Nora Roberts, who sell millions and millions of books a year, but it makes a big difference to me and to many other authors, many of whom have to work at a second job because writing doesn't pay enough to pay the bills.
In publishing, sales are everything. If an author's sales go down enough due to pirates stealing their work and giving it away, that author will soon find herself without a publisher.
I hope I haven't stepped on any toes here. I don't mean to offend, but this is a growing problem that effects nearly every author I know, and not in a good way.
For more info, you can read an excellent article published in the New York Times
Here.
Mandy
posted by Mandy | 1:12 PM
2 Comments:
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about purchasing your titles from second hand stores? A lot of my personal library comes from Goodwill or Savers due mostly to the fact that you can find books that may not otherwise be readily available.
I don't have a problem with that, since you can't lend it to more than one person at a time, and it's unlikely to be passed around more than a few times, whereas pirate sites can download a book to thousands of people.
Plus, used book stores are a good place to buy an author you've never tried before, and, as you mentioned, a good place to find books that are out of print.
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