Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBlueSky
Until then Mr. Author, don’t bother me with your whining because technology has upset your cozy little way of life.
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Er... how many authors do you know? There's not much cozy about their way of life. Unless you're talking about a very tiny minority of "best-seller" authors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBlueSky
File-sharing sites are nothing more — or less — than the aggregation of a big big library to be used for conveniently checking out books to read. How Mr. Author can object to that so vehemently I do not know. Do they not WANT their books to be read?
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No. Really. There's a major difference between borrowing a book from the library and downloading one that has been scanned or cracked. When you borrow from a library, not only did the library pay for the book (and the library is physically local, so that implies something about how many copies of the book were paid for), but the library keeps track of how many times a given book is checked out, and uses those statistics to decide what to buy next. If you and ten friends check a book out from your local library by Author X, and Author X puts out a new book, the library will probably buy a copy of that book, too. That, in turn, affects whether the publisher is likely to sign Author X up for another book. There is no feedback like that for download sites. And the lack of physical location means that the number of copies sold to make "free" copies available is far smaller than for libraries. That's a model that will only work if authors sell their books once, to a file-sharer, for a very large sum of money, i.e. a patronage system (more on this below.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
I'm not making any attempts to justify anything whatsoever-- that is just you projecting. I need no justifications at all-- I want it, it is freely available, I take it. End of story. And as I have cleary stated (wait, I'll quote myself):
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Here's my vision of a morally preferable world-- all of human knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere, all the time, with no worries about whether one can "afford" to "purchase" that information. How or if content creators manage to make money off of that system is not my concern or interest.
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In my vision of a morally preferable world, no one would ever starve, or be homeless, or be denied access to decent health care. In that world, I think a great many creative people would agree with you that information ought to be free. I know very few creative people who enjoy worrying about how to get paid for their work. Almost all of them simply want to be able to take care of themselves and their families and have time to create.
If you think information ought to be free, start thinking about how to make rent, dinner, and health care free. If you think worrying about that isn't your problem, well, I believe file-sharing sites have a term "leecher"....
Meanwhile, here's my suggestion. Rather than authors depending on royalty payments, they ask fans to pledge payments (legally binding pledges, to an escrow account) for a new book. When the amount pledged reaches the author's asking price, the author finishes the book and hires an editor to help do so (good books require good editors as well as authors). If the author also wants to budget for a publisher's marketing department, they can do so, but fans may not be willing to pay much of a markup for that. Then the author collects the pledges and releases the book, unencrypted, and anyone who wants it can have it. Those who want it printed can do so via a POD service.
One outcome of this scheme is that authors will probably get more donations if they offer "extras" to high-donors, such as getting a mention in the book, having a character named after them, etc. Further in that direction lies direct corporate sponsorship, complete with ads in the book, or at least product placement. I suppose the market will "decide" how much of that they're willing to put up with.
