[Worldwalker]

Let's look at a few scenarios:

An author named Arthur writes a book. It's available as both a paper book and an ebook.

Bob buys the book brand-new from Borders.
Carol borrows Bob's book and reads it.
Dave buys the book for his Sony Reader.
Elaine borrows Dave's Reader and reads the book.
Fred makes a copy of the book from Dave and reads that.
Gail downloads the book off the darknet.
Harry buys the book at a rummage sale.
Irene gets the book out of a "Free Books" box at the AAUW sale.
John checks the book out of the library.
Kathy tucks the book under her jacket and sneaks out of Borders.
Louis doesn't read the book at all.

Which of these people are stealing from Arthur? (or from the publisher, as the case may be)

It's pretty obvious that Bob and Dave aren't stealing it, and Kathy is. But how about Carol, Elaine, Fred, Gail, Harry, Irene, and John, who read the book without paying Arthur? (Louis didn't pay Arthur either, but he didn't read the book)

It gets tricky, doesn't it? You can't say "everyone who read the book without paying for it is stealing" or you'd criminalize Carol, who borrowed Bob's book, and Harry and Irene, who got it used. But if it's okay for Carol to borrow Bob's book, why isn't it okay for Elaine to do it, or Fred? And there's the matter that Dave probably paid more for the book than Bob did; should he have less of a right to lend it out? And in terms of Arthur's cash flow, how is Louis different from Harry? Or from Fred? The answers aren't as simple as they might look at first glance.

From an author's point of view, the real question is much simpler: "Do I get less money if someone does thus-and-so than if they don't?" That's a question authors wrestle with in other forms all the time. Will people pay me more for a high-falutin' book or a bodice-ripper? Should I price my book at $1 or $5 or $12? And, of course, the issue of what one wants to write comes into play: even if, for example, a romance will sell more copies than a literary novel, is that really the story burning to come out? It all comes back to "what is making me money, and what is costing me money?"

And the bottom line is that people who are never going to pay for your books ... are never going to pay for your books. Period. They are not your customers. You will not get their money. Since their money isn't on the table, they don't matter. They could read every word you've ever written, or they could heap scorn upon your writing, or they could be illiterate even in their own language, which is some obscure dialect of Lower Silesian. It doesn't matter. You're not getting their money, and you were never getting their money, so from your point of view as an author, there is no difference between the guy who reads every word you ever wrote but doesn't pay for any of them and the guy who can't read English.

Then we get the people who go out and buy your books, and who don't give them to a few million of their closest friends. The odds are pretty good that they'll keep on buying your books. They like to feel honest (it's amazing how many people are like that, surprising as it may be), or they're just used to buying books, or they want to make sure the author gets paid and keeps on writing. Those people are giving you money. You want to be nice to them. Making their reading lives inconvenient -- which is what most purported anti-piracy measures do -- isn't being nice to them. It's making them ask themselves "why am I giving money to this guy who just called me a thief and electronically dicked me over?" You don't want to do that. I say again: you want to be nice to them; they're buying your groceries.

In between, we get the people who might give you money ... or might not. They might decide to buy your book. They might decide to borrow it from someone. They might decide to download it off some random website. The odds are fairly high that making them dislike you will not induce them to give you money. The ones already inclined to obtain illicit copies will do so just out of annoyance. The ones who prefer not to do that will just read some other author's books. There are millions, and there are more books most readers want to read than there is time to read them; convince someone that you're not a person they want to do business with and they won't ... your competition is a click away. You want to encourage these people to give you money. Harassing them will not do it. Insulting them will not do it. Inconveniencing them will not do it. Seriously ... do you rush out to eagerly give money to people who harass, insult, or inconvenience you? You want to make the fence-sitters -- and that's not just the people downloading unpaid books, but the ones buying books from used bookstores or church charity sales, the ones borrowing books from libraries and getting books passed on by their mothers-in-law -- want to give you money.

By the way, very few authors, percentage-wise, have ever gotten rich. In fact, very few authors have even been able to make a living from writing. This is not just an artifact of the era of ebooks; this has always been the case. Even authors who attract the interest (and advances, sales promotion, etc.) of a publisher aren't guaranteed a living, let alone riches. In the field where I'm most familiar with authors -- science fiction -- all but a handful of authors have full-time jobs. Few are able to support themselves solely by writing, and those few -- like the late Jack Chalker, for instance -- write prolifically (55 books in 25 years after he quit his day job), are extremely well-known in their genre, and heavily promoted by their publishers. And there are very, very few of them; most writers don't make anything close to a living at it.

And the cold, hard fact is that indie ebook writers surviving through self-promotion make even less. Some make little. Some make nothing. We can argue whether J.K. Rowling's problem is piracy, but Joe Schmoe's problem is not. Joe Schmoe's problem is that he is not J.K. Rowling. Nobody has ever heard of him. They walk into Borders and his books are not on the "new and notable" rack. They go to Amazon and his books are not in the "recommended for you" list. They go to the library, the used bookstore, the charity book sale, and they don't see his books. Not only does the NYT Book Review not cover them, but neither does the dude who writes a book column for the South Podunk Chronicle or the one who writes that blog they read once in a while. In order for piracy to impact your sales, you have to have sales for it to impact. In order for customers to decide whether or not they intend to pay for your books, they have to be customers in the first place. Once that's dealt with, then the question of whether people who would otherwise give you money are not doing so for some reason can be addressed.

Also ... saying you'll take your toys and go home doesn't impress anyone. Seriously, it doesn't. It makes me think of Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. That's not company I would want to be in.