And that’s that. You don’t own, hold or lease the copyright and you advertise an e-copy for sale, you’re a pirate.
http://www.janefancher.com/TheCaptainAndLime/
And that’s that. You don’t own, hold or lease the copyright and you advertise an e-copy for sale, you’re a pirate.
http://www.janefancher.com/TheCaptainAndLime/
I read Jane’s comments and got myself all worked up over stupid, stupid people! I’ve also seen your comments that you’ve seen your books offered without the seller having permission to do so. Well, I hope your books listed in the iBook store are legit. I saw all five Fortress books, three Foreigner books and the Forge of Heaven. If this listing is not legit, I’d like to know so I won’t buy more than the one I already have…
So did we. I’m still trying to simmer down. Thank you. But I believe the iBooks are ok. I know that the Harper titles are in e-book release,and Penguin-Putnam, where DAW resides, is offering e-books of some, but not all, of the Foreigner titles.
Concerning the purchasing of books at the used book stores – I have suggested that publishers put a blurb at the back suggesting a token payment to be made to the author.
I certainly hope that Ms. Cherryh is receiving her cut from the sale of e-books by others. Greed has little to do with it – it is simple justice and Ms. Cherryh has a lot of little dependents.
Sigh. I so hate getting exercised about it all. Unfortunately the general public thinks writing is a get-rich-quick-and-easy plan. The truth is, back in 1975, a good average first novel got 2000.00 up front, half on signing, half on publication, and paid beyond that only after it had sold 40,000 copies: so you’d get a check once or twice a year for, say, 200.00, which in the 1975 economy went further than it does today. Today the advance has doubled to 5000, but so has the cost of most everything. Writers are not generally rich people. But there’s a lot of anger out there at people who get rich without having a ‘real job’, and it seems to be lurking out there on, of all places, the book forums, and aimed at the writers. Let me say while I’m at it, that the publishers aren’t getting rich either: most in that industry work long hours, take work home, don’t drive big cars, and wonder how they’re going to pay their bills too. So are the printers. The publishing industry is just not in good health right now, and the major reasons are cost of paper, cost of transportation—and transportation is the headache. Any booklover who’s ever had to do a house-move knows how much a library weighs—and publishers and book distributors have to do that every month. On a national scale. The way it operates is sheer madness, complicated by a US tax ruling that says books in warehouse have to be taxed as inventory; so nobody wants to have books in a warehouse. They have to be on trucks continually, going or coming, and no store wants them lingering on the shelves either.
The answer is—books are costing a lot because of warehouses, printing, and trucks, and those costs are still climbing. Nobody is really making money except people selling gasoline and trucks… and the plain fact is, it’s *change* catching up with an industry rooted in the Victorian era, in its printing machinery as well as its practices. In the 1980’s they were frantically trimming wasteful practices and production steps; in the 1990’s they were trimming departments and personnel; in the 2000’s it’s just worse and worse, and slimmer and slimmer.
“But there’s a lot of anger out there at people who get rich without having a real job….” This is an attitude that I think is endemic in relation to the arts. Artists don’t really *work*….they sit around and have fun all day…..the hours spent in the studio trying to make something work, continually honing and refining to get to the place where it works….the time needed alone….because any art is essentially lone time spent in a studio. And then there is always that possibility that the kiln gods will NOT smile upon you this firing. Yet…..when it all comes together that feeling of completeness is the most amazing high of all.
I know a lot of people involved in all aspects of the arts…none are what I would call rich….many make a living….some well off, but I don’t know anyone who is in it for the money.
Just two weeks ago somebody asked me how to become a potter; the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. If you don’t have a love for the process with all the routine and tedium (only it isn’t) it entails, then the arts are not for you, because I think most of the joy is in the doing….don’t get me wrong the recognition is wonderful….but it’s part of the end not the doing.
