Novelist Quits Writing Due To Piracy

Captcha said:

I agree that it's a short-sighted/stupid policy on the publisher's part, but I've got to disagree with the idea that people are FORCED to commit piracy. Something not being available in my preferred format does not give me the right to steal that item, and it certainly doesn't FORCE me to steal the item.

If we, as writers and as human beings, believe that it's wrong to take someone's work without their permission, then we should stand by those beliefs even if it means we can't read that person's work, or can't read it in our preferred format.

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QFT.

Toothpaste said:

I agree with what people are saying, that making it less available isn't the way to go, and that most people who pirate aren't even reading the book in the first place.

But man, I'm stunned with some of the attitudes where evidently the excuse of "I want it now, and can't afford it otherwise" is a perfect excuse to steal someone's work. Like if you really wanted a shirt in a store and couldn't afford it, you'd steal it and then maybe buy another one from the same store later?

We live in a culture of entitlement, where people want things and they want them now. This means people go into crazy debt buying things they can't afford instead of waiting and saving up the money, or, I guess this also means people justify stealing.

Piracy is theft. And yes this author's reaction seems silly to me and not a solution to the problem, but that still doesn't mean piracy isn't theft.

(there's also a BIG difference between an author choosing to put her work out there for free, and someone else making that choice for her)

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Again, QFT.

Snitchcat - Wow, so if you were in a store and you couldn't afford a shirt you wouldn't just not buy it, you'd stuff it into your coat instead because the corporations need to learn to price things so you can afford them?

Okay then.


See, I don't think there's anything wrong with authors choosing to give stuff away for free to promote their work. There is something wrong though when someone else makes that choice for them.

And also I am sick of the argument that the big corporations deserve it, the people in the end who suffer aren't the big shots, but the little guys. In the store where you stole the shirt, the employees get docked pay, and the book you steal? Well that author doesn't get the money she deserves, but what I think is even worse is she doesn't get the sale. I have a one book deal right now, I am hoping my publisher expands it. But likely they will only turn it into a multi-book deal if the first book does well. If people are stealing my book instead of buying it, this means that all those people who could have contributed to my sales numbers aren't and then, well, my publisher sees that no one buys my books and doesn't offer me any new contract.

So instead of supporting an author you love, you've just made it so that she won't be writing any more of those books for you. Nice.

Why should authors incorporate other people stealing from them into their promotion model? Stores don't do that. Stores could eliminate their entire loss prevention departments if they just decided that the stuff people stole was a great promotional device.

That said, whatever for this lady. The world doesn't owe anyone the equivalent of a full-time salary for writing, and if she can't make ends meet with her writing, finding another job is a good choice. Making it into a ZOMG TRAGEDY is pretty narcissistic of her.

Folks, if you want to read a book and you can't afford to buy it, take it out of a public library, don't steal it. Writers love library sales.

Toothpaste said:

Snitchcat - Wow, so if you were in a store and you couldn't afford a shirt you wouldn't just not buy it, you'd stuff it into your coat instead because the corporations need to learn to price things so you can afford them?

Okay then.

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Please don't take my comment out of context. This is specifically about books. If I were in a store and couldn't afford the t-shirt, I would walk off without the t-shirt. And this assumes I have access to the t-shirt in the first place.

I also do not appreciate the tone of attack. Thank you.

Back to topic: I have encountered far too many advertisements for books that, when I come to "Click to Buy", the response is, "You must be a resident of the USA or Canada" or, it's "Does not ship to xxxx country". Or, and this is a good one: your credit card is invalid. Problem: the credit card is good for every country but the States. And PayPal is not an option for me.

But the answer would be to "walk off without the book"? Oh, easily done. However, I may as well stop reading anything by my favourite authors, whose books are not accessible to me! Thank you for cutting out 90% of my favourite past time: reading.

IceCreamEmpress said:

Why should authors incorporate other people stealing from them into their promotion model? Stores don't do that. Stores could eliminate their entire loss prevention departments if they just decided that the stuff people stole was a great promotional device.

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It's a different take. It's a different way of looking at something that can be exploited to create even more sales for the author. It's a suggestion. I believe I also mentioned "idealistic".

As I said, I have a different viewpoint; I'd rather not be attacked for having one. However, all that said, it doesn't mean I don't understand, or can't see what piracy is, or understand why the Spanish author decided to stop writing. I just don't believe it's the right decision. /shrug.

Snitchcat, you're changing the terms of the argument. "Can't afford to buy" is a different thing from "item isn't offered for sale in my country."

