I'm not a writer and don't intend to become one but I'll quote
Eric Flint.
Quote:
Someone asked me once, in a debate, how I'd react if I discovered that one of my titles—maybe all of them!—had become widely pirated. I started by posing the most extreme case I could imagine.
"You mean, I walk into a drugstore and see that the latest copy of Time magazine has my face on the cover, with a title that reads 'Works of Eric Flint pirated worldwide!' and an article on the inside that tells everybody exactly how to do it?"
"Yes," came the reply, demonstrating that my opponent was no wizard at the art of debate. "What measures would you take?"
"Well," I said, "the very first thing I'd do is get on the phone and call my friend Mike Spehar. He's a retired Air Force pilot, and I'd want his advice on which brand of private jet I should buy to be able to commute easily from the villas I'd be buying in southern France, the coast just south of Barcelona . . . Hm, maybe a penthouse in Manhattan and another one in Paris . . ."
It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
In the real world, the only authors—or musicians, by the way—who get "pirated" in any significant numbers are ones who are already famous and enjoy top sales. (And all the "piracy" is likely to do, even then, is simply boost their sales. See my next essay for a further discussion.) The great problem faced by all authors—musicians are in a very similar position—is the opacity of the book market. The entertainment market in general, actually, even movies. Compared to that problem, all others are fleas standing next to mammoths.
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