I have been involved in the arts in one way or another for most of my life,,,in a very small way, in a very peripheral medium…and yet I would not give it up for anything…..and I don’t know any artists who feel differently…
I am starting to rant…could go on forever…..and have gone off thread….I think the best thing is try to educate one person at a time….face to face….not over the web…
Thank you for being here. 🙂 😀 😆
Hugs back—one just hopes as time passes and one gets older, the world will miraculously ‘get it’. But y’know, it’s a common writerly complaint since Plato took up the pen that spouses do not understand ‘staring into space’ equalling ‘busy writing.’ And if your faithful spouse doesn’t get it, and interrupts the epic idea to want the garbage taken out, the world at large is going to be even more inclined to think you swan about plinking occasionally at the keys and sipping champagne proffered by a romance model between dips in the pool. Ha. Ha! Like painting is wearing a beret and smock and daubing lazily but accurately at a canvas and getting paid millions by the idle rich after three hours’ work. I’m smart. I live with another writer. We read each other’s code and know not to interrupt a stare. 😉
The problem is ultimately alienated labour. It’s not just that they see artists living the good life for little work; it’s that most people do not work jobs that fulfill them. They have to find fulfillment elsewhere. So anyone who is working a job that fulfills them, even if it isn’t greatly compensated, is still viewed (and partly correctly so, I might add) as living a life of a luxury most people just don’t have.
Us academia nuts and mad scientists get some of that too, but we’re occasionally allowed to be seen as stoking the great money engine. But it is definitely a luxury to be envied that one’s work is closer than most people’s to the things that fulfill one emotionally.
That is very true, Asad: I sure can’t complain about management or work environment, beyond the fact I need to pick up the place (just did taxes). I can say—beyond the fact that when I wake up, I’m always ‘at’ work—I have a dream of a way of making a living. So in that light—yep, I am very, very lucky. It has its downsides: solitude is a biggie. But there’s two of us. Which again, makes us very lucky.
I am doing a slow boil! I hope everyone will go to and read this week’s The Ethicist. Evidently it is okay with Mr. Cohen to download a pirated copy of a book as long as you have bought the hard copy. He likens it to to copying a CD to your iPod. This says nothing as to the ethics of pirates themselves and the encouragement such actions offer. This sure ain’t my grandmother’s ethics!
Pay ’em and make piracy profitable and you only encourage them.
The web site address did not go through…not sure how to post it. It’s ‘nytimes.com/magazine’.
Am I a bad person for agreeing with The Ethicist? His argument is the moral argument against DRM—that when we buy content, we are paying for the content but should have control over the medium, not the creator or distributor.
With physical paperbacks it was easier to understand. It wasn’t like you were going to type it all out or photocopy and bind “books” to resell on the street or send to 20 of your best friends. It was just too tedious to be a paperback pirate. The most you’d do is give a book to a friend or sell to a used book store. Either way there were only ONE physical book still. With infinite digital copies and the internet people get tempted because it is easy…but it is just as wrong as it was in pre-digital days. It just “feels” less wrong because it is easy to do. Feelings don’t dictate the law though and neither does the ease of thieving.
But I contend that it’s an even more relevant argument now. With electronic mass media, your ability to control the distribution of content is so weakened that the only way it could work is to institute draconian controls over computer use. Unless you accept that control and monitoring of legitimate uses is a necessary sacrifice—which is extremely radical compared to how people view things in the West at least—then it’s by definition an argument that creators should not have control over distribution media.
Therefore facilitating consumption in multiple formats becomes a burden on creators and distributors and insofar as they don’t satisfy it, people are not unjustified in finding their own means to do so.
I realize what a burden this places on content creators and distributors. Unfortunately, the model for what we consider to *be* content, and what we’re willing to pay for, and how content creators will make money is going to change very radically over the next decades, and current creators are not going to like everything they see.
That would work if authors had patrons or otherwise were compensated for their work so it wouldn’t matter how distribution went about. But money is still involved and people still have to make a living. Just look at the newspaper world. We still want the content journalist produce but we don’t want to pay for it. In fact, the internet has been around long enough there’s a whole generation of people who don’t see the need to pay someone for their work in that field. Meanwhile, colleges are telling kids not to be journalists. Be something that will actually sustain you. Thus we are losing out on people who would otherwise have been an asset to us and are starting to get our news from sources with less standards and talent or are copied and reworded but not original material. It will be many years before people are trained to think otherwise. Now bring that back to your thought — if we don’t find a way of keeping writers floating we are going to be in trouble. The next generation of readers will have no concept of paying for something they feel is free even if they are shooting themselves in the foot. It is just around the corner already and once it sets in it will be as hard to sort out as journalism already is.
