Here is the answer of D. Pogue:“Unfortunately, I’ve had terrible experiences releasing my books in electronic form. Twice in my career, ‘blind’ people e-mailed me, requesting a PDF of one of my books. Both times, I sent one over–and both times, it was all over the piracy sites within 48 hours, free for anyone to download.
“I’ve got a mortgage and three kids to put through college, and it broke my heart! Unfortunately, the bad apples have once again spoiled it for everyone else.”
Now, I realize that my position is unpopular in some circles. And the piracy issue really does bum me out, because some of my how-to books (on Windows Vista and Mac OS X, for example) are 900-page behemoths that would be so much easier to carry, read and search right on the screen.
But this week, I came across a blog post by author Steven Poole on just this topic. (It’s at
http://stevenpoole.net/blog/free-your-mind, and it contains a couple of naughty words.) He recently conducted an experiment: he offered an electronic download of one of his books, called “Trigger Happy,” on a “pay what you like” model. In assessing the results, he writes:
“Is this, as some people say, an exciting new Internet-age business model for writers and other creative types?
“Er, not really. The proportion of people who left a tip after downloading “Trigger Happy” was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%.”
Mr. Poole, as it turns out, is just as disinclined as I am to make free electronic delivery his primary distribution channel. Here’s how he covers the “information wants to be free” line of reasoning, which he calls “the Slashdot argument”:
“It says that books, music, films, software and so on ought to be freely distributed to anyone who wants them, simply because they can be freely distributed.
“What is the writer or musician to do, though, if she can’t earn money from her art? Simple, says the Slashdotter: earn your money playing live (if you’re one of those musicians who plays live), or selling T-shirts or merchandise, or providing some other kind of ‘value-added’ service. Many such arguments seem to me to be simple greed disguised in high-falutin’ idealism about how ‘information wants to be free.’
“…I think the Slashdot argument can actually be disposed of rapidly with one rhetorical question, as follows.
“Oh Mr. Freetard, you work as a programmer, do you? How interesting. So do you perform all your corporate programming duties for free, and earn your keep by selling personally branded mousemats on the side?
“Didn’t think so.”
But what about the Radiohead experiment, where the band released an album online using a “pay what you like” system–and succeeded?
As Mr. Poole points out, that’s fine if you’re already an established name: “If there’s been a comparable success by a band that hasn’t already gained its cultural capital and name-recognition through the evils of copyright and corporate promotion, I’d like to know about it.”
So yes, this is how I, as an author who’s been twice-burned, truly feel. And yet I realize that it puts me, rather awkwardly, on the same side of the piracy issue as the record companies and movie companies, who are suing teenagers for downloading songs, and of whom I’ve made endless fun.
Actually, authors like me are lucky; our work is, at this point, pretty much protected with unbreakable copy protection. That is, our bound and published books can’t be duplicated infinitely and distributed by the millions online.
So what would I do if I were in the business of music or movies, where piracy is so much easier?
I’m just happy I don’t have to answer that question.
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