Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture 494
joeflies writes "CNN published an article entitled 'Digital Piracy Hits the e-Book Industry.' It quotes the following statement by novelist Sherman Alexie: 'With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away. It terrifies me.'"
The article also points out a couple of interesting statistics for a "slumping" industry beset by piracy: "Sales for digital books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That's more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers," and "consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers."
No shit. Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if the consumer didn't feel ripped off, exploited, and raped by every business and company they have to deal with we'd be more receptive and less possessive of whatever goods we happen to come across. Half the damn stuff in my house I don't really own, I license or lease or rent it or whatever. Damn right I like the idea of open source and control.
When you don't understand something... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's simple: don't offer your unfounded opinion.
Clearly people pirate books they wouldn't have bought... I know one kid who has like 4000 ebooks, he's probably read two of. Also, making them "more" digitized doesn't matter. When there's one digital copy, there's 10,000,000. They are right about one thing, making them easier to buy (and part of easier means less copy protection) will mean they will sell more.
Just look how iTunes completely stopped selling anything when they started offering non-copy-protected books - oh wait, they didn't.
His publishers are a bigger problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just checked the kindle store; He has five books available there.
I then checked amazon.com and found pages and pages of paper books of his.
Now, why would people pirate his books?
Perhaps because they aren't legally available in ebook format?
Just missing the right term (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is a suprise ? (Score:4, Insightful)
ebook readers buy more paper books than other readers, and this is a suprise ?
Someone who is willing to spend 200-400 dollars on a e-reader is already a heavy reader, practically by definition. As much as I love my e-reader, there are a bunch of books its not good for - photo books, textbooks (no, A4 pdfs on a Sony e-reader are not a good option.) And for my favourite authors, i'll buy the hardback and get it signed by the author, and then lend to friends.
Isn't the Library already a way to get books free? (Score:2, Insightful)
bought 3.1 times as many books.. from Amazon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing ebooks to physical book sales is obviously stupid, because Amazon can't track how many physical books I bought at local chains, or the used shop downtown.
Let me paraphrase that (Score:3, Insightful)
The loss of something isn't inherently bad. That a change terrifies someone you might respect does not make it bad.
Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies him (Score:5, Insightful)
He blames piracy on open source culture yet (Score:5, Insightful)
he keeps on using internet for everything. he doesnt object to being linked in forums/content sites using open source scripts for their engine, he doesnt object to using google, which not only uses numerous open source elements to power its operation but also provides open source back to the community, he probably is thrilled when someone gets to buy his books by finding him the through the searches google provides, and many many more.
well, see, mr novelist, apparently you either dont know zit on what you are writing about, or just one of those who want everything self-centric.
if you want to prove otherwise, drop your usage of ANYthing that includes open source. including google, any and all links it provides to your novels/ebooks, any potential traffic/sales you get from forums/sites using phpbb and the similar open source engines. and then lets talk. else, youre just another bastard to us.
The real story should be. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'm always. . . impressed. . . by the ability of the 'news' media (and people in general) to turn things around completely ass-backwards. The anecdote that the CNN story leads off with is about the Dan Brown book "The Lost Symbol". The book sold millions of copies, but was pirated over a hundred thousand times in the first few days. To me, that says "9 out of 10 People willing to pay for stuff they *could* have downloaded for free". The *real* story, which CNN apparently wishes to ignore, is that the vast majority of people are honest, and wish to pay the authors whose books they like, *instead* of pirating. The *real* story is the pirates are the vast minority of people. Of course, that doesn't generate page views.
As for Sherman Alexie . . . why do I care if he (she?) is terrified? People get terrified about all sorts of irrational things. Many children are terrified of the dark. Why do I care if someone is irrationally terrified of something?
Tie to Open Source is unsubstantiated (Score:3, Insightful)
I think ultimately this has nothing to do with Open Source and everything to do with people wanting something for nothing, and if they can get it, they'll take full advantage. Likely the tie to Open Source comes from the fact that people who are extremely cost conscious are going to prefer Open Source products because they align with their pricing criteria (The same way illegal copies of products align with their pricing criteria)
-Runz
Re:What do you expect. (Score:5, Insightful)
(CNNNN) -- When Dan Brown's blockbuster novel "The Lost Symbol" hit stores in September, it may have offered a peek at the future of bookselling.
On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. This was seen as something of a paradigm shift in the publishing industry, but it also may have come at a cost.
Less than 24 hours after its release, printed paperback copies of the novel were found in library sites such as the New Your public library. Within days, it had been read for free more than 100,000 times.
