Dear Readers and Fellow
Authors,
I was recently shocked
to be confronted with a viewpoint I honestly hadn’t even contemplated before. I
tried to make sense of the words that to me seemed to be excusing ebook pirates
for stealing my works and actually laying the onus of preventing piracy on
me, the author. It seemed to say I was responsible for making my books more readily available *in all formats* around the
world, or else the piracy was somehow my fault. To say that I was appalled would be putting it mildly. I want to respond,
not to an individual, but to everyone who has taken part in piracy, either as
an uploader or as a downloader, as well as to those who would argue for there being any legitimacy in doing so. Because there are other options.
This thing I do, this writing, is
my career.
I am not a hobbyist.
Writing is my job. I
put in anywhere from 40-90 hours a week when my health permits, and I work
weekends, holidays, long after sane folk have gone to sleep and long before
they wake. It’s what I do. I love writing. I love creating new worlds, and
honing my craft. I love it right down to my bones, but I still have a bottom
line. I still have a family to support. I still have a kidlet who will be going
to college in less than three years. Right. So, there I was, flabbergasted by
this recitation of all the reasons people pirate when I was hit by the
following epiphany and realized I have something to say to the people who
pirate, and the people who would try to explain why it is ever an author’s
fault when someone steals from them.
Frankly, I don't care why they
pirate.
I care that they are
stealing from me. One of the points made was that people are afraid to write to
authors, that they consider them somehow too important to bother. Before I was
an author I wrote to authors. Loads of them. The ones in this m/m genre
especially were so kind about writing back.
I don’t think authors are special,
not to be approached beings.
You don't know my
story, I get that. Here is a quick and dirty version. You don't know about how
serving my country led to me having two risky surgeries for spinal cord
compression nor how I spent two years recuperating from them. You don't know that
during that time when I wrote to those authors to thank them for the free books
they'd posted during the first Goodreads m/m romance groups Christmas Stuff my Stocking Anthology, because that
book literally saved me from a pretty bleak depression, many of those wonderful
authors replied by sending me more free books. Those were real people, reaching
out in real time to ease someone else’s way. You don't know that my car was
repossessed during that time, or that my daughter and I nearly became homeless
and only because my landlady let me pay what I could, when I could did we not
end up living in shelters. You couldn't know that. You don't know that during
that time we only ate by the grace of a local food pantry.
During that time I never resorted
to stealing books.
I even had a friend
make copies of ebooks that she tried to give me. I can’t tell you how much I
longed for those books. But I waited until I could eke out three dollars here
and five dollars there to buy them.
So honestly?
I don't care if someone
is poor. There are millions of legit free books out there. I don't care if they
don't have a credit card. Again, there are tons of free, LEGITIMATELY FREE books
out there, some of which were written by me. Every single time a pirate steals
a book of mine they are literally taking food out of my daughter's mouth,
stealing away her college fund, and pushing me closer and closer to having to
abandon writing altogether so that I can spend my time doing something to earn
money that is not so easy to steal with impunity.
Listen up. Pirating has real effects
on real people in the real world.
It’s pretty much the
same thing as someone stealing into your house and taking from you, stealing
your car, or taking money from your bank that was set aside to pay bills. You'd
be angry, wouldn’t you? Especially if you’d worked hard to earn those things and
even more so if the work was dear to your heart.
Again, writing isn't a hobby for
me, it's my job.
Do you get that, person
downloading that one free book? Or you, uploader who thinks you’re not hurting
anyone real? Or even you, person who defends them tacitly?
Perhaps you're young
still, or life hasn’t burdened you with responsibility for someone else’s care.
Perhaps you haven’t had
to pay bills or purchase your own food.
Maybe it’s just a case
of you thinking everyone who writes and isn’t a New York Times bestseller is
just a hobbyist, and that stealing their books doesn’t really hurt them.
