But if that should change, you’ll see a paradigm shift, all right — a market flooded primarily with free but unedited work, except for those writers with other sources of income which would allow them to hire an editor. And as someone who’s judged her fair share of unpublished work over the years, I can assure you there are far fewer gems out there than you might want to believe.

Karen, I don’t think it’ll be that bad, to be honest. First, readers put up with some shocking work now. In my opinion. :-) But if shocking work is what people want to read, then who am I to say those authors shouldn’t become wildly successful?

Also, it’s possible to compete with “free”. How else can bottled water manufacturers make a profit? By understanding what needs are being met by illegal distribution–other than “don’t have to pay for it”–we can also find ways to compete with it effectively.

I’m also hoping that a market that allows for greater distribution and a more democratic selection of which works become successful (which touches on Robin’s last point above) will mean that the level of craftsmanship required to write a successful book will become higher.

Whatever the new-and-improved model turns out to be, I don’t think that’s what we really want. :)

But how do you know? Some change is actually good. ;)

just as Maybelline has to sell makeup in order to pay its workers.

But should consumers prefer Kirkland Borghese, for example, does that mean they are responsible for Maybelline’s failure? If mascara makers flood the market with a bunch of mascaras that are about the same level of effectiveness, does that shift the supply/demand curve? In one way it’s so wonderful that a large number of authors get a chance to have their books placed into the stream of commerce. But if the mechanism is not in place to effectively market all of those books equally, or if readers prefer some authors but not others, it can disable authors who do not have a solid reputation and guaranteed market share. And what about those of us who tend to be more book loyal than author loyal? I don’t think the market is at all set up to favor our preferences.

Plus, as a reader, I feel all the time that books are available that I have *no idea* are out there. If it weren’t for other readers and bloggers, and for Jane sending me books and recommending books, I would be even more limited in my awareness of what’s out there. And that’s frustrating to me, too, because it constructively abridges my own reading experience and cuts against the diversity I crave. And it can make me less adventurous, ironically, because my reading selection becomes more and more shaped by the books I have to review and those recommended to me. And when I do venture out and am disappointed because I don’t get the diversity I seek, I can become even more gun shy. And it’s a bitter irony, IMO, because on the one hand there are so many books to choose from, and on the other it often feels like there’s little substantive diversity among those offerings.

Plus I have limited time and money, which also limits my risk-taking behavior when it comes to even being in a position to seek out and purchase books by new to me authors. Which is one of the reasons that an occasional free read by a new author can get me started in a whole new reading binge (I can’t tell you how many ARCs have led to *multiple* sales of books by new to me authors). So authors can insist forever and a day that we readers drive the market, but IMO that’s only true in an abstract sense, because the market is delimited by authors and publishers long before we partake of its offerings.

But beyond that, I’m struck, frankly, by the way readers are so consistently placed in the position of carrying the burden for authors’ success or failure. When you talk about authorial “rights” to be paid for writing, I can’t help but feel that it’s the publisher who bears that particular burden. IMO you do not have that kind of contract with the reader.

Do I feel any individual reader has some sort of obligation to “pay” me by buying my books? Of course not. But my publisher’s sole source of revenue — from which I do get paid — is from book sales, just as Maybelline has to sell makeup in order to pay its workers. Since my earnings are entirely dependent on how many people buy my books, in a way that does put the burden on The Reader. At least, with this current model. Not knowing what my publisher’s other expenses are, I’m really not in a position to know whether they could, or should, pay me more through a higher royalty rate.

No, my contract isn’t with the reader, but with my publisher…who promises to sell as many copies of my books, to as many markets, in as many formats, as they possibly can (and thus far, I’ve had no complaints in this regard). If readers don’t buy enough of my books, I may well find myself out of contract. If they cease buying anybody’s books, nobody gets a contract.

Just sayin’. :)

As for piracy…right now, although I loathe and detest it on principle, I don’t think it’s having that huge an impact on most author’s overall sales. But if that should change, you’ll see a paradigm shift, all right — a market flooded primarily with free but unedited work, except for those writers with other sources of income which would allow them to hire an editor. And as someone who’s judged her fair share of unpublished work over the years, I can assure you there are far fewer gems out there than you might want to believe.

Whatever the new-and-improved model turns out to be, I don’t think that’s what we really want. :)

Hmm, next time I’ll wait for Robin to comment before I unleash my comment diarrhoea on this thread.

LOL, Kat! I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to comment, I wasn’t going to comment, so you see how well I practice self-discipline!

