I'm just not cool with this
Jun. 1st, 2010 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomi_jayI feel like I'm constantly blogging about JA Konrath at the moment. I haven't become obsessed, I swear. But, let's face it, the guy is doing interesting, if controversial stuff, and as a writer, I want to keep up with it all.
Anyway. This post is the latest in Konrath's self-publishing adventure, in which he posits that ebook piracy doesn't harm sales, and offers to prove it by letting people download an ebook of his for free, and encouraging them to post it to torrent sites (or whatever? This is where I admit I know nothing about the terminology of file-sharing), and so forth. He'll watch his sales and see if this impacts on them negatively or positively.*
Now, I find this fundamentally flawed to begin with. Konrath has offered this book for free. This is not the same as me going to a torrent site and taking a copy that somebody uploaded without his permission. If you throw open the doors of your house and tell people your possessions are up for grabs, you can't then say it's theft. The circumstances are completely different. All this experiment will really prove is people like free stuff, and that's kind of a given anyway.
Will it affect his sales? I don't know. I imagine probably not to any great extent. I imagine a few people who weren't Konrath fans before will probably become fans and thus pay for his other books. Great. Good for him. Again, I don't think that proves anything either way - there are too many variables. And I don't buy into the argument that "If a free option is available right next to a paid option, and people take the freebie, that PROVES they wouldn't have bought the one for sale because they took the freebie." I just can't get behind that logic. If Konrath charged for the book, people who wanted it badly enough would pay for it. If you give them the choice of not paying for it, they'll more than likely take the freebie. Again, all this proves is that people like freebies.
But that's all kind of minor stuff compared to my main niggle: the idea that piracy isn't a problem, or at least that, if it is a problem, we should all just shut up and ignore it because it's going to happen anyway. Either that, or jump on the boat and hoist our flags alongside the pirates. No. Sorry. I'm not okay with that.
Authors are providing a service, same as anyone else in a job. You can argue the merits of that service, you can argue that some books are crappy and you wish you hadn't paid for them. Of course you can. Same way you can eat a horrible meal in a restaurant and wish you hadn't paid for that. But writing a book is a job, and if you do a job, you get paid for it. That's just a basic rule in life. I wouldn't come to the office every day and work for free. I wouldn't expect anyone else to. So why should I write a book and give it out to people for free?** Why shouldn't I get paid for that?*** Why should anyone who makes a living from their writing accept theft as an unavoidable aspect of their career?
And why would Konrath encourage that theft? Because that's what he's doing, when I boil it down. He's saying, no, ebook piracy doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything. Well, I disagree. I think it does matter. I think encouraging ebook piracy devalues the author's job, and the product they produce. I think authors deserve to be paid for doing their job. I think if my boss at my day job refused to pay me because somebody was stealing pens from my desk, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Okay, I'm not pretending to have answers here. As I said, I'm sure Konrath's sales won't suffer because of his experiment. But then again, I don't think his experiment has as much to do with piracy as he thinks, so that's another matter. I'm not pretending there's necessarily any effective way to stop piracy. But why be complicit in it? Maybe you agree it's okay, or not a big deal or whatever, but for those who don't agree, why make them complicit in it by stating out loud that it's not a big deal?
I honestly think the phrase that sums all this up best is "controversy creates cash." I expect Konrath ultimately will benefit from this experiment because people are talking about his books and drawing attention to them from sources that might not have paid attention before. I guess the adage about no such thing as bad publicity works here too. It just makes me sad that so many people seem to think this is okay. As usual, I'm interested in what other people think, mostly because, as said, I really don't know a whole lot about digital piracy, torrents, etc. Shout at me, people.
*I wonder how many people go ahead and download the freebie just to prove that Konrath's right and traditional publishing is broken, rather than because they want to read the book? I see a lot of commentors on his blog in general doing the whole This Will Show Them All song and dance, and I suspect people who want validation of their decision to self-publish will support Konrath's experiment just to gain that validation.
**I'm not against authors giving out freebies by any means; there are lots of good reasons to do so. But this isn't the same situation in my opinion.
***I say "I" in a purely hypoethetical sense because I don't yet make enough money from my writing to afford the bus trip into town to cash my royalty checks. But you know, I one day hope to make enough money from writing to live on, and if I go around encouraging people to pirate my books, I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot with that one.
Anyway. This post is the latest in Konrath's self-publishing adventure, in which he posits that ebook piracy doesn't harm sales, and offers to prove it by letting people download an ebook of his for free, and encouraging them to post it to torrent sites (or whatever? This is where I admit I know nothing about the terminology of file-sharing), and so forth. He'll watch his sales and see if this impacts on them negatively or positively.*
Now, I find this fundamentally flawed to begin with. Konrath has offered this book for free. This is not the same as me going to a torrent site and taking a copy that somebody uploaded without his permission. If you throw open the doors of your house and tell people your possessions are up for grabs, you can't then say it's theft. The circumstances are completely different. All this experiment will really prove is people like free stuff, and that's kind of a given anyway.
Will it affect his sales? I don't know. I imagine probably not to any great extent. I imagine a few people who weren't Konrath fans before will probably become fans and thus pay for his other books. Great. Good for him. Again, I don't think that proves anything either way - there are too many variables. And I don't buy into the argument that "If a free option is available right next to a paid option, and people take the freebie, that PROVES they wouldn't have bought the one for sale because they took the freebie." I just can't get behind that logic. If Konrath charged for the book, people who wanted it badly enough would pay for it. If you give them the choice of not paying for it, they'll more than likely take the freebie. Again, all this proves is that people like freebies.
But that's all kind of minor stuff compared to my main niggle: the idea that piracy isn't a problem, or at least that, if it is a problem, we should all just shut up and ignore it because it's going to happen anyway. Either that, or jump on the boat and hoist our flags alongside the pirates. No. Sorry. I'm not okay with that.