And I buy books from the UK that aren't issued in the US all the time; I just can't buy them from Amazon.co.uk. Your local bookstore can order US books for you.

Saying "If I can't order a book in the easiest possible way, I will buy a bootlegged copy" isn't really the strongest argument for your case. (It also represents a tiny fraction of unauthorized book downloads, in any case.)

Can't afford = not available for sale, in my particular case. And my local bookstore cannot obtain US books for me -- regardless of cost or availability.

So, I have to order a book using the most impossible / improbable or most difficult method possible? Even after waiting for a reasonable amount of time to see if the book does become available in my country?

And me representing a tiny fraction of unauthorised book downloads? That's a baseless assumption. I am allowed to play devil's advocate without announcing it.

You know what, this argument is going nowhere. Let's return to topic.

Snitchcat said:

Perhaps I'm being idealistic here. But, instead of fighting so hard against it with laws and prosecution, how about trying to integrate it, use it, exploit it? Yes, I realise true criminals exist, but them aside, how about those who are looking for access to your work without the hurdles?

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Who are these 'true criminals'? Don't they have the same mindset, that if they want something badly enough, it's okay to just take it? If there are too many hurdles, then theft is justified? We're not talking about medicine for a dying baby, here, we're talking about books.

I sympathize with the frustration of not being able to have access to something you want because of geography, but I can't go along with the arguments you're using to justify pirating that item. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we can't get what we want. It sucks, but it doesn't justify theft.

Snitchcat said:

Please don't take my comment out of context. This is specifically about books. If I were in a store and couldn't afford the t-shirt, I would walk off without the t-shirt. And this assumes I have access to the t-shirt in the first place.

I also do not appreciate the tone of attack. Thank you.
.

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I was not attacking you. I was stunned you would steal anything and offered you a comparison to try to show you how it's wrong.

And just because your excuse is "I'm not talking about t-shirts, I'm talking about books" and that you aren't talking physical books but ebooks, and that you are using the excuse of it's just because I can't get these books where I live, doesn't matter. It's still an excuse for stealing.

I get why you got upset by what I said in comparing what you are doing to shoplifting, and I get why you'd want to come up with reasons that what you're doing isn't the same thing. Shoplifting is so obviously wrong that you don't want to be accused of doing the same thing in what you're doing stealing someone's book. But you are. Just because you don't have to physically go into a store to do it and no one will chase after you, just because you can get away with it, well, that still doesn't make it right.

Interestingly when I was a teen I had friends who used the exact same excuses as you do for their shoplifting, and in fact used the "the corporations deserve it anyway" thing as well and I said the exact same thing to them as I did to you.

I'm sorry, you can try to convince us and yourself that what you are doing is somehow different, but it isn't. Now, you can acknowledge, "Yup, I'm doing something wrong, but them's the breaks" and fine, I can't say anything but be disappointed in you. But you can't defend the behaviour. It's wrong.

There are other ways to get the books you want to read without stealing them. Like IceCream said, go to your local bookstore and have them order them for you. And you know what? Like I said above, if you can't find or afford the book? Then you can't have the book. You don't have RIGHT to a book or a t-shirt or anything, just because you want it.

The excuse of "it's more convenient and easier for me to steal" is not one.

Sometimes we don't always get what we want. Trust me, I haven't gone clothing shopping in two years because I can't afford clothes and I finally saved enough to be able to go shopping this month. Should I have not bothered to save my money and just shoplifted instead?

Anyway, I know you're likely going to see this as yet more of an attack, and I would be defensive too in your situation, but I hope others reading this will see my point.

Okay, this is my opinion, it's my viewpoint, it's a suggestion. Also, it is a reason, not an excuse. But take it as you will.

Get off my back, stop trying to convince me that I must agree with you; I am who I am and I have my reasons. You have no evidence I have actually stolen anything. You only have me playing devil's advocate without notifying anyone.

My apologies for venturing an opinion which offers a different take.

Let's return to topic, please: the article that was linked.

Nothing wrong with venturing a different opinion, and I'm sorry that I thought you were speaking from personal experience. You wrote your posts in first person and very much as if these were your reasons (which are still in my mind excuses, but there you go, semantics and all that), not "could be someone's reasons for it".

Nonetheless, if you are just playing devil's advocate, my points remain the same. Change "you" to "one", and there ya go. You are allowed to venture a different opinion, but I am allowed to counter that different opinion.

