Brian Keene on piracy

[mr ploppy]

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=10258

Not sure which way I sway on this one. He put up a free serial over the last couple of years, then removed it so that people who want to read it would have to pay mega-money for a ltd hardback. I'd probably have more sympathy if he put it out as an ebook as well.

Interesting also that he didn't realise that a lot of his biggest fans are also active in the pirate scene. I would have thought that would be a given for most reasonably successful writers.

[DiapDealer]

Without getting into the whole right/wrong, appropriate/inappropriate thing, I found this statement somewhat puzzling:

Originally Posted by Brian Keene

I’m hard-pressed to understand why I should bother investing the time or energy to do Dead Air as a free, weekly serial here when it will just get [bleeping] pirated by a bunch of people to whom mutual respect and appreciation are foreign concepts. If it’s not appreciated, then it seems to me like it would be a lot less strain to just write it and release it the old-fashioned way.

A lot of different concepts/things can be attributed to/associated with piracy... but I'm hard-pressed to understand how "lack of appreciation" for the work in question could be considered one of them.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Your "sway" looks pretty clear from here.

What right does anyone have to judge Keene over how he sells his entertainment product? You have a right to say yay or nay, but you don't have a right to throw a virtual brick through his storefront and rob from him and his family.

I like the way he suggests that the perpetrators of this piracy were "too young to know better." I didn't know they gave 5-year-olds access to Facebook and Twitter accounts...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

A lot of different concepts/things can be attributed to/associated with piracy... but I'm hard-pressed to understand how "lack of appreciation" for the work in question could be considered one of them.

He's intimating that, if his fans appreciated his work, they wouldn't pirate his work. How hard is that to understand?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

He's intimating that, if his fans appreciated his work, they wouldn't pirate his work. How hard is that to understand?

You're looking for a fight. I hope, for your own satisfaction, that someone obliges you... but it won't be me. My statement wasn't meant to be taken as support (or an excuse) for piracy. But I suppose it's a bit too much to ask that a meta-discussion about the effects and motivations surrounding that particular counter-culture be able to take place. I forgot where I was for a second... my apologies.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

He's intimating that, if his fans appreciated his work, they wouldn't pirate his work. How hard is that to understand?

I entirely agree with you, Steve.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

He's intimating that, if his fans appreciated his work, they wouldn't pirate his work. How hard is that to understand?

It's a good example of the kind of disconnect between readers and writers we have now.

Reader sees something that was previously free removed from the internet so they archive it for other readers who arrived late or didn't have the foresight to save their own copy.

Writer removes free thing from the internet because they are worried it might eat into sales of over-priced hardback sold to speculators.

An official ebook edition would have kept everyone happy. And leaving the original blog version online forever wouldn't have hurt sales of either.

[howyoudoin]

Anyone else mistakenly read the thread title as "Brian keen on piracy"?

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

It's a good example of the kind of disconnect between readers and writers we have now.

Reader sees something that was previously free removed from the internet so they archive it for other readers who arrived late or didn't have the foresight to save their own copy.

Writer removes free thing from the internet because they are worried it might eat into sales of over-priced hardback sold to speculators.

An official ebook edition would have kept everyone happy. And leaving the original blog version online forever wouldn't have hurt sales of either.

Normaly I don't get into these arguments, but

From the blog (emphisis mine):

If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have written a free novel for you called Deluge: The Conqueror Worms II, and I wouldn’t have offered it here for free, with the understanding that once it was finished, I’d remove it and then sell it in book form (which is how I make my living).

So more like: Writer doing something special for blog fans (much like a free giveaway at a bookstore -you snooze, you lose) and Fan delibrately going against Writers' wishes.

(my one and only post on the subject. I now retire to the sidelines. )

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

Normaly I don't get into these arguments, but

From the blog (emphisis mine):



So more like: Writer doing something special for blog fans (much like a free giveaway at a bookstore -you snooze, you lose) and Fan delibrately going against Writers' wishes.

(my one and only post on the subject. I now retire to the sidelines. )

I was there when he first started serialising it, and there was no mention of it being removed when it was finished back then. Though he did warn that it would be gone a couple of months before the last episode went online, and said that anyone who was interested should either read it now or save it for later. It was basically advertising that brought people to his website each week looking for a new episode.

But it's not really about his legal right to remove it, or even his moral obligation not to, it's about his apparent surprise that one of his fans would want to preserve it in its original form after it was gone.

I get that there is more money to be made from hardbacks for the speculator market than there is for mass-market releases for readers, which will be why writers like that like to restrict how many people are allowed to read their work. But these days, it really shouldn't come as any surprise when the readers don't play along with that and make their own mass-market edition. It's pretty much inevitable.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You're looking for a fight.

I'm trying to persuade, in order to prevent "reading for entertainment" from going the way of tap-dancing and vaudeville (which I have come to understand isn't much of a stretch).

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I like the way he suggests that the perpetrators of this piracy were "too young to know better." I didn't know they gave 5-year-olds access to Facebook and Twitter accounts...

They'll apparently give fetuses access to Facebook.

http://gawker.com/5807597/

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But it's not really about his legal right to remove it, or even his moral obligation not to, it's about his apparent surprise that one of his fans would want to preserve it in its original form after it was gone.

It wasn't a matter of preserving it; it was a matter of redistributing it without permission, by someone who should have known that would cost him sales, but clearly didn't care (or didn't care enough to actually think about their actions, as he suggested in his comments).

I personally think Keene was giving far too much credit to his pirates for not knowing any better... and the fact that they changed their Facebook and Twitter accounts only indicates that they do not want to be tarred with the brush of legal action against them.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I'm trying to persuade, in order to prevent "reading for entertainment" from going the way of tap-dancing and vaudeville (which I have come to understand isn't much of a stretch).

No you're not. Let's be perfectly clear. You're trying to ensure that authors are able to continue MAKING MONEY from providing "entertaining material" to readers—an endeavor that I'm fully in support of and, as such, need no lectures on.

And it still doesn't change the fact that I'd like to be able to discuss some of the intricacies and the psychology of the—for lack of a better term—"pirate counter-culture" without an angry author flying in and announcing that "you're killing literature and contributing to the decline of civilization!!"

Is it not possible (ever), that someone who has in their possession an illegal copy of a book could also very much appreciate the skill that the author exhibits in their writing? That's all I was asking. Not "respect," not "support," not "ethical", not "moral", not any of that judgmental, subjective clap-trap. The definition of "Appreciation" was the only thing I was addressing. Plain and simple. I frankly dismiss the notion out of hand that monetary recompense is the only possible form in which Appreciation can make its appearance.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

He's intimating that, if his fans appreciated his work, they wouldn't pirate his work. How hard is that to understand?

True fans, of course, would never share a book with someone who can't afford it right now, or who live in an area where it's not sold. They'd tell them, "this is an awesome author, and you will realize that if you just buy one of his books for full retail price--as soon as it's available in your region--and read it."

Because that's how most of us discovered our favorite authors, right? We walked into a bookstore and bought something by an author we'd never read before.

Brian Keene doesn't want fans; he wants customers. That's a reasonable goal for an author to have, but he should perhaps consider that there are almost always easier ways to make money.