I know my perspective on this issue is shaped by a bunch of different things, from my understanding of IP law and theory to the fact that I give away my intellectual property to the public sphere regularly in the course of my employment (and I don’t know how you’d measure whether I’m being paid fairly for it — I know what I’d say, lol), which means that I have a different perception what we’re all entitled to for our creative efforts and how important a strong public realm is for continued creativity. In any case, I agree with you that we’re on the cusp of a potential paradigm shift, and IMO there are other possible models out there that will benefit authors much more than they are now, even if it may take some time to make that shift successfully.

So? you might say.

The bit that makes it interesting are the comments (not the roughly $1675.00 in lost royalties so far, which, for this ebook author is a hefty chunk of change):

“Thanks so much for sharing. These look really good. Did some research on the author and I don’t suppose you have the second Huntingdawn book as well, do you?”

‘Aint that just a kick in the pants.

All those hours and hours of hard work going for free. And then they can’t even be bothered buying one lousy book (the 2nd HD book).

In this instance, the get-something-free-promotes-buying-concept = Epic Fail

I don’t see widespread interest in looking at how these different models might work beyond individual promotions. More’s the pity, IMO, but then the economy and other (not piracy) factors may eventually incentivize more risk-taking.

I think maybe we’ll see this happening more with a younger generation of writers who are comfortable with the idea of CC and filesharing and have a more intuitive understanding of how these can work to their advantage. I see this happening now in non-fiction, on blogs, etc. It’s hard to do if you’re used to how traditional book publishing works.

Hmm, next time I’ll wait for Robin to comment before I unleash my comment diarrhoea on this thread. I think you’re all sick of me by now. (I’m sick of myself, to be truthful.)

It’s hit way too close to home-I’ve had roughly, and a low estimate, about 10k worth of illegally downloaded files of my work that I’ve seen online in the past two years. Those are only the files I’m aware of and I’m aware there are quite a few that I’m not aware of.

One of my ebook titles has actually had more illegal downloads than I’ve had sales, and that’s a mega-punch right in the gut. I know how to take hits and I take them pretty well, but considering some of the negativity I’ve had to handle over piracy, this is just an area where I’m not going to take the punches as well as I’d like.

So I’m stepping out of this discussion.

Anyway, if half of your favorite authors just stopped putting books out, you wouldn’t miss them? Would you really expect to find somebody telling their exact sort of story elsewhere?

Shiloh, as a reader and to be brutally honest … I’m not sure. I do have favourite authors and favourite books. My favourite books are not always written by my favourite authors. I’ve also bought many books by favourite authors that were utterly disappointing and I wish I hadn’t spent good money on them. (And you know, I don’t actually blame the author—mostly, I blame the publication process that didn’t polish the book to the level that I expected.) So in terms of what I’m spending on my favourite authors now … I’d probably spend more if they could write more quickly, but I also want my money back for some of the crap I’ve had to read (obviously, the good outnumber the bad since they’re favourite authors).

Think about four or five of your favorite writers-there’s a good chance that if this change were to come to pass, at least half of them would no longer continue to write for publication.

In the worst case scenario, maybe. I doubt we’ll get to that point. I’d love it if we can find a better business model for publishing stories—I really, really would. And I’d love it if that model compensated authors more fairly for their work (as in, less going to the non-writing bits of work and more to the writer).

But you know, publishing as it stands doesn’t always give me what I want. Look at Laura Kinsale. How many people have asked when her next book will be out? How hard is she finding it to get a publishing deal that she can be happy with? Look at Kenyon and Ward, who have produced great books but also some horrible ones (IMO ONLY). Where’s the reward for readers who buy 400+ page books that could have been edited to half that and not lose the story, or a book written in larger fonts with wider margins but priced according to page number? Readers take risks, too, when they buy books and support their favourite authors.

Yes, I do see a great deal of the current mass pirating problem as a shift in values.

Too many people have this sense of entitlement. They think they are entitled to my hard work, to Nora’s hard work.

Too many pirates don’t view books as the same sort of goods that they’d view a meal, a house, a coat. They know if they steal those, it’s wrong and they can get arrested.

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree. To me, the shift in values isn’t just about a sense of entitlement—in the negative way that many/most authors see it. To me, the shift is saying something about the way we consume stories, what we’re willing to risk for convenience, how we try new authors. It’s not black and white to me, and that’s probably where we’ll never agree.

The book Free Culture articulates pretty much what I think about piracy (illegal sharing) and I really recommend it. You may not agree with it, but I think it gives some good insights as to why people are sharing/downloading illegally. He differentiates between commercial piracy (which, I agree with him, is wrong) and the kind of piracy that I’m talking about, which is really filesharing (no profit to the filesharer). And it also has a very interesting discussion about technology and how it has given copyright owners much more control over their products, which wasn’t possible before.

