Not This Again
Good afterevenmore, Readers!
First, my apologies for getting this to you late, instead of my usual morning post (also, please spare a thought for the editor, whose forbearance is bordering on legendary. Give him some kudos in the comments). I was away on holidays all last week and couldn’t get my usual writing in.
I wasn’t completely out of the world while on holidays. I did occasionally check social media… which might have been a mistake, because an old, old argument has begun once again. This isn’t one where I can understand both sides. This is one where I am firmly on one side, for very obvious reasons. There are several points to this argument, all of which stem from the same kind of thought process, and all of which I find exhausting.
But what argument, you ask? (I’m assuming) Ah! But the age old argument of the cost of stories.
Some (though thankfully not all) readers are very used to getting their reading material free, largely online, and often through means that are less than savoury. Much of that material is meant to be free, and I have no issue with at all. This, of course, is fan-fiction. It is a great place for writers to cut their teeth. It’s a great place for readers to find stories in worlds already well-loved. While I don’t really write or read it myself, I think fan-fiction is great!
I do think, however, that it has somewhat skewed what some readers expect from writers.
I was scrolling through BlueSky while away from town, and I came across a long thread from an author explaining an interaction they had with a reader who was annoyed that they could not pirate that author’s story. The reader in question, and I cannot emphasise how crazy and entitled I found this enough, complained to the writer for expecting payment for their novel and how “selfish” it was that steps were taken to ensure that payment would be received; which is to say, cease and desist notices were issued and the pirated story was removed from the site this particular reader was attempting to get the story from.
Of course, it was a pirate site. The author would not receive a single cent for the story, no matter the number of readers.
There is no real way to put into words how irritated I am about it all. I’m sure none of you need this explained, but I’m going to anyway. I need to vent. So… cheers for giving me the space to do so!
Perhaps it’s just me, but I have never understood the expectation that some entertainment (primarily, prose) should just be free always. It boggles my mind that people think that way. For sure, some could be free (the aforementioned-mentioned fan-fiction, for example). But writers still need to eat. We need to put food on our tables… and have a roof over said tables. If our work – the writing – cannot provide that, we’ll have to put it aside to do the work that will. Which is to say, if we can’t earn from our writing, we take other jobs. Other jobs leaves less time for writing. You, the reader, get fewer stories from your favourite writers, because we’re all trying to not starve to death. I mean… that’s obvious, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
If writers earn enough to live from their work, they have the time and resources to continue writing. Everyone gets more stories to enjoy. The maths is painfully simple.
Lord knows, I’d have so many more books written by now if I was spending close to thirty-six to forty hours a week writing instead of doing work for someone else. I can’t, because I need to eat. That hasn’t stopped me from writing stories when I can though, and even offering some of them for free.
The Timbercreek Incident eBook, for example, is available for free (or by donation, but that’s not a requirement) from my Ko-Fi shop or from Itch.io. You can read it free on Wattpad, too, if that’s your preferred venue. You have to pay if you want it from other platforms, but it is available for free if you want a free story. I intend to do that for all of the stories I write as serials for my Ko-Fi subscribers. They get the first look at the narrative, months before it’s published, and also their own special edition of these stories.
I would have another serial up by now, but I’m working two jobs besides this writing endeavour, and I simply haven’t the time to dedicate to writing the way I want… Or the way I feel my Ko-Fi subscribers deserve, if I’m honest. Right now, I have the subscription as low as I can – just CAD$1.00 a month. It’s so low because I cannot offer much currently; because I am so constrained by the whole food/shelter requirement taking up the majority of my time. I want to do more. I can’t afford to. I won’t raise prices unless or until I feel like I’m providing enough value to justify it, and I can’t provide enough value because I’m not earning enough to be able to dedicate the time required to create that value. It’s an endless circle; an ouroboros of frustration, if you will.
This isn’t an ad for my Ko-Fi, I promise. It’s just a convenient example to draw from in my personal experience.
I don’t understand why some people have such an issue with creatives being able to support themselves financially with their creations. Is it because we enjoy the work (despite all the complaining I frequently see (which I also don’t understand. There really isn’t any part about writing that I dislike… up until the reviews start coming in, but that’s very much a me problem))? I mean, I know forensic accountants who absolutely adore the puzzling, number crunching, and mystery solving that comes with their jobs. They find enormous satisfaction in it. Should they not get paid, either?
My confusion over this attitude that some people have towards creatives is genuine. I cannot understand it.
It’s not like there’s no value in creations. When things get tough, so many people turnto books, and to television shows, and to films – all of which require writers.
Look, there is already a place where readers can get books to read – including electronic books – and not pay a single cent. That would be the library. Get thyself a library card and you can get books out to read. It costs you nothing. At all. A lot of library cards can be issued to anyone, anywhere. You don’t need to physically go to the library. And better yet, it supports the author, because (at least where I am), we earn a little bit of money every time a book is lent. It’s win-win! You get free book. I get a couple of cents in my pocket. Yay!
And yet, and yet, so few of these readers go that route. Instead, they head to pirate sites. That is a win-lose. Why do you want to make someone lose like this? Does it bring you joy knowing that a person’s hard work will remain unrewarded? That pleases you?
If the issue is that you think that writers are somehow making bank, I am very, very unhappy to inform you that that simply isn’t the case. Goodness knows I wish it was. Those writers you hear about, the wildly wealthy ones, those are the tiniest percentage of writers. Not all of us are best-sellers with adaptation deals. Most authors earn less than a living wage from royalties. Even those who are published by the big houses with marketing teams and whatnot.