Library loans, long confined to books, are spreading to music and movies. And as electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, smartphones and Apple's much-anticipated "tablet" boost demand for books, experts say the problem may only get worse.
"It's fair to say that loaning of books is exploding," said Dilbert Drongo, an industry expert and professor of marketing at Fordham University.
Sales for library books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That's more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
Statistics are hard to come by, and many publishers are reluctant to discuss the subject for fear of encouraging more libraries. But library loans may pose a big headache in 2010 for the slumping publishing industry, which relies increasingly on electronic reading devices and e-books to stimulate sales.
"Libraries are a serious issue for publishers," said Carnt Hakkit Book Group in a statement. The company that publishes Stephenie Meyer's wildly popular "Twilight" teen-vampire series says it "considers copyright protection to be of paramount importance."
Authors are concerned as well.
"I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King or James Patterson or a really big bestseller that when their books become completely lendable, how easy it's going to be to loan them," said novelist and poet Sherman Dyslexie on Stephen Colbert's show last month.
"With the open-door culture of the Library, the idea of ownership -- of artistic ownership -- goes away," Dyslexie added. "It terrifies me."
And it's not just bestsellers that are targeted by librarians.
"Textbooks are frequently loaned, but so are many other categories," said Ed McCoyd, director of dubious policy at AAP. "We see shelving of professional content, such as medical books and technical guides; we see a lot of general fiction and non-fiction. So it really runs the gamut."
Lending of music, thanks to cassette, CDs and other devices, has been a threat to recording companies for more than a decade. Over the years, the record companies tried different approaches to combat library loaning, from shutting down free publicity to encrypting songs with digital-rights management software to suing individual customers.
Although legal lending of music persists, Apple's online iTunes store is now the world's biggest seller of music.
To some industry observers, this may be where the future of the book industry is heading as well. But talk to publishers and authors about what can be done to combat libraries, and you'll get a wide range of opinions.
Some publishers may try to minimize lending by delaying releases of books for several weeks after digital copies go on sale. Simon & Schuster recently did just that with Snorkel King's novel, "Under the Aquadome," although the publisher says the decision was made to prevent cheaper e-versions from cannibalizing hardcover sales.
Some authors have even gone as far as to shrug off physical book technology altogether. J.K. Pot has thus far refused to make any of her Hairy Porter books available physically because of library fears and a desire to see readers experience her books in pixels.
However, some evidence suggests that authors' and publishers' claims of damage from libraries may be overstated.
Recent statistics
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When you don't understand something... (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's ok to steal, as long as you steal more than you could possibly have bought legitimately otherwise? Sounds great. I guess you'll have no problems then with me pirating millions of dollars worth of money. It's not like I could have earnt it legitimately anyway. And if they just made money easier to make, I wouldn't have to.
Closed source scares me more (Score:1, Insightful)
The idea that a corporation ( and it is corporations who are behind this - the artists receive 10% of the purchase price if they are very lucky) can hold the public to ransom over an artefact which has become so widely known and appreciated that it has been transformed into a part of the common culture, is despicable.
There is a vast difference between a struggling author having his work pirated and consequently being prevented from earning a living, and a work known by everyone, for which the author has already earned a substantial income, being withheld from those who cannot afford to pay the tax.
The images of the twin towers in flames, the famous publicity shot of Marilyn Monroe standing over the grating, the films I saw in my youth and the books which were held out to me as classics, and which I was forced to read (albeit gladly) are mine just as much as they belong to the corporations which 'own' the various copyrights.
There is a point at which a creation becomes so widely read or watched, that it ceases to be the possession of just one organisation and an eternal source of revenue for them.
The politicians who connive with big business to impose these 'taxes' are the real culprits in all this. They are crooks and fraudsters who legislate to legitimise their thievery. Vote them out. Organise and stand for office yourselves. You can do better.
Re:If the formula is flawed the result means nothi (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:bought 3.1 times as many books.. from Amazon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor do they have the ability to track your ebook purchases from other websites!
...
But really, your point is moot. Amazon can and only tracks sales from within their own domain, which doesn't make their point "obviously stupid". Their customers buy 3.1 more ebooks on average. They have a shit ton more customers than your used shop or local chains, I would wager. In fact, I doubt most of those shops even sell ebooks. I hope next time you remember that when a website or a chain says, "consumers did this more than this", and you know they can't track from other vendors, it's implied that they mean their own customers.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:5, Insightful)
From a writer who has no idea how technology works [wikipedia.org] you can expect kickass cyberpunk books! If, and only if, he has a good imagination.
If your books don't sell, don't blame piracy. Blame the books.