For example, I can go to Borders and read an entire book for free. But what would usually happen is that I’ll go and browse, and after reading a chapter or two (or less), I’ll either decide not to buy the book, or I’ll buy it. (Or maybe I’ll read all the good bits and then put it down. Anyway.) The bookstore might shoo me away, but the author and the publisher can’t control my behaviour. Now take ebooks. Where would I browse an entire ebook? Very few places, because publishers or authors can and do control my (legal) access to those books. And I can extend this comparison to UBS and libraries. YES, they are different in terms of their consequences for authors and publishers, BUT from a reader’s point of view, what mechanism allows us to buy cheap digital copies of books to try new authors, or to complete a series (that we may have already spent $100+ on), or to stretch the budget, and so on? When you tag all illegal sharers as “pirates” and put them in the same box as commercial pirates (those who illegally sell pirated copies), you do a disservice to readers and potentially miss some legitimate reasons why people illegally share files.

I can’t stress enough that I don’t think we will lose written storytelling. And I want authors to be paid for their work—probably even more so than they already are. But I also think that technology has changed the business environment. The book, in its current form, and publishing in its current model, will inevitably change. Part of this change is being driven by the readers in ways that neither publishers nor authors can fully control.

But beyond that, I’m struck, frankly, by the way readers are so consistently placed in the position of carrying the burden for authors’ success or failure. When you talk about authorial “rights” to be paid for writing, I can’t help but feel that it’s the publisher who bears that particular burden. IMO you do not have that kind of contract with the reader. Which is not to be construed as a defense of piracy. But I think that it’s a scapegoat for other, more significant issues, some endemic to the economic downturn and others arising from the way publishers are doing business and authors are contracting with them.

Are authors arguing that it’s piracy that’s imperiling their writing careers?

Imperiling, no. And hopefully we aren’t moving to some sort of model where we have to rely on something other than writing our books to continue writing them.

But piracy is hurting writing careers. It adds up to fewer sales and in these tough times, those with fewer sales are the ones who don’t get contracts renewed or their series get axed before they are ready. Is piracy the sole contributing factor…no, I don’t think so. Poor economy plays in, market saturation plays in…anything that causes fewer people to buy books.

I also think there are authors out there who have taken risks and shown that they can use CC or free books or, yes, torrents in ways that benefit them.

I don’t see widespread interest in looking at how these different models might work beyond individual promotions. More’s the pity, IMO, but then the economy and other (not piracy) factors may eventually incentivize more risk-taking.

That answer to that is…many authors will stop writing them.

Actually, I think that’s more drastic than I’d predict. I think the form may change but stories will endure. And I think there will still be a market for stories. The question is what will the market look like? There are authors who are being pro-active about pursuing these questions, and others who aren’t. As a reader, I’d prefer that authors were more pro-active, but I know it’s not going to be feasible/comfortable for most to do.

That happens, everybody loses, including the pirates.

Again, I doubt it. Lots of people are willing to put out stories for free. Maybe they won’t be as polished, but once they find an audience, who’s to say they’re any worse than traditionally published work?

But readers have faves. And those faves may very well quit writing. I’m sorry, but nobody could ever replace the stories that I find with Lynn Viehl, JD Robb, Mercedes Lackey, etc. Think about four or five of your favorite writers-there’s a good chance that if this change were to come to pass, at least half of them would no longer continue to write for publication.

Please note…that doesn’t mean we’d stop writing. I’d write…for myself. And I would just leave the stories on my PC. Many would go unfinished. Most would be unpolished. Because it’s the incentive of selling the story that drives a lot of us to finish and to polish.

Anyway, if half of your favorite authors just stopped putting books out, you wouldn’t miss them? Would you really expect to find somebody telling their exact sort of story elsewhere?

I’m sorry, but many of those who currently write for a living would find another way to make a living if the publishing industry suddenly turns upside down and writers are no longer paid in a manner similar to what we are paid now.

Will other people write and give those stories away for free?

Sure.

But will they be by the authors that gave up writing because writing was no longer worth it as a job?

No. Because many of us would stop. As far as writing stories go, there’s a million people out there who’d love to have people reading their stories. But authors like Nora, like SL Viehl/Lynn Viehl, there are not a dime a dozen. Their particular voices are unique-they are irreplaceable. And if they stopped, readers would very much miss them.

Yes, I do see a great deal of the current mass pirating problem as a shift in values.

Too many people have this sense of entitlement. They think they are entitled to my hard work, to Nora’s hard work.

But people are entitled to have a roof over their heads. If homeless people went into another person’s house and just took up camp…is that right?

If somebody went to a restaurant, ordered their favorite meal and then it came out only…bleh…but ate it anyway, could they then only leave 25% of the food bill as payment? Not unless they want to get arrested.

