#pirating books

[esckeyes]

Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess

“Your AI monster ate all our work. Now you’re trying to pay us off with this piece of garbage that doesn’t work.”

Vox has this behind the paywall. But the title pretty much sums it up.

[violet-primroses]

There’s a very big difference between pirating a book by SJM and pirating something by an author who hasn’t even had their first royalty check

[mrlancer]

You know, I never realised how extremely naive I was as a human until people talked about pirating books. I didn't even know people did that or that it was a thing until I was like in my late teens early 20s...

[mynameisnowwyrm]

When it comes to the whole book pirating debate, I feel like there's one thing people fail to take into account. The only difference between pirating a book and not reading it, is a person not reading the book, the author was not financially supported either way. If a person literally has no access to a book other than to pirate it, their options are pirate or don't read. In that case pirating the book makes no actual fucking difference. I think people usually come at it from the angle that people can buy the book but they're just choosing not to and that is a very narrow view of the actual picture.

Also I see a lot of people saying to support local libraries instead of pirating and i agree. If your library doesn't have the book you want and you can ask them to order it, go for it! The problem comes when you realise not everyone can do even that for many different reasons. You got a shitty underfunded library that relies solely on book donations for new books? You're not reading that new book ig. Do you want to read that queer book everyone has been recommending but you live in a very conservative area/with your conservative parents? Sucks to be you. Are you disabled and physically cannot get to your library bc not enough people care about making things accessible to disabled people and they don't lend out ebooks or audiobooks? That must suck.

Again, people keep recommending libby and if you can use it, great. However being able to use libby entirely depends on your local library and if that's not an option you're shit out of luck. (In an effort to dot my i's and cross my t's i checked and yep, no libraries near me, or far away from me, use libby.)

Also with the advice of asking authors if they can give some of their books away for free or authors holding a raffle or contest to win a copy of their book, it's awesome if there are a few authors willing to do that but it's just not practical on a large scale

The main issue people have with pirating books is that it screws over the author, and yep, it does. Most authors already don't make a lot from their books and pirating definitely doesn't help. It doesn't matter if the book was published with one of the major publishing houses or independently, authors and editors and everyone else who worked on the book who rely on it doing well get the shit end of the stick. So that's why of you can get the book at a library or you can afford a physical copy or ebook or audiobook, do not pirate it.

My issue with people having this argument is that they fail to take into account that there is a lot of privilege in having access to books in a way that supports the author and restricting books to only people who can support the author is unfair to people who can't. It's a lose lose situation no matter how you look at it.

Ngl people who make blanket statements that pirating is bad all the time, no matter what, make me kinda mad bc they fail to acknowledge any nuance in the situation. I know the main argument is that the anti-pirating stance is bc authors need to be supported, but a lot of people approach it with "if you can't afford it, you don't deserve access to it" energy and that is very fucked up and frustrating. I swear the fucking classism reminds me of the many many times that leftist spaces accidentally slip into eugenics rhetoric bc no one ever listens to disabled people. The current system we live in is inherently flawed and no one ever wins, we all lose.

Author writes book 》 support the author buy buying the book. But you need money to buy the book and you're broke 》 go to the library. But the library is underfunded and inaccessible bc nobody cares bc everything is undefunded and inaccessible, why should the library be a priority? 》 pirate the book. But then the author isn't getting any money 》 everything sucks.

At the end of the day you can have your stance on book pirating, but maybe don't fucking demonise people who pirate books bc it's not going to help the situation.

[brechtian]

yall have GOT to learn the difference between pirating books from extremely successful white authors versus small authors (esp of color and/or lgbt) like. Stealing from George R R Martin is not the same as stealing from like Sabina Khan or Qwo-Li Driskill this isnt a difficult concept

[igotablankpage]

I’ve seen discourse floating around about this on Tumblr, so I just wanna say:

DON’T PIRATE BOOKS!

NO MATTER YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES.

THERE IS LITERALLY NO EXCUSE YOU CAN GIVE.

IF YOU DO IT MAKES YOU AN ASSHOLE AND A THIEF!

[agwitow]

Re: Pirating Books

Okay, so... this might get me a bunch of backlash, but... I have thoughts about the book pirating being discussed right now. There are lots of great points and alternatives to pirating that have been suggested (LIBRARIES!!!! USE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!!!), and I agree with them. Mostly.

First, let’s talk about why pirating books hurts indie/small press authors

Yes, as an indie/self-published author, the ONLY money I see is from book sales. And, personally, I’ve listed the short story prequels as free (at least on Kobo; Amazon still won’t match the price), and the novels at $4.99, which... really doesn’t net me much money. Because I’m not exclusive to Amazon (where the bulk of my sales, such as they are, occur), I only get 35% of that. So every novel I sell, I only get ~1.75. (Kobo gives me 70%, so...if you ever wonder why I throw out my Kobo links more often than my Amazon ones, well... there ya go)

Even at the 70% royalty for being exclusive to Amazon, an indie author with a similarly priced book is only making ~3.50 per sale. Minimum wage where I live is a little over $11. And, like so many places, minimum wage isn’t actually a living wage here. So, let’s do a quick bit of math...

It took me a solid month to write the first draft (yay NaNo) of my first book. I don’t have exact numbers, but given that my average typing speed during word sprints is around 30 wpm (which, if you aren’t aware, is a short burst of writing where you purposely try to get as many words as possible by not over-thinking things), let’s assume my ~62k word novel took 34-1/2 hours to write.