100,000 times? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA states:
Where do they get these numbers from? Do Rapidshare release download stats? Is there some secret BitTorrent download counter/tracker these people have access to? This has got to be a figure someone has just pulled out of their ass.
So a question for you (Score:3, Insightful)
What would you propose as a replacement? See we have an interesting quandary: We like creative works of all sorts. A massive part of our entertainment comes from this and these days we even need it for other things. So we want people to be able to work on "virtual goods" as it were. Well, these people still need to eat. They need physical goods to be able to do their work. That means they need to get paid. So what do you do about that? There is our current system, where we declare virtual goods to work like real goods. You have to pay for each copy you want. This works pretty nicely in a capitalist economy. It encourages people to make works that others want, allows them to support themselves doing so if they are good, gives more rewards the greater the demand for a work is and so on.
So, let's say you do away with that. You say "Information scarcity is artificial, from now on, all information can be copied freely." Ok, how then do the creators of it eat? What do they do to make money? Their works are no longer viable. This means they have to get other jobs, their creative works can only be a hobby. The "Well just sell support!" that is often parroted for software doesn't work at all in these other areas.
You run in to the very real problem that we want people to spend their time creating works that are nothing but information. However, if you want them to do that, you need to pay them. So if you want to eliminate the concept of IP and have all information be unrestricted, you've got to come up with a system for how to compensate the people who spend their time making it.
Re:His publishers are a bigger problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
exactly. Piracy is an economic problem. If you have piracy then you have an major imbalance in your supply and demand chain. Try to fix that first before blaming everyone else.
People wanted portable music files on their computers and they got them where ever they could. movies, ebooks etc offer what they people really want and they will mostly buy the legal copies.
Even in somlia the piracy is an economic problem. 20 hijackers get a million plus dollars for 2-3 months of work. it breaks down to each getting some $20,000 who then spend that money on the locals $20,000 for three months work isn't bad by USA standards in somlia it worth a lot more. especially since one can't get harmed by international maritime law. They feed you a meal better than you have had in weeks, give you a quiet place to sleep while they detain you for a while and then let you go.
Solve the economic demand side of the product and realize that your not supplying things that there are honest markets for.
Re:WTH is Sherman Alexie? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Expert" changed its meaning. It used to mean "someone who knows something about a subject". Today it's "random loudmouth that shares your opinion on it".
Re:What do you expect. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's standard routine. If your business fails blame someone else.
The idea went away? That idea never stuck (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be honest here, how many people do you know that really had "that idea" of IP ownership? How many talk about "licensing" Windows and how many "buy" it? How many "license" a book and how many "buy" it?
And that set in with the open source movement? My dad, who can't tell a toaster from a netbook and would think of a medical condition hearing about "open sores", is the proud "owner" of a very extensive dead tree library. And it's his firm belief that he "owns" those books, the idea that these books don't belong to him never crossed his mind.
So let's be sensible here. The idea of intellectual property never made it into public conscience. And until recently that was very much in the interest of the same people that now bemoan it.
Re:The real story should be. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to wonder though, about those millions of people who bought "The Lost Symbol"... It would be easy to assume that they did so because they are good and honest people. But it could simply be that 9 out of 10 people don't have any idea where to find pirated digital books, or have access to do so.
In my eyes, the publishing market has always been about convenience. People, in general will pay for something if it is convenient for them to do so. As soon as it becomes more convenient to simply download it off the net (including the risk of breaking the law) they will. Sure, there are still lots of people willing to then buy the book after reading a pirated copy, but I'd be willing to bet it's a LOT less than 9 out of 10.
Re:Isn't the Library already a way to get books fr (Score:2, Insightful)
Lost sales? If I borrow the book from the library, chances are I wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
You might also not have ever encountered the book you borrowed! libraries are great discovery mechanisms... that's why we still have STACKS and don't all just sit at the CPU pinpointing exactly what we want.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, your comment is exactly what I expect from someone who's never made their living as a writer, artist, or musician.
Ever been in a room filled with end users, with you representing IT, and being told how the systems should work by a bunch of people who can barely send an email?
That's how these discussions feel, except the posters are the end users.
There are very few if any full time artists/writers/musicians on this website, and they are not well represented here.
Re:I have a personal anecdote to share on the matt (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I'm just afraid of being locked out of my own collection (losing it overnight as with kindle, unable to transfer to new laptop/reader, unable to copy passages out of it for fair use or search/index it using my software, etc). Now that iTunes and Amazon offer unprotected music it's a great place to shop (I prefer amazon as it doesn't require bloatware in a VM to download, but iTunes often has better bitrate). Thing is that I'm not big on music, and most of what I like is free legally or I already have.
