[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by elcreative

What happens if I don't want my work available as an e-book because I've produced a carefully crafted work where I regard the specific typography, layout, artwork and even the specific paper as crucial to the book? Who are you to say I have no rights to restrict the circulation of MY work???

Bootleg comic books are scans, not text; the people who want to read them agree that the artwork is essential. They do not, however, have holograms on the covers, even if the paper copies do; the readers have decided that's not important.

You have the right to decide a certain kind of paper is all you're willing to print on. You don't have the right to decide that the paper is essential to the reader's experience, any more than a painter has the right to insist their work only be displayed under full-spectrum lights, or a movie producer has the right to insist the movie be shown on larger-than-65" screens. If someone buys your book and photocopies it at 150% original size in order to read the smaller text, they'll lose that special paper--and you don't get to control that. If they convert it themselves to an ebook in order to have text-to-speech program read it to them, again, you don't have the right to stop them. (In the US. I gather UK laws are different.)

If you want to control how your work is experienced, don't publish it. Once it's released to the public, your control is very limited.