Snitchcat said:

And me representing a tiny fraction of unauthorised book downloads? That's a baseless assumption.

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No, it's based on the Wiggin Digital Entertainment Survey, and the reasons given by the people surveyed for their unauthorized downloading.

I'm sorry your local bookstore can't order US books for you. That must be frustrating. May I suggest alibris.com, which I know ships to the UK, and accepts credit cards from all nations?

Ugh. I saw this a few days ago. It's right up there with the "If only 1 out of 4 paid me for those downloads, I'd be a bestseller!!!" rant from other authors.

Piracy sucks, yes, but most of those were never sales in the first place; you can't treat them like they were. Stopping writing isn't going to make the downloads go away.

Thanks for the suggestion, Empress. Unfortunately, I'm not in the UK -- would be great for books if I were. (For the record, I don't download pirated books; all the free reading I get is through works that are no longer under copyright, or they're paid-for local language books. Any English books I purchase are from the local store -- they carry only the really big names, though.)

Hmm... interesting link to the survey -- I hadn't seen it. I withdraw my statement of "baseless assumption".

Yes, Toothpaste, you're allowed to counter any opinion; I just didn't like feeling there was an attack. But anyway, opinions will clash and I'm sorry I wasn't clearer about playing devil's advocate from the beginning.

Downloads will never vanish, but their method will change over time. Do agree, that quitting isn't the answer. Then again, there seems to be much more to the situation than what's been presented in that news article. It would be interesting to see why the latest book's sales weren't as good as the previous publications' and see how much piracy truly affected that book's sales.

Snitchcat said:

Thanks for the suggestion, Empress. Unfortunately, I'm not in the UK -- would be great for books if I were.

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Oh, sorry. I was misremembering or conflating you with another poster; my apologies. Alibris ships pretty much everywhere in the world, though.

I'll be honest, I don't pirate books over it, but if something isn't out in digital form, that equates to a delayed purchase for me. When I add a book to my "want to read" list, the first places I look are bn.com for the Nook ebook or Audible for the audiobook. If it's not in either of those places, it goes to the back-burner of my wishlist -- something I'll ask for birthday or Christmas instead of gift cards, but not something I'm going to read now. Which, if you're an author looking for good sales at the time of release, isn't a good thing.

Was it wise for the publisher to only put out a hardback for fear of pirating? No. Does that make pirating okay? Heck no. Should someone give up the art they love because of pirating? I don't think that's worth even giving an answer.

IceCreamEmpress said:

Oh, sorry. I was misremembering or conflating you with another poster; my apologies. Alibris ships pretty much everywhere in the world, though.

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No worries. But if Alibris ships anywhere.... hehe... new favourite bookmark! Thank you! (^_^)

Miselle said:

"This kind of thing makes me wonder if some authors will simply refuse to go digital at all and keep the print."

Google will be happy to steal it, scan it, and put it out there. One digital copy = infinite number of digital copies.

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Last time I looked, though, Google didn't have a full copy. You could only look at a certain number of pages before you were cut off. Unless they offer to sell a digital version. Can they do that w/o permission from the author/publishing company?

Alessandra Kelley said:

Speakeasies, I'm tellin' ya.

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I don't buy the speakeasy analogy. One, during prohibition, there was NO legitimate source of alcohol; in this case, there are, for the vast majority of people, lots of legitimate sources. Two, the alcohol during prohibition probably wasn't stolen from its makers. In the case of pirated books, there are real authors, most of whom are not making a lot of money from their craft, being stolen from.

I'm absolutely open to practical arguments for how to reduce piracy, and I can see that lower prices may be one way to go. But that's just a harm-reduction strategy; it doesn't it any way negate the moral issue involved in people choosing to steal someone else's work.

I think, in the case of this author, there is more going on. She has an.... interesting history.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Good points. I went way too far in my analogy. Got caught up in my own cleverness, I'm afraid.

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Always a risk for writers (as I know far too well from my own flights of fancy!)

I'm not published yet, which probably makes my opinion on the matter totally wordless, but I think I'd rather people pirate my novel and actually read it than not buy it and not read it.

It's actually made me want to go and buy something by her. I'm curious.

I think it's a personal decision. I don't get why people attack her, nor why "I don't make enough money to buy your books" is a good excuse. That's the most bullshit thing I've ever heard to excuse theft. Go to the library.

And as for the "writing is a passion, get a real vocation" comment? What could be a bigger insult to a novelist? A vocation can't be a passion?

Give me a break. It sounds like she somehow acquired some real d*bags for fans.