I really wish someone would do the same for books. As long as piracy provides a cheaper, more convenient, and higher quality product (all of which are currently true) how can legitimate distributors hope to compete? Well they can't win on price, but there's no excuse for not winning on convenience or quality. And that would be enough to win me over, despite my not having a lot of money. Offer a better quality, DRM-free product, with an easy buying process, at a sane price, and you'll have my business.
public confusion over the term "open source" (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the average person has very little idea what the term "open source" actually means. It's a technical term that's vague to them. These are the kind of people who probably also aren't clear on the term "operating system," etc.
I've seen both positive and negative misinterpretations flying around. The usage in TFA seems to be open source == piracy, or maybe open source == free as in beer. If you really parse the quote from the article in terms of the actual meaning of "open source," it doesn't make any sense. Actual quote: "With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of [artistic] ownership [...] goes away." Meaning: "People on the internet are used to being able to see the original programming instructions used to create their software, and with that culture, the idea of [artistic] ownership [...] goes away." It obviously doesn't make any sense. It also doesn't make sense when you consider that open-source licenses like BSD and GPL can only be enforced because the original authors own the copyright.
There are also people who see "open-source" as a feel-good term, like "green," and they apply it inappropriately because they want some of that goodness to rub off on them. For instance, I went to a symposium in August here in California where the results of Schwarzenegger's Free Digital Textbook Initiative were announced. Participants included open-source types from Curriki, CK-12, and Connexions, as well as teachers, politicians, IT folks, hardware vendors, and textbook publishers. The only traditional publisher that submitted any books to the initiative was Pearson, and all they submitted was a consumable workbook, not actual textbooks. Pearson's rep referred to its workbook as "free and open-source," but in fact the workbook is not open source in any sense. (It's distributed in a non-editable format, and it's not distributed under an open-source license.)
It's unfortunate that we haven't ended up with terminology that's more understandable to the average person. We had people like RMS advocating the term "free software," and others like Eric Raymond pushing for "open source." This had to do with an ideological agreement within the free software/OSS movement. The problem is that neither term is easy for outsiders to understand. "Free software" simply implies free as in beer to most people. They equate it to "freeware," i.e., low-quality, closed-source Windows software that you download from someone's Geocities page as a .exe file. "Open source" isn't understandable to most people, because they don't understand the distinction between source code and executable code.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is saying that copyright is bad (well, not me at least). But copyright, thanks to you in the USA*, is now basically indefinitely.
Copyright is a balance act, benefiting the creator and ripping of the public culture
* because of you exporting the idea of an indefinitely copyright to all Europe and rest of the world. In addition to the ridiculous flight safety laws. Thank you very much America.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Insightful)
If I trespass on your property and build something from your materials, I don't own the result, even though it's "my" creation. Buf if I design something, then I can legally prevent you from building that thing out of your own property; in effect, I usurp some of your (and everyone else on the planet's) property rights.
Your main argument seems to be that because someone put a lot of work into something, he is entitled to get money for it. Why did he put a lot of work into something in the first place? Perhaps because he knew he had this artificial scarcity and taxpayer-funded policing of people. OK, but that doesn't give us a reason for having it in the first place, before anyone was expecting such policing.
It seems the only justification is "because we haven't come up with another model to fund the large initial investment in creating a design". I think initially people accepted this, because the monopoly was of a fairly short duration, short enough that it was worth the benefit of this new funding model. But that's long gone, and the public domain has been shafted.
Re:So a question for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's start with the facts:
1.Information can be copied at virtually no cost.
2.The benefit of an intellectual work is multiplied by the number of people who use it.
3.Creating intellectual works has a cost.
The current system tries to satisfy 3 by limiting 1 in order to make the work behave more like a physical object, so that people will have to pay to get the work. Limiting 1 greatly reduces 2, and has all sorts of collateral damage.
If we leave 1 intact, intellectual works have a far greater benefit to everyone. The challenge is to come up with a way to satisfy 3, without harming 1 and 2. The free-market solution to problems like this is to allow market participants to come up with innovative solutions. Those that solve the problem best stand to make the most profit, so there is incentive.
With the current sub-optimal system in place, there is no incentive to come up with a free-market solution, since the current system is effectively subsidized by taxes, and it even makes it dangerous not to play, due to the possibility of frivolous lawsuit. There is no justification for the current system, because it's been created almost entirely to benefit a small group of people, and it's been done at a cost of everyone's property rights. And no, ideas aren't property. Property is a way of dealing with conflict over scarce resources; if a resource isn't scarce, then everyone can use it without conflict. So it's not that "I have to come up with an alternate", it's that "you have to justify your continued infringement of my property rights".