Too many pirates don’t view books as the same sort of goods that they’d view a meal, a house, a coat. They know if they steal those, it’s wrong and they can get arrested.

But books, whether people see or not, take time to create, time to publish, time promote-it’s work, just like making a coat, a meal, a house, and selling it.

I have no issues with other, legal methods of reading for free. I adore libraries, share books, have bought my share of used. But all those books WERE bought new at one time and thus added to the author’s earnings.

But what of *illegal* sharing, say between friends, or between a closed group of 10, 50, 100, 1000, 5000 people? At some point, someone also bought the (usually e-)book being shared. This is the grey area I’m most interested in.

So I’ve little sympathy for the fleecees of those scams.

Nor have I, and I think if you wanted to screw around with piracy, you’d just offer a gazillion gibberish files or incomplete books, or books with missing pages. Make it harder for people to find what they need, and they’ll appreciate the convenience and security of obtaining books legally.

A few weeks ago, another Harlequin author stumbled upon what appeared to be a piracy site…one which apparently had, not only our more recent books, but books which weren’t out yet…and in some cases (yes, it gets better), books which WEREN’T YET WRITTEN. This one asked for a fee to download the books (which obviously gets into serious illegal ground, as opposed to merely morally repugnant ;-))…but one of more astute colleagues discovered one could enter ANY set of words, and wouldn’t you know…that “title,” too, was available for download, just register and give us your credit card for access.

You can guess what’s coming, right?

Yep, site’s a scam. Someone linked to a message board crammed with complaints from folks all over the world who’d been fleeced, being directed to porn sites and having their credit cards charged over and over…and none of them ever got the books/films/whatever they’d originally wanted.

Now it seems there are more of these so-called “free download” sites cropping up all over the web.

I have no issues with other, legal methods of reading for free. I adore libraries, share books, have bought my share of used. But all those books WERE bought new at one time and thus added to the author’s earnings. Illegal downloads harbor far, far more potential for abuse, even if the extent of that abuse can’t be proven. So I’ve little sympathy for the fleecees of those scams.

The term “come back to bite you in the butt” comes to mind. ;-)

I’m sorry, Kat, but the ideas that a writer should work for ‘tips’ is insulting.

Shiloh, there are plenty of writers whose books I’ve bought through the UBS or through the library that I wish I could pay royalties to. But I’m not buying a new book to do that (unless it’s to give to someone else as a gift, which I’ve done before). I don’t think I suggested tipping, but I wouldn’t actually mind having some way to compensate a writer outside of the current model.

Please don’t misunderstand—I don’t necessarily want you all to suddenly be entrepreneurs—the stuff I’ve been talking about are just suggestions—they’ll work for some, they won’t for others. And I believe I’ve said this already—if ever these non-writing activities take off, I’m confident there will be middlemen to handle these parts of the business. I mean, if you think about it, the process of writing a book involves the author, the publisher, the editor, the printer, the marketing dept, the cover artist, the wholesaler, the retailer, etc. It’s not like authors are being asked to MAKE books themselves now. In a similar vein, however the market evolves, I think most of these tasks will be outsource-able so authors can do what they do best.

I don’t want writers to beg for payment—I think you guys deserve to be compensated—but the system doesn’t always let readers do it either.

If the general idea becomes that people don’t need to pay to read my hard work, then I won’t give it to them…period. It can remain an idea in my head or something I jot down to amuse myself.

I’ve already stated previously that I don’t think the art of storytelling (or story writing) will disappear, but that the form in which we tell and receive stories will probably change. And it’s changing already.

That answer to that is…many authors will stop writing them.

Actually, I think that’s more drastic than I’d predict. I think the form may change but stories will endure. And I think there will still be a market for stories. The question is what will the market look like? There are authors who are being pro-active about pursuing these questions, and others who aren’t. As a reader, I’d prefer that authors were more pro-active, but I know it’s not going to be feasible/comfortable for most to do.

That happens, everybody loses, including the pirates.

Again, I doubt it. Lots of people are willing to put out stories for free. Maybe they won’t be as polished, but once they find an audience, who’s to say they’re any worse than traditionally published work?

To be honest, I don’t know how much more I can contribute to this discussion. I think maybe the problem is that I’m assuming that illegal sharing (as opposed to commercial piracy) is a symptom of a larger cultural shift in values. And since many authors in this thread see that only in a negative light, we’ll probably just keep raising the same issues over and over again.

Yanno, Shiloh, every time you open your mouth online, I start nodding like a bobble-head in agreement. ;-) I think I need a new internet acronym: WSS (what Shiloh said.)

LMAO.