[Prestidigitweeze]

Let me clarify:

Hardcover editions are no longer a given in a world in which even paperback editions are dwindling. They are to moderately successful published writers what houses are to the shrinking middle class: a wistful recollection. In many cases, the choice is to go with the fancy expensive edition or not be published in hardcover at all. This has been going on since at least the 80s.

The choice appears less ruthless to me than it does to you. If other fans will get the book a bit later, and if the wait makes them hungrier without neglecting their appetites, then I don't really see the harm.

Not every writer spews novel after novel of makeshift prose. Some invest huge amounts of time in what they do and labor to make their books perfect, keeping hours like any nine-to-fiver and sucking up the overtime. For them, writing isn't an avocation. Their goal is to produce a thing of lasting quality as well as make a living, which means that writing is their calling as well as their full-time job.

The person who lives that way might be thinking about money when they sign the deal for the edition that will sell. But they might view the limited hardcover differently: I made sacrifices to write this book and a few of you might feel the same way about owning it.

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Here's where we agree:

Mr. Keene has complained extensively about the pirating of an ebook he himself offered as an incentive for purchasing the official release. He has taken on a role no traditional author wants, which is to be seller, advertiser, marketer and advocate of his own work.

When writers do this, they establish new relationships with the public and are recast as merchants; as bloggers, they become personalities. Unless they are extremely careful, they can shift to being perceived as money-coveting vendors and obnoxious narcissists instead of magnanimous imaginers.

It's Mr. Keene's regrettable emphasis on piracy, pricing, successive editions and being cheated that makes the cost of those limited hardcovers seem so irksome. Many genre writers before him have published the same way and been content to leave the machinery obscured by the tarp. In my opinion, that's where the machinery should remain.

We've seen this happen before to music, film and television. We've seen what grousing about it did to the popularity of the artists and celebrities who held anti-piracy press conferences. Writers have the advantage of being the third successive group to suffer the economic effects. I understand Keene's feelings of betrayal and frustration, but I'm mystified by his obliviousness to history.