Some might consider it a victimless crime, sticking it to the corporations and whatnot. But that’s not how it works. It would be great if the only person hurt was not a person at all. But a pirated book is a book that doesn’t sell. That’s royalties the author will never receive. That’s a whole bunch of sales that will never be recorded. And if a book doesn’t sell well, that author is dropped like a hot potato. If that happens to the first couple of books in an ongoing series, guess what’s not getting published — the rest of the series. And possibly that author, who must carry those terrible sales to every submission attempt thereafter.
Anyway, my point is, if you want free books, go to the library. Plenty of libraries issue cards for folks not in their immediate area. You get a free read, authors get paid.
Alright, I’m done venting. I was already quite frustrated to not be writing as much as I’d like, and that whole exchange on socials last week made my blood boil perhaps a little harder than it usually does. It is quite personal to me. Obviously.
Thank you for letting me it all out. I’m feeling better already.
Right, I’m off to continue writing the free creative recaps of my D&D sessions for my Ko-Fi supporters. I have to go.
When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Skylark, Human and The Timbercreek Incident.
Another side of this is that, as a writer, I find it helpful to envision the audience I’m writing for. The fact that people have willingly spent money to read a book I’ve worked on—for example, that people have committed $90,000 to read GURPS Ring of Fire, which I edited and wrote some parts of—tells me that my work has an audience; the fact that Steve Jackson Games offers to pay me to write one or another book tells me that in their best estimate, that book WILL have an audience. And that gives a sharper focus to my work; it helps me as a creator. People who get my books for nothing, from pirate sites, are not giving me that information. And yes, I suppose they could tell me that they like book X and would like to read similar books Y and Z, but the fact that they spent nothing to get book X means I don’t have an estimate of how much they liked it; spending money means they have skin in the game. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
But Steve Jackson Games are able to make those estimates, better than I could, because they too have skin in the game. Every dollar they spend on producing one book or game could have gone to a different book or game. And earning back what they’ve spent lets them go on producing books and games. People who acquire books from them are cutting back on their future ability to produce. And that hurts me, too, indirectly, both as someone who can sell his services to them to help in that production, and as someone who wants to consume what they produce and would like them to be able to produce more of it.
That too! I could rant forever about this topic, but I was already late with the post, and quite wordy.
This just fills me with outrage. It’s nothing more than shoplifting. Actually it’s more like burglary and is no different than someone breaking into your home and stealing from you.
While this sort of thing is not new- the condition “kleptomania” was an invention of Victorian lawyers who defended upper middle-class housewives caught stealing from department stores and the old country store derived its distinctive u-shaped counter layout, with most goods out of customer reach, to thwart shoplifting-I think what we’re seeing here is more shaped by the ease with which modern technology facilitates theft while simultaneously normalizing it.
I managed a large independent record store back in the nineties and our customers disappeared almost overnight with the emergence of Napster at the end of the decade. We went from actual shoulder-to-shoulder packed weekends to tumbleweeds within a year. Everyone made the justification that CD prices were too high and while that was true it didn’t stop these same people from binge-shopping like crazy before nor, more importantly, did it justify the irreparable damage it did to artists and the countless other people whose jobs disappeared overnight.
When the COVID book boom kicked in and young people suddenly discovered reading, one of the first thing I noticed was how much social media chatter was devoted to people pleading to the ether for free ARCs or openly bragging about their illegal ebooks. I wasn’t surprised but it still made me sick and angry. It really highlights how much the new boom is more about rabid consumerism and plain old greed and how little of it is about the love of reading and the appreciation for the people who create it. It’s what makes me worry about the future of AI in publishing and just how much of the audience out there could be happily willing to bury their faces in the troughs full of slop solely because the supply is free and endless.
You have every reason and right to be furious and I’m at a loss as to why more writers, in fact all writers, aren’t raging about this.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I cannot imagine this way of thinking, and I think it is precisely because I appreciate the works so much. I appreciate how reading carried me through a miserably lonely childhood. I appreciate the stories that made me feel hopeful (or feel at all, really). I don’t understand how someone can claim to enjoy a thing, but cannot appreciate that thing.
Anyway, I’m glad I’m not alone in my outrage. Thanks.
This mentality is infuriating but not surprising. Such people (most of whom have never created anything of value themselves, which is part of the problem) want everything for free but don’t seem to understand that by removing the incentive to create anything of value, nothing of value will be produced in the first place. At that point, everything might as well be free since it will likely be of limited worth to begin with. It’s way more “selfish” than a writer expecting to make something (which is usually small to begin with) from what can be months or years of hard work.
Judgment: Agreed, it’s a wrong mentality. Agreed, it is totally unreasonable, selfish, and stupid of anyone to demand another’s work for free (slavery, anyone?). Agreed, an author should be completely free to either expect compensation for work– assuming good value for work relative to value paid– or to supply the work gratis, by the author’s own choice. Agreed, the attempt to remove an author’s ability to choose to expect or not expect compensation is a crime, and should be pursued as such.
Mercy(?): Sometimes this utterly awful mentality comes from a place of addiction. Not compulsion, but real, true, chemically-based addiction. Sure, reading/narrative/unreality addiction is not recognized as an addiction in any of the DSMs, but the DSMs don’t recognize a lot of things that can become addictions in some people. This irrational demand for the supply of the addictive substance at lowest cost to the addicted, with complete disregard for how much it might hurt anyone else, is extremely common. The attempt to make the irrational demand while lashing out at others and attributing bad faith to anyone but the addicted himself/herself, is also extremely common.
Is it right? Absolutely not. Should we accommodate it and say it’s OK because it’s an addiction? Heavens, no; I deal with small addictions that are not recognized as addictions, and I think we all do: it’s our job as human beings to control such things and view each other as equally important as ourselves, regardless of our dependencies. Should we understand it as a source of idiotic behavior? Yes. Should we let them get away with it without calling them on it? Definitively NO.