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Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture
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."
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.
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?
"With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of taxpayer-funded artificial scarcity - of artistic monopoly -- goes away. It terrifies me." There, fixed that for you, Mr. Alexie.
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?
(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
It is worse than that -- the person in question doesn't even know what is happening in his own profession. From TFA,
"I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King..."
Stephen King has already released a no-DRM ebook and made a lot of money from it, by releasing it piece by piece and requiring a certain minimum number of paid downloads before the next part of the story is released; this was discontinued because King himself could not figure out where to take the story. Perhaps if these people spent less time whining about how their fans are not paying their publishers, they could be more aware of how the Internet can change things and how they can use computers to publish their stories in new ways, connect with their fans, and provide their books to more people.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"