Re:When you don't understand something... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not paying for "information", you're paying for a "performance" by a certain person or group.
There are only a handful of storylines. The art comes from the telling, and not every writer can do that well.
You're paying to have a particular writer tell you a story without the expense of traveling to hear him tell it in person.
Because technology has made it easy to duplicate a performance, first in print, later in recordings, now digitally, doesn't mean you're paying for "information".
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Insightful)
"With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of taxpayer-funded artificial scarcity - of artistic monopoly -- goes away."
I've always wondered why so many people on slashdot find the right to profit of your creation to be such a bad thing. (I.e. artificial scarcity). It's especially odd for a site full of software engineers .etc. whose livelihood often depends on artificial scarcity.
It's worth noting that grandparent does not criticize artificial scarcity, just calls it what it is in order to contradict the novelist's claim that it is a form of property. Whatever grandparent's opinion on the value of copyright may be, the statement that it is not like physical property under US law is correct.
I rather like copyright, particularly as I'm an aspiring novelist, but I have no illusions that it's a type of property or that my novel should be "mine" forever should I be fortunate enough to get it published. I recognize that copyright is just a limited right that I'll get to exercise for a long span after the work is released.
Re:No shit. Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Half the damn stuff in my house I don't really own, I license or lease or rent it or whatever."
And the other half you pirated?
Re:What do you expect. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are very few if any full time artists/writers/musicians on this website, and they are not well represented here.
Do they need to be? It's not like writers/artists/musicians are traditionally known for understanding the business of publishing music/art/literature. They just know how the system screws them.
Let's see - the artists feel screwed. The purchaser feels screwed. Hmm... maybe the distributes are screwing both of them in order to squeeze money out of both ends?
The Role of Society in Society (Score:3, Insightful)
There's an article [latimes.com] up at the LA Times about Peter Drucker. If you don't know, Druker was an economist who said things like:
The enterprise exists on sufferance and exists only as long as the society and the economy believe that it does a necessary, useful, and productive job.
As pointed out above by noidentity and others, people who have risen in the economic hierarchy thanks to institutions built by the people for the people owe their success to society's edifices as much as themselves. Sure someone may be a talented corporate cost-cutter with the nickname "Chainsaw" or a writer nobody has ever heard of, but they would be flipping burgers if it wasn't for the artificial man-made constructs of incorporation and copyright.
There's an implicit Ann Rand-ian quality to Alexie's thinking: progress for all depends on the special qualities of a few geniuses who naturally deserve the good life. Putting aside the fact that most admirers of Rand ignore that her elite characters all had a social conscience and gave back, few people who claim to be rainmakers stop to consider where they got the water that makes the rain.
But that's all background really, the issue that Alexie is talking about is the economic value of what he does. That value is assigned by society and I think it's fair to say that the generation growing up doesn't see as much value in it as he does. And they may have a point. Upsetting as it may be to artists, would the world fall apart if it was even harder to make a living doing what they do? Did Avatar give us free electricity? Feed Africa?
The artistic community might also want to ask itself if copyright had not been extended to ridiculous lengths and more books that people actually want to read were in the public domain, would that have prevented a lot of piracy? Experience has shown that where legal alternatives exist for people to get what they want they will chose those alternatives. I don't think too many people explicitly know how many works they have been denied by copyright reform but I think they can sense it.
The conflict we have now exists because this generation's instincts clash with the status quo. It remains to be seen whether or not the interests represented by Rupert Murdoch`s media machine can keep the lid on things.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
However, his royalties may. Sooner or later we will have to consider, as a culture, what to do if established authors, and promising young authors, decide to abandon writing because too many freeloaders reduce author profits below subsistence. I'm not talking about the **AAs, I'm talking about individual authors who may have contracts with reputable publishing houses that do not insist on exploitive relationships. And what about the psychological deterrent to creativity? JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in desperation on welfare. Might she have done so if she believed her work would be distributed freely without any compensation to her?
The writers need to adapt. Back in the 1800s, hugely successful authors like Charles Dickens used serials to captivate audiences. Each person needed to buy each issue of the magazine to continue reading the story, and later it would be published in a book if it was a success. Today, that is relatively rare in traditional publishing, though it does still happen with manga.
Perhaps established writers can do what Stephen King did when he distributed an e-book, he would release a new part after certain sales were met. Or perhaps they can sell chapters to put on various profitable blogs. Perhaps they can release things in blogs themselves.