Authors are providing a service, same as anyone else in a job. You can argue the merits of that service, you can argue that some books are crappy and you wish you hadn't paid for them. Of course you can. Same way you can eat a horrible meal in a restaurant and wish you hadn't paid for that. But writing a book is a job, and if you do a job, you get paid for it. That's just a basic rule in life. I wouldn't come to the office every day and work for free. I wouldn't expect anyone else to. So why should I write a book and give it out to people for free?** Why shouldn't I get paid for that?*** Why should anyone who makes a living from their writing accept theft as an unavoidable aspect of their career?
And why would Konrath encourage that theft? Because that's what he's doing, when I boil it down. He's saying, no, ebook piracy doesn't matter. It doesn't affect anything. Well, I disagree. I think it does matter. I think encouraging ebook piracy devalues the author's job, and the product they produce. I think authors deserve to be paid for doing their job. I think if my boss at my day job refused to pay me because somebody was stealing pens from my desk, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Okay, I'm not pretending to have answers here. As I said, I'm sure Konrath's sales won't suffer because of his experiment. But then again, I don't think his experiment has as much to do with piracy as he thinks, so that's another matter. I'm not pretending there's necessarily any effective way to stop piracy. But why be complicit in it? Maybe you agree it's okay, or not a big deal or whatever, but for those who don't agree, why make them complicit in it by stating out loud that it's not a big deal?
I honestly think the phrase that sums all this up best is "controversy creates cash." I expect Konrath ultimately will benefit from this experiment because people are talking about his books and drawing attention to them from sources that might not have paid attention before. I guess the adage about no such thing as bad publicity works here too. It just makes me sad that so many people seem to think this is okay. As usual, I'm interested in what other people think, mostly because, as said, I really don't know a whole lot about digital piracy, torrents, etc. Shout at me, people.
*I wonder how many people go ahead and download the freebie just to prove that Konrath's right and traditional publishing is broken, rather than because they want to read the book? I see a lot of commentors on his blog in general doing the whole This Will Show Them All song and dance, and I suspect people who want validation of their decision to self-publish will support Konrath's experiment just to gain that validation.
**I'm not against authors giving out freebies by any means; there are lots of good reasons to do so. But this isn't the same situation in my opinion.
***I say "I" in a purely hypoethetical sense because I don't yet make enough money from my writing to afford the bus trip into town to cash my royalty checks. But you know, I one day hope to make enough money from writing to live on, and if I go around encouraging people to pirate my books, I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot with that one.
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Wandering in from Google
on 2010-06-02 04:20 am (UTC)I wouldn't come to the office every day and work for free. I wouldn't expect anyone else to.
I get your point and agree that artists should be paid for services rendered in some form, but there are a ton of exceptions to the money rule. Plenty of jobs are non-paying jobs: volunteer work and internships. Internships are the foundations of the publishing industry, ironically.
Maybe you agree it's okay, or not a big deal or whatever, but for those who don't agree, why make them complicit in it by stating out loud that it's not a big deal?
I could flip that around and say that by complaining about piracy all of the time, other authors are making me complicit in an enforcement of copyright that I do not wholly support or believe in. It cuts both ways. I take this issue seriously. I do NOT want people confusing those who share my work illicitly with those who steal and resell for profit (which is what the definition of commercial piracy actually is).
Regardless of my own ethical/moral stance on file sharing, as an author IRL, I have to set aside moral rights and look at the issue from a business perspective. Some consumers who buy also steal; in the music industry, consumers who steal buy the most. Consumers who buy but do not steal resent authors who act like they believe most consumers steal. Authors who rant about "stealing" create many resentful consumers. Combine this trend with the advent of a digital generation that consumes information in paragraphs and not pages, multilaterally and not linearly, usually for free and not by subscription, and it spells a bleak future for strict moralists.
I prefer to focus on the positive instead of spending my energy on the negative and wasting my time.
If you think JAK's stance negatively affects your bottom line, you should take steps to counter it. I emphatically disagree with anyone who claims file sharing is a black-and-white issue and that they hold the unimpeachable moral high ground in this morass that we call the technological revolution.
Re: Wandering in from Google
on 2010-06-02 09:29 am (UTC)Plenty of jobs are non-paying jobs: volunteer work and internships.
I actually wrote a long paragraph about this, then deleted it because I was getting too off-topic. I do write a monthly magazine column for which I don't get any monetary reward, but do get my name and a website link every month, and get a bottle of wine or two here and there. So yes, of course I acknowledge not all jobs are paid in money, but usually there is some kind of reward, whether it's personal satisfaction or alcohol or whatever. Anyway, my point (probably not articulated very concisely) was that if you're writing for a living, you would expect to make money from that, same as I expect to make money by coming to the office every day.
I emphatically disagree with anyone who claims file sharing is a black-and-white issue
I emphatically agree that this is not a black-and-white issue. I really do. I believe there are rarely moral or legal absolutes. To use a rather sketchy example - smoking weed is illegal. It has long term bad effects on your mental health. I don't do it. But I don't shop my friends who do it to the police either, because smoking weed doesn't make them scummy wife-beating maniacs.
I feel the same way about ebook piracy. I don't think it's going to lead to social and economic armageddon, nor do I think everyone who downloads books illegally is a nasty, sneaky, amoral bastard.
I'm not a digital naysayer: I don't believe we're heading into some grim future where technology will reduce all writers to homeless hobos or anything. At the same time, I reserve my right not to agree with ebook piracy. I'm not going to spend my life crying over it, nor am I going to support it.
Can I do anything to counter it? I honestly don't know. But I don't think that means I have to like it.