Personally, I look at my digital content as temporary things. I am not looking at them like “hey, I’ll pass these on to my grandkids.” We’ve transitioned from records to tapes to CDs to MP3 and people have bought the same song over and over again in each format. It just happens and it doesn’t really bother me. I’ll buy a book from amazon for my Kindle and in 20 years I’ll probably buy it again to use in the holodeck or something. We’ve always have been rebuying content. It’s just the way it is and I am not going to get worked up about it. Your dead tree books have always run the risk of getting flooded or burned or moldy. I’ve bought the same paperback three times in one case. It would be nice if digital content could be a little freer, but it would also be nice if people didn’t steal things. People do though, and for a lot of people they don’t care that the author never sees a dime for their work. Free up the content, add in the infinite copying capabilities of it, and kiss goodbye any money going back to the author in the form of sales. You’d have to find a new way of sustaining them and I don’t see people lining up to commission a book like the Romans used to do statues.
Unfortunately however, if users do not find a way to pay us for creating the material, we can’t produce it anymore as professionals, and you’re left with the amateur epic series Captain Wonderful Meets the Monster of Doom with Crayola illos as your only reading material.
My point in the starting post is that what governs the right to sell the content of books is copyright; if you are not the copyright holder (me) or a contractual licensee of the copyright holder (a publisher who has paid me money) you do not have the right to sell the content. The selling of secondhand used copies which contain the content is not actually a legitimate activity in that light, but has been tolerated by the companies and by the author historically, as an activity having a moral benefit, and of minor harm to the copyright holder and publisher, ie, books once read do not end up in the dustbin; but there is still no right to sell the content.
CJ: Let me just say that you’re not correct about the legality of selling used media containing content (CDs, books, etc), at least not in the USA. It is not happening on the sufferance of the author and publisher. The doctrine of first sale allows the unlimited resale of secondhand copies whether the copyright holder likes it or not. Consider:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-880022.html
The belief that copyright holders have the right to control the distribution of already purchased property even for their economic survival is considered sufficiently odious that the law has enshrined the right to resell.
At that point we have created the natural expectation that consumers own the media; author’s rights at best pertain to the distribution of the content. Consider that (IIRC) even the DMCA has an interoperability exception to its rather aggressive anti-reverse-engineering provisions.
Canada solved this for music by charging a levy on every blank CD for the compensation of the music industry as a whole. The result of this, as I understand it, has been that Canadian courts now presume that every Canadian is now in a contractual relationship with the music industry, making it very difficult (and rightly under these conditions) to prosecute possession of pirated copies.
It may well be the case that our artistic future is one of wall-to-wall low quality fanfic. The era of the artist, particularly the author, as independent business existed under very particular conditions: the ability to mass-produce text, but under very expensive capital requirements. Prior to this era, there was no such ability. Now we no longer have very expensive capital requirements. I won’t try to predict what comes in its place in the next decades, but I don’t think it is necessarily disaster either.
So you are saying a digital book can exist in a “secondhand” state? You’d have to win a court case for that to hold water. What you are talking about deals with DTBs where something actually exchanges hands. If I sell you my paperback I no longer have it. On the other hand, I can sell an infinite number of people unprotected digital books. That isn’t secondhand use. What would people say if Amazon opened a “secondhand” ebook store? Once they stop laughing they’ll be calling up their lawyers.
No, I was responding to CJ’s statement that the reselling of paper books existed under the toleration of copyright holders.
We’re still working out what to do with digital books (and other content), precisely for the reason you mention. But there, the problem remains enforcibility. Essentially, the necessarily level of enforcement has so far been deemed far too odious for users and far too restrictive of legitimate uses.
So far, only the TV industry has started to mount a response that works, but that’s only because users are willing to watch a (topical) ad every so often on hulu. I wouldn’t be surprised if hulu has made a dent in piracy in the USA, because it’s easier than piracy. For various probably quite good reasons, it sounds like the book industry is probably going to be able to be the last to adjust to cheap digital transfer. Consider the recent MacMillan/Amazon dust-up.
This is related to (but oh so much more civil than) the recent dust-up on Mobiread.
You’re both right—that there’s going to be more litigation before the market does what the market does and shakes out.
But before we end up in the state of the forum over in Mobiread I’m going to declare a moratorium on the topic while we have two well-stated opinions and no one is angry.