What your opinion about ebooks? and ebook piracy? Have you lost money from piracy? Do you agree with Neil Gaiman about this ?
Neil is quite wise. I don’t feel that I’ve lost money to piracy, and feel that it’s basically a non-issue. Perhaps some day it will happen that this hurts more than it helps…but so far, everything points toward piracy increasing sales. Libraries have been around forever. Nobody who buys my books HAS to. They do so to support the author.
There are some things that bother me. For example, if an author doesn’t want you to distribute their books that way, it’s a jerk move to do so anyway. In that case, it has nothing at all to do with ‘stealing’ or anything like that. It’s the author’s legal and moral right, in my opinion, to say that. I think they’re dumb for making a big deal of it, but it should be their right.
So…I don’t know. I’m not going to tell folks to go out and torrent my books. I put one of my own up for free so you wouldn’t have to. The biggest argument for piracy, in my opinion, is the “Let them try it out before they spend money on it” argument. So, this way people can try out my books for free. If they like my writing, maybe they’ll consider buying the next one and supporting me.
I don’t like that Torrent sites are making money by doing what they’re doing, all the while hiding behind the idea that they’re providing a service for the good of mankind. Some very few seem genuine in their dedication to the freedom of information. The rest just want to make a buck, and do it by cutting as many legitimate people out of the loop as possible.
But as for people sharing my work with friends, pirating an ecopy of a book they already have a physical copy of, trying out a book before buying a copy, and the like—you’ll hear no complaint from me. In fact, I probably won’t complain anyway, since it won’t make a difference and it’s really not hurting. There are some things about the entire culture that do annoy me, though.
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