Then you have the second draft, which (I found) goes quicker (largely in part to my actual typing speed of over 80wpm).

Then a third draft. Then editing (which most indie authors pay for). Maybe a round with beta readers, followed by a final bit of editing/revision. Then Formatting. Cover design. And finally, FINALLY, you’ve got a ready-to-publish book.

Even assuming drafts 2 and 3 took half as long as the initial draft (they took longer than that, but let’s be conservative with the hours put in), we’re at 69 hours total. Plus editing at the low-low-low rate of 0.01$ per word ($620). I did my own formatting, and it took about 20 hours to do. Cover design can cost hundreds of dollars, but again, I made my own. Let’s assume ~50$ for stock images. Add another 10 hours for final pass of edits, and we have a lowball cost of producing a single book.

99 hours x $11 = $1,089 + 620 + 50 = $1,759

This does NOT include ordering sample print copies to check over for print errors (as well as one final pass for editing purposes), or the cost of setting the book up (I went through Ingram Spark, which is $79 for set-up).

So to BREAK EVEN, an indie author (with similar stats as me) has to sell 503 books at 70% royalty (1,005 at 35%).*

And that doesn’t take into account the hours of outlining, planning, research, and world building that went into creating the story. Or the fact that we should be valuing the work at a living wage instead of minimum wage. AND I low-balled an awful lot of my figures.

Which means, indie authors don’t start making any profit off of a book until AFTER they’ve sold a minimum of 503 books.

So every pirated book is a lost sale, which means it’ll take a little bit longer to break even, and even longer before we see any profit.

Right, but none of that is controversial, so let’s move on to what is probably going to earn me some hate.

Despite the above, there are some situations/reasons where I (personally) think it’s fine to pirate a book. This is 100% my own opinion, and if an author has openly stated they view pirating as only a negative, then please don’t use my opinion to “well, actually” them.

They might’ve thought/looked at similar things as me and decided it isn’t worth the benefit. Which is a totally valid view.

But... books are expensive (well, print books are... I think ebooks are really reasonable, given how much work goes into them). I get it. And it can be disappointing to spend 20$ or more on a book that you don’t like. Totally valid.

So, if you will legitimately purchase the book once you’ve determined that it’s one you’ll enjoy, then, sure. Go ahead and pirate it. I don’t begrudge you not buying it if it’s something you won’t enjoy.

If there’s a free sample available, or free short story prequels (hint, hint), then, really... you shouldn’t need to pirate the book to figure out if you’d enjoy it. You can make use of the totally legally available samples.

Okay, but maybe you can’t even afford the $4.99 for the ebook. I get it. Money is tight and there are necessities like groceries and prescriptions and gas/bus passes to buy. You’ve asked your local library to bring a copy of the book in, and they haven’t (for any number of reasons). What’s a person to do?

Well, you could ask the author to send you a free copy. You may or may not have luck with that (assuming you can even find a contact email for them), though I don’t know many authors who’ll actually send a free copy to anyone that asks. But for argument’s sake, let’s say the author says no.

Now you’ve struck out on all the legal ways to get a free copy, but you really, really want to read the book. So you pirate it. I’m not happy you pirated it, but I’m not going to begrudge it.

However, if you pirate a book, then you better leave a freakin’ review. And add an extra star on to your review. It doesn’t make up for the loss of money, but it makes it a little more likely that a paying customer will give the book a chance in the future.

TL;DR - the only (possibly) acceptable reasons to pirate a book are if you are 90% likely to purchase it after, or, if you can’t get it any other way and 100% promise to leave a review so future readers will be more likely to give it a chance

*the 503 books at 70% royalty, only applies to ebooks. I make about 0.05$ per paperback I sell (so I would have to sell 35,180 paperbacks to break even)

**EDIT**

@authorjoeypaul pointed out that KDP doesn’t require you to be exclusive to get 70% royalty any more, and I did double-check that, yes, I’m set up to get 70% through Amazon as well as Kobo. Sorry about the mix-up, my lovelies!

[meaganspooner]

On Illegal Book Downloads

Question via my contact form on my website:

Lisa G. asked: How do you not lose your cool entirely when you see your book being downloaded for free? All that hard work for nothing, I'd freak out

Sadly, every single traditionally published author has had to go through the experience of seeing links and torrents to free downloads of their books. It's kind of a rite of passage, really. 

At first, my blood boiled every time. The very first one I saw, for my debut novel Skylark, made me cry. It was before the book had even been released, and the illegal copies had been ripped from the e-galley.

As an author, you just have to learn to ignore them. Like bad reviews, you'll cry over the first few you see, and then you'll lift your head and realize "Hey, this doesn't actually change anything about me, my work, or the people who support me." It says far, far more about the people doing the pirating than it does about you.

As a reader, don't give into temptation. Yes, you'd read a book for free. But you'd be giving in to an utterly destructive practice to this industry (and other creative industries, for that matter) and if you want to have good, professionally-written and produced books to read five years from now, ten years from now, you need to be willing to pay for them, or to go through the proper channels to read them for free (libraries). To pirate a book, any book, is to say that you don't care about books, literacy, imagination, learning, or love of story. Pirating is contributing to the destruction of books.