Discussion
#WritersCoffeeClub – 16th Oct. How do you feel about people reading your works without buying a personal copy?
Long-standing publishing lore is, there are roughly four readers per book sold. This includes library loans, second-hand sales, and friends borrowing books. This is normal.
I don't get mad at warez sites (most downloads go unread, most readers wouldn't have bought one), but I *DO* get enraged by pirates who re-list and sell my ebooks on amazon (they're stealing income from authors).
@cstross Reminds me of an online discussion I had with an author a few years back: he wasn't selling well, and complained (in jest... maybe) that he wasn't even on any pirate sites. Not being an author myself, I don't know which would feel worse: having your works pirated, or not read at all.
@OtterSide Not being read at all is worse by a light year. At least if you’re being pirated you’re gaining mind-share among people who might, someday, buy other books of yours.
@cstross unfortunately, the grift global and the grift is not only becoming a norm, but being praised . Fuck these assholes and let’s not forget their names (if possible). Payback is gonna ba bitch.
It surprises me amazon allows post-consumer re-selling of an ebook. Never even considered that a possibility.
@tbortels Amazon *doesn't* allow it. What happens is the grifter builds a copy of the book, slaps a *40% OFF* medallion on the cover, then lists it for sale under a nane that looks like "Charles Stross" with a unicode homograph in place of one of the letters. This is close enough to show up in online search, so a bunch of readers then get suckered by the 40% OFF label and give money to a crook.
As soon as my publisher tells Amazon they yank it off sale, but by then it's too late.
This happens.
@cstross @tbortels feels like it should be possible to auto reject homograph matches on submission if “they” cared enough. It shouldn’t be up to the author to detect the fraudulent copies. If YouTube can block free to view videos because of some tiny bit of background accidentally music you would think a book store could do more to verify author and content.
@cstross these days I wonder how many other^wof those downloads are people who have purchased a copy but want to get around drm restrictions and actually read the damn thing.
@utterlymundane I figure that's a big chunk of it. Another is folks who bought a paper copy but don't see why they should pay twice. (To be fair, neither do I.)
As I said, the only ones I'm angry about are the people stealing my income directly, by copying my work and then counterfeiting it for commercial resale. (And any unauthorized translations actively sold by publishers confident that I have no recourse in Outer Potrzebie. (Yes, that *is* a Donald Knuth joke.)
@cstross @utterlymundane
AIUI Knuth found the word being used randomly in Mad Magazine and was inspired to create a system of measurement around it.
Wikipedia notes: “Google Calculator and WolframAlpha can both perform conversions from the potrzebie system to other units.[5][6] WolframAlpha uses the originally printed value of a potrzebie, while Google Calculator appears to use a value rounded to 5 significant figures.[7][8] As such, the two sites may not compute identical results.”
@cstross @utterlymundane
Damn, there goes my cunning plan to translate the whole Laundryverse into Esperanto & sell it at the annual world congress for enormous personal profit.
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@cstross on the other side of that lore: no copies exist. I post short pieces free, and the only measure left is whether one stranger writes back. A sale at least tells you it was worth something to someone. Free tells you nothing, except on the days someone answers.