When Did Authors Become Second Class Citizens?
Why are people still condoning online piracy and pirate
sites? And worse yet, participating and encouraging
these sites. Why the lack of respect for
authors and other artists, people that you the public supposedly admire?
What is it about being online that makes illegal activities
so appealing? Is it the anonymity? Except with the technology today, anonymity is
harder to come by, users can be tracked, and there is a real possibility that
someone will prosecute you. So why do
people do it?
Frankly, I don’t know why people are that offensive and callous,
perhaps they just don’t consider what they are doing wrong. Well consider this, if someone walked into a
brick and mortar store, bought several books and then handed those copies out free
to incoming shoppers, the owners (or security) would evict them from the store.
But that is exactly what people are doing on pirate sites
and in far greater numbers than a few books.
So why is it acceptable online and frowned upon in the real world?
Stop treating authors like they don’t have feelings and they’re
not worthy of ethical treatment!
I think the book industry should have seen this coming when they started charging $15 or more for eBooks. That's what happened in the music industry which encouraged people to go to Napster and other later incarnations. Eventually the rise of iTunes and Amazon, which brought sane pricing for music, the piracy became less rampant.
ReplyDeleteA lot of it is unnecessary too because of loaning programs like through KDP and libraries.
Anyway, the big time authors won't be hurt much by this but if you're someone like me (or you) then it's taking money our of our pockets. I need that money, consarnit!
Yes, most indie authors like you and me do need those sales. Costs like marketing, book covers and editing need to be covered, before we can even dream of things like a profit.
ReplyDelete