Maybe you truly believe
that authors owe you free books. I actually heard someone say this to a table
full of authors once. After dropping that bombshell, that person waxed poetic
about how ebooks were overpriced, and how unfair it was to ask anyone to pay
over—I don’t recall what the exact price named was. And this was for books of
over 300 pages. Added to that was that no author or publisher should charge
over—again I don’t recall the exact number, only that it was ludicrously
low—for a book no matter the length. I can tell you that my first thought was
that the person in that instance was in essence saying authors should not be
paid a living wage.
Wouldn't you be angry?
Think about it this
way… Would it be okay with you for someone to tell you that they were going to
have you work for hours, days, or months and when payday came around finally,
they said, “Well, your work has been devalued because someone found a way to
steal the thing that you do. It really
isn't their fault, these pirates. They’re only doing it because what you've
done/created is so awesome and it's hard to get where they are…”
Again, I don't care why
people steal books. It's just wrong.
There aren't a lot of
jobs I can do now. I can't lift over 20 lbs. I can't sit for long periods.
Sometimes my legs swell horrendously and I can't stand either. So I write. But…if
I can't provide for my kid and myself by writing? I will have to stop. Eh, I'm
starting to repeat myself.
Another point about why
people pirate was a question about books being available in enough formats. My
books are available in all the formats. And more importantly, there are free
apps out there for readers to convert their books to other formats if they
want. Calibre is a good one. I post things on my web pages that people can read
for free there. Or at least I used to. I don't anymore.
I won’t write free books anymore—I can’t
Why?
Because I don't have
time. I have to write faster and faster so I can try to make some profit before
my work gets stolen. Let me say again that I love writing. Otherwise I'd have
given up after the first pirate episode. I’ve been asked how I came by the
numbers I shared about how much pirating had cost me on one book? It was in
excess of 25k. Simple. I multiplied the
number of downloads (after less than a week of the files being up on the pirate
site) by the legit cost and then figured out what my contracted percent would have
been. I only did that for a span of less than a week. My sales went from really
good for a first publication to less than five books sold in the next quarter.
And the book released at the end of a quarter, so it's reasonable to assume
without the pirate site a lot more books would have sold.
For me, it’s exhausting, trying to
explain my side of this.
I won't waste time or
energy talking about this anymore. Thanks to some friends I’ve found a service,
Muso, that will help me deal with take down notices with a minimum of fuss and
time spent. Other than that, I’ll just do what I have to take care of my
family. Sadly that means no more free stories. I just can’t justify the time
when pirates steal so much of my profits.
Yes, any justification of pirating
upsets and offends me.
No amount of telling me
that I should feel bad for the pirates or understand them is going to change the cold, hard fact that they, everyone
who uploads, and everyone who downloads stolen books is STEALING. When
they are my books it hurts me right away. When they are someone else's it hurts
when I lose that author’s future works.
When pirates *uploaders or
downloaders* steal, it’s more than a single copy of a book.
They steal authors’
motivation. They steal money from families, they steal children’s futures. They
steal books that the authors will never write, because they’ve had to take some
soul killing job they hate in order to support themselves and their families.
They steal the free reads that authors would have written to give back to their
fans, to raise monies for charity, to kick off a new series.
If you love an author’s
works? Only read what you can buy of theirs. Ask your local library to acquire
a copy of the book. Write to the author. We’re people. There’s not a struggle
out there that one of us hasn’t gone through. And seriously, as a group we’ve
got some huge fucking hearts. If you’re in a country where you can’t safely buy
our books, we’ll probably post something for you online. If buying the ebooks
is difficult because of where you live, tell us. We’ll probably find a way to
make it easier for you to buy them there. But don’t give yourself the bullshit
answer that it’s okay to steal.
Tell it Like it Is Dammit
At least be honest, and
say, yep, I’m a thief, and I don’t care. You don’t get to say you’re “sticking
it to the man”. That’s crap. You’re taking food from people who may well be
poorer than you. That’s the truth. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.
Cherie Noel
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