For every story about an author not making enough money on a book, there are ten more examples to counteract it. The creator of XKCD survives only on XKCD merchandise. And XKCD is marketed exclusively to open source culture. The comic itself isn't updated daily, and theres no ads on the page. Sounds like a recipe for failure right? No, because people liked it, it survived. Surely then the tale of Homestar Runner would be one that ends in failure as they are all hard-to-do Flash animations with lots of bandwidth, yet the creators still make a living, still make new cartoons and recently released several video games based on it. All this while no ads on the page. There are many other sites that make a living for the author, User Friendly, CTRL+ALT+DEL, MegaTokyo, and Penny Arcade and more all make a living for their authors.
Do we want promising youths to avoid careers in writing because online distribution has hurt profitability? Would J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Norman Mailer have enriched our lives if they needed other jobs? And Robert Heinlein said that many of his stories were written "to buy groceries".
Promising youths are not going to avoid careers in writing because now publishing is free. Look at teenage blogs sometime and you will see more poetry than in an English class, stories, etc. If they write something and the community likes it, the community will sustain it.
Without some requirement to pay for books, would enough people do so?
There is always going to be a market for physical books. Now, 10 years from now, 100 years from now. Its not going anywhere. And those are physical things and can't be duplicated for free.
Since a large part of the US's trade brings our nation income from royalties on Hollywood movies, is it possible we need to make sure what we produce has value in the world market to improve our balance of trade and thereby reduce inflation and unemployment? Of course the answer is yes-- so maybe the question we should be asking is how to puncture the evil media conglomerates (like the **AAs) to make sure the wealth from our nation's creative minds does not unduly concentrate wealth and power.
You are just like the RIAA. You see a -possible- reduction in sales, ignore history and ignore people who don't fit your definition and make a flawed conclusion. A) Before there was any copyright people wrote B) Today, people can release content for free, without ads and still make a living C) E-Books and online publishing increase the amount of writers because it costs no money to get them published and you keep your rights.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously... how did "artists" survive before copyright? How did the renaissance get going? Who said that shitty writers had a human right to earn a fortune from derivative novels at the expense of draconian laws and computers that are locked down to prevent even the most basic control by their owner? Huh? Huh?
The MARKET determines what is shitty or not, not you. And guess what, "shitty" doesn't mean "not good." It means people don't want/like it. It could be the most brilliant thing in the world. You didn't like Harry Potter? So what? Millions of other people did. So yes, if millions of people are reading/enjoying my work, you'd better believe I have a right to make a living off of that.
The "hobbyist art is good enough" argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, these people still need to eat. They need physical goods to be able to do their work. That means they need to get paid.
I have bought four guitars, two amps, cables, effect pedals, a saxophone and a clarinet, pooling together summer job wages, birthday gifts, savings of allowances, et cetera. I've been in a recording studio twice; I've performed on the local town square once, and at several events locally. Back when I was a kid (~14-18yo) and didn't have any real money.
Musicians want to play. Actors want to act. Writers want to write.
The publishers acted as quality assurance; they did searching and pruning, so we could have the best art. You know what also does that? A moderation system (/.). A review system (amazon). A simple counting mechanism ("most downloaded this day/week/month/year").
None of them are perfect. So aren't the studios. And some artists already choose a life of material poverty in return for wealth in terms of self-expression and self-actualization.
Exactly why is it that the people's need for art can't be satisfied well enough this way? Some amateurs are really good. Oh, so we'll go to the theatre and look at people rather than go to the cinema and look at screens, because making films is rather resource-intensive (i.e. expensive). Or we'll watch more shorts and/or more animated films. Won't we still be entertained?
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)
A real artist makes art because they have to.
The world may wind up losing out on some vapid entertainment (the aforementioned Harry Potter) but real artists will continue to make art and will continue to eek out livings by doing so.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is all old news.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
'The MARKET' does not have copyright, if you want to argue about 'the MARKET', pick a field that doesn't have government protected monopolies.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm talking about people who write books, write or make music, movies, etc. If you have a family or want a life or good health you can't spend your time on the road touring nor can you afford to spend all your free time producing content for which you earn little income.
You are ignoring the basic fact that most people who write books and write or make music don't make a living doing it. I know a lot of people who do that. The same is becoming true of movies. We all know examples in music, so I won't relate them. I'm sure we all have co-workers who are part time musicians.
An example from book publishing, I once met an author who was in the process of getting her fourth SF/Fantasy novel published. I had noticed a couple of her previous book while browsing at Barnes and Noble. When I met her she was working as a part time secretary for a professor. None of her novels had resulted in what could be considered a full time salary for any length of time. Yet her publisher was still publishing them, and she was still writing them.
I have a friend who spent a significant part of his net worth making a movie and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to get it shown at major film festivals.
