People are worried about book pirates and I'm over here worried about people not reading.
Other things I don't vilify that bypass author and publisher income:
Handing a book you love to a friend.
Used bookstores.
Other things I don't vilify that bypass author and publisher income:
Handing a book you love to a friend.
Used bookstores.
There are several different kinds of pirates:
1) Hoarders. People who steal just to amass large amounts of 1s and 0s on hard drives. They consume .00001% of what they steal. They weren't going to pay for it anyway.
These are the pirates people fear the most, for no reason.
1) Hoarders. People who steal just to amass large amounts of 1s and 0s on hard drives. They consume .00001% of what they steal. They weren't going to pay for it anyway.
These are the pirates people fear the most, for no reason.
2) Broke people. There are voracious readers out there who don't have the income to support the number of books they consume. These are often the super-spreaders who start book blogs, write book reviews, and pester their friends to read more.
Please steal my books.
Please steal my books.
3) Samplers. The try-before-you-buy crowd. They'll steal your first book and buy everything else you write immediately after. They've been burned too many times. I've made my first book in a series free because I feel these folks.
4) Youth. Before I had mobility, my own credit card, reliable income, I was a digital pirate. I downloaded music, movies, comics, games, books. Those years shaped my taste and my habits. I've since paid for some of those same films/albums/books 4 times in different formats.
5) The annoyed. There have been times when I've paid for some software or media, and the hoops I had to jump through AFTER paying for it were so terrible, that I downloaded the pirated version too. Again: I paid for the thing, then used the non-DRM version because it was easier.
70% of hysteria about piracy comes from the first group, and they consume and contribute almost nothing to these media cultures.
The other 30% is directed at the young and the poor, which if you give them their way now, they'll be loyal customers in the future.
The other 30% is directed at the young and the poor, which if you give them their way now, they'll be loyal customers in the future.
What I worry about is the way we educate our youth so that we instill a fear and loathing for book-shaped things from a very early age. We should let them read the books they enjoy through high school. And we should stop teaching math and history out of book-shaped things.
/rant
/rant
