I think there are several people here making a mountain out of a molehill. Sure, Ms. Bujold, when she realized that the CD was freely redistributable was not happy, as she put it:
Quote:
The Fifth Imperium is not "sample chapters". The Fifth Imperium is "giving away my life's work for free."
And I don't have another life in which to replace them.
I'm looking for an easily-accessible way to entice people to buy my books, not an easily-accessible way to relieve them of any need whatsoever to do so.
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This is a sentiment shared by many authors, and one that I'm not sure is entirely wrong. Yes, she labeled The Fifth Imperium as a pirate site (from her perspective, they didn't get permission from
her to redistribute). She asked that they stopped redistributing the CD, which they did, but she did not take it to the level of the authors shutting down the lending site by organizing a massive campaign amongst authors to misrepresent the site and shut it down by complaining to the ISP.
I suspect Ms. Bujold's contract allowed for Baen to distribute the CD for promotional purposes, and that she was unaware of the extent of the distribution allowed. That happens. I know at least one author has pulled books from the Baen Free Library too. IMHO, that's the author's right. I'm sure Baen would rather keep their authors happy and pull promotional material (when they can), even if the contract doesn't require them to.
Does she need to prove that having the freely available CD with 2/3rds of her work on it is cutting into her sales? No. It could even be in her economic best interest to leave it up at The Fifth Imperium and other places, but if she believes otherwise, we should respect her wishes.