I have a friend who paints, and tries to sell his paintings online, for about $2500 a piece. He maybe sells one a year.
So stop with the "I've gotta make a living at writing/making music/making movies" crap. Most of the people who write/make music/make movies would do it even if there weren't going to be a big paycheck, because most of them don't get a big paycheck anyway. Even with established artists (with rare exceptions) once the publisher has their cut, there's never much left for the artist.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)
It never was if your work was only ever mediocre. Millions, or perhaps billions of books, musical works, paintings and recordings have been made during the course of mankind's history, but of those only a comparative few will ever be of interest to future generations. Every so often, a musicologist (say) might unearth some gem from a few hundred years ago, but a lot of such work remains unplayed simply because it is of little interest.
Being an artist is only a viable job if you're good at it: there's no substitute for talent.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?
Oh, Cry me a river. Really - if 80% of all the authors producing today simply stopped, would anyone notice? This hugely precious literary ecosystem you seem to speak of doesn't and has never existed - it's a figment of a money-grubbing, Disneyfied publishing industry.
Ever been in the fiction section of a bookshop in the last 75 years? Almost all of what's on the shelves is deriviative garbage published by a miniscule number of gatekeepers desperate to reproduce the last blockbuster than sold more than 10,000. JK Rowling?? Without too much subjectivity, JK Rowlings books are complete shit! Fiction publication is like music publication: for every vapid block-buster there are literally thousands of similar works (some arguably far better) that barely sell much over a couple of thousand copies in their entire print runs despite ridiculous marketing efforts.
Meanwhile, really worthwhile books will always get written because the energies of art and intellectual freedom will always far outweigh trivial economic consideration. For one thing, what do you think authors did before the perpetual copyright we have today? Do nobody bother to write books before 1850?
The time is ripe for change. Piracy will decimate the money-grubbing, Disneyfied publishing industry and not a moment too soon. Don't fancy making tuppence from your pipsqueak idea for a murder mystery? Get a proper job!
Re:What do you expect. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Your statement that "most of the people" would do it event if there wasn't going to be a "big paycheck" misses the point unless you think a "big paycheck" is $80 to 100 grand a year. It's not."
For most people in most places that IS a big paycheck.
You assume that piracy is a threat to these people. That is not a valid assumption.
"You also don't account for the drop in production and quality that occurs when you have to spend 40 to 50 hours a week in your day job to make ends meet."
Then they probably weren't that good to begin with. Just because you are passionate or have fans doesn't mean you have marketable talent. Life kind of sucks that way. Hobbies are things you like to do that cost you money. Otherwise they would be your profession. On the other hand, maybe they have the passion and talent and just need to be seen and heard. Piracy might just be the ticket....
Usenet Was Here (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello, the '80s are calling and want their news back.
Re:I have a personal anecdote to share on the matt (Score:3, Insightful)
"I will pay $1 for a book, maybe $2 and that would be severely pushing it. I will not pay $5, $10, $25 for an E-Book. Sorry, but no. There is virtually no cost to distributing an E-Book. There is no paper, ink, shipping, storage, typesetting, etc... there is simply pressing a button to make a copy."
The bulk of the "cost" of the book is not in those things. It's the same model with music and movies. Bestsellers subsidize the failures. And they try to make a large profit.
Ultimately, you pay $25 for ebook for the same reason that you pay it for the hardback, for the convenience. You want it now. If you don't want it now, you are not their target demographic and thus do not matter to them.
Personally, I think you have a skewed sense of pricing between mediums. You equate a book to a music single. I would equate a book to an album or movie. A short story would be more equivalent to a single. In short, what you want is never going to realistically to happen. You can create a single in a day. You can't do that with a book. One has a greater production cost.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody has the right to profit. If you build a snowman, you can't complain that nobody pays you for it even though it does improve the landscape. You have the right to try to profit, but society has no obligation to bend backwards for you.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:3, Insightful)
> Your few friends and acquaintances are not proof of anything and they don't refute what I wrote.
Ok. Then take 99% of the guests at any sci-fi convention or any other literary convention.
Any well informed "fan" knows the idea of the blockbuster author is a myth. It's the top of a
very large pyramid with most of the actual talent being on the bottom like slaves.
Expansive copyright primarily benefits large corporations rather than the talent.
Re:No shit. Duh. (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh, I have a desk that I built myself that is a direct copy of something I saw in a furniture store. EXACT copy, spent about 10 minutes measuring it out one day in the store, left and built it myself. Turns out doing so was about 40% cheaper.
Wouldn't that be pirated furniture? I made a copy of an existing product using my own resources. Just like copying an mp3.
