I’ve spoken with several publishers on this topic. They knew they shouldn’t do what the music industry did (i.e. sue their own customers) but that’s typically where the thought process ended. At a writing conference I recently attended, there were a lot of worried writers. They worried that someone would steal their stuff.
Don’t worry about it.
It’s either:
1. pretty rare (maybe it’s not good enough to bother stealing—uh-oh!),
OR
2. the people who steal it are power users and curators who are going to read more of your stuff and pay for it and the related products and services you sell (so be prolific and imaginative),
OR
3. the pirates are scum who never pay for anything anyway so the sale isn’t really lost. If they weren’t stealing your stuff, they’d be stealing someone else’s stuff instead. (Don’t waste time or base your business model on the lowest common denominator douche.)
Maybe that’s counter-intuitive, but I’d rather concern myself with factors I can control rather than worry about things I cannot control.
Free not only can work, giving to get often does work. You can hide your light under a bushel or put it out there so more people can find it. Scott Sigler built a bestselling franchise, for instance. So did Cory Doctorow, and the list of authors who embrace free and easy access is growing.
Repurpose what you write so more people can find you (and find you interesting.) The churning of information raises sales.
There are some instances of publishers stealing work, but it’s a rare anecdote, especially in an era where, with Google, stolen material is so easy to find. I’ve found a few things stolen from my features and columns in magazines. Usually it’s a case of someone on the other end who is clueless rather than malicious. We just ask that they attribute the material so I get credit and make sure a link back to the source is included. That’s the basis of the Creative Commons model. It’s not really a big deal.
What people forget is, though e-books and web bits are easy to snatch, so is a regular old paper book. When I worked at Harlequin, foreign knockoffs happened often in the Chinese and French romance markets.) The text was stolen and lousy covers were slapped on the books. All they needed was a photocopier. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
Consider this: put some or all of your book up on your website (using whatever model you choose: a taste, weekly podcast-a-chapter meal or the whole feast at once) and you’ve got proof of ownership in every time stamp.
Filed under: authors, Books, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Writers, American Gods, book, books, Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons, e-books, Neil Gaiman, piracy, Scott Sigler
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