Neil Gaiman and Baen have it right (Score:3, Insightful)
Baen with Webscriptions and its Free Library has been making e-books in multiple formats available for years. They've found that after an author puts a few books into the Free Library the sales of that author's backlist (including the freely-available books) rise. I suspect that they get more sales & readers for Webscriptions as well - if I can buy individual ebooks for $6 or the entire set of releases for the month (up to 4 "frontlist" new publications plus some backlist) for $15, I might as well cough up the couple of extra books and see which writers I like.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm.. How exactly do I as the author of a book make money by allowing you to write fan fiction and freely copy my work?
First of all, "copying of your work" is not involved here; fanfic writers build on top of it. So your nice story about adventures of Lagrumar and Meleanne (who, of course, got accidentally teleported onto a planet of robots) will not be touched - you wrote it, and nobody can change what you wrote.
Now consider your protagonists and the universe that you developed. As a businessman you can leave it all to yourself, and possibly write a few more novels in that setting. Chances are, it will take you a few years, and there will be some serious disconnect between the Book 1 and the Book 2 because there is nothing to bridge the gap, to keep the interest going. It is also frustrating for the reader to encounter loose ends that you never had a chance to work out ("where did Evilron go, and what prevented him from stopping Lagrumar on the Bridge of Destiny?") By the time your second book is out the mystery of the first story is largely forgotten.
So cultivation of the fan base, using whatever makes them happy, helps you too. First, you have a chance to follow up on side stories and minor protagonists that you would never do yourself. This is often the case with fanfic set in Star Wars or ST universes - filling the gaps. Most of ST fanfic, for example, is underground, unauthorized, and you take your chances when you read it - much of it is awful. If, however, you, as the author, have some influence over the writers, you can help those who can write, and you have a good chance to convince the rest of budding writers to either do something harmless instead, or to write what they can write. Instead of War and Peace, for example, they can try themselves with a short story of a lone soldier in one battle of that war.
All that adds to your customer base, increases your presence among the readers, increases the number of books set in your universes (mostly through the free labor of your fans) and makes your chances of landing another contract much better. This is only my humble proposal, of course, and I am only dealing with one specific question - how to add value to books.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:3, Insightful)
I was with you all the way to the last sentence -- Get a proper job!
What exactly is a "proper" job? One where you go to work every day for minimum wage, doing the same thing over and over and over, hating the job and the paltry contents of the pay envelope at the end of the week? Do you have a "proper" job that doesn't involve a money-grubbing corporation of some sort and isn't solely in the pursuit of money?
And to play devil's advocate for a moment, what if everyone listened to your advice? Everyone gets a "proper" job, leaving no one to make new movies, music, video games, television shows or books. What do you do after work when our culture disappears? How do you entertain yourself? What do you do for fun?
You say that if 80% of authors stopped writing, no one will notice. This seems to assume that the good ones aren't motivated by money and only the mediocre talent wants to get paid. Look around. That's not real life.
Besides, would we really rather have Stephen King working down at the local hardware store? Would the world be a better place if Charles Dickens had joined the military or been a banker instead of writing stories? Edgar Allen Poe tried the military, but failed to get through West Point. Should we put Bob Dylan in a telemarketer job? Willie Nelson could be a WalMart greeter. Springsteen could probably get elected governor of New Jersey. Pete Dougherty and Amy Winefeld maybe could run a day-care center. Samuel L. Jackson could be a great car salesman, but don't even think about trying to get him to come down on the price. Yeah, proper jobs for all.
There's enough literary playground in that concept for a good book. At least a comedy film. I'd go direct to DVD, though, because it might only be funny for one or two viewings.
But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?
The question was not about the "money-grubbing, Disneyfied publishing industry," it's about how to keep the authors writing without the need for publishers. "Get a haircut and get a real job" was an insult when George Thoroughgood wrote a song about it and it still is. Do you decide the 20% that shouldn't get a proper job? Or is Simon Cowell to remain the global arbiter of that? If so, I'd rather wade through the other 80 percent in search of something that rocks a bit more than the sticky-sweet pop parade he puts on.
As for the original article, railing against dear old Ben Franklin's public library system because people can read your books for free is even more ludicrous than the RIAA's campaign of stupid. There's more to a library than just the fiction section. You can't copy things at a library. You can borrow one physical copy of a book to read it, but only one person at a time can access its contents. Still, hundreds of people may read one particular copy.
While I'm willing to take chances at the library, I'm not going to buy a book from an author whose work I have never read. Similarly, I'm not going to buy music I've never heard.
And a last thought on all of this is that the only people complaining about the internet (or the library) are those whose success and popularity may be directly attributed to it.