A self-described pirate calling himself “jap” left a comment on the blog we posted called “We Have Met the Enemy and He is The Real Caterpillar,” an interview with a book pirate. “jap” informs us that in our defense of copyright we have missed the point. “You have your morality and I have mine,” he says. His statement is reproduced in full below.

Well, jap, I do have a morality, and this it: If you want to find me my address is 171 East 74th Street in New York City. Does your morality have a street address? Why not?

Richard Curtis
*********************************

Hi. I am a pirate, and I have downloaded a lot of books.

I think you are missing the point. You have your morality and I have mine. It is prefectly [sic] okay for me to download books (or movies btw). It was also okay to copy or print books for everybody before 1710 (when the first copyright law was passed), or buying that “unauthorized by author” books.

Shakespeare was a pirate is he bought or copied a book (surely he did). Middle Age scribe monks were pirates. Are you really sure that your morality is better than theirs?

Probably you are thinking just now “but it is unlawful!!” Is it necessary to explain that law and moral are not the same thing? (btw it is not always unlawful).

Morality aside, it is probably of your interest to know that we the ebook pirates do buy books. I understand you are worried for your business but don’t worry: the book business is not in danger.

Best regards

Publishing’s Grumpy Old Visionaries: True Believers in Books’ Digital Future Science’s Doubtful Advance

By Chris Allbritton and Sara Nelson

It’s probably safe to say that no one really knows what lies ahead for the post-literate, corporatized, bottom-line-focused publishing industry. More than 400 years old, the business of books has, to say the least, been one of the most resistant to the changes brought about by the Internet and other new-media technologies.

Some would say only the young and fleet of foot have any chance of staying on top of what’s happening in the $10.3 billion trade-book industry. Those people would be wrong. Three veterans of the publishing business—former Random House editorial director Jason Epstein, outspoken agent John Brockman and agent-turned-e-publishing-impresario Richard Curtis—have spent the bulk of their collective 200 or so years on Earth in this business, and their experience has given them their own ideas of where it’s all going.

Epstein recently published Book Business: Publishing Past, Present and Future (W.W. Norton), an expansion of a much-discussed article in The New York Review of Books, of which he is a co-founder. His take: print-on-demand can revitalize a business that he says was practically destroyed by the rise of chain stores in the suburbs.

Brockman—who is an early pioneer of online book submissions; a founder of Edge.org, a site that addresses the ”digirati” culture; and an agent for science and nonfiction projects—thinks the industry can’t be saved, which is O.K. with him as long as his clients keep getting their checks. And Curtis thinks the key to publishing’s survival is in agents morphing into publishers, which is what he has done by releasing his clients’ works—most of them nonfiction by such authors as Harlan Ellison—in digital form.

Will publishing as we know it cease to exist? Will virtual book-buying become the norm? Will everybody in traditional publishing lose his and her job? Will readers take to the newfangled technology and contraptions designed for digital reading? While it may take a generation to find out, [INSIDE] took an afternoon to harness the trio’s collective intellect and glean what these e-geezers have to teach the business’s new kids.

[INSIDE]: How have the traditional roles of agent, publisher and author changed?

EPSTEIN: I said in my book that agents would very likely be the publishers of the future.

CURTIS: I’m doing it, and we’re starting with backlist books, because backlist books are branded by previous publications and the names of the authors. We have now acquired a total of 1,200. We don’t need editors at this point because we’re not yet publishing original books.

EPSTEIN: Why do you think other agents haven’t done this? They seem like the most likely people to do it, more likely than publishers.

CURTIS: Because agents are paralyzed by inertia and fear. They realize that—and John, you can really speak to this——they’re in danger of becoming irrelevant as the relationship between buyer and seller intensifies and the need for a middle person decreases. Most agents will have to become more relevant to the digital process, [doing things] such as creating Web sites for clients and operating them as promotional vehicles for their clientele. Otherwise, authors are going to wake up and say, ”What do I need you for when I can go directly into the buying and selling process?”

EPSTEIN: That means there will have to be independent Web site managers, so to speak, who will handle these authors. And that’s what publishers could become. It’s the most natural thing in the world.

CURTIS: The hardest thing for an agent—and I’m sure this is true of you [indicating Brockman]—one of the reasons why agents are paralyzed is because of the conflict of interest. Because we’ve all grown up in a time when the roles were very clear-cut. There’s an author who’s represented by an agent; the agent goes to the publisher. For an agent to become a publisher, that sets off all sorts of conflict-of-interest bells. And most agents don’t know how to emotionally handle that or address that.

EPSTEIN: I think Richard’s idea [about agents becoming e-publishers], which I’m delighted by, is the future. I think it’s going to be a little premature, because I think people will not want to read on screen as much as they want to read in book form.

BROCKMAN: There is a whole recent trend of thinking in the cognitive sciences of looking at the human as a machine made out of machines, and the mind as a computational device. And there are people like [physicist] Freeman Dyson who think about these questions from another point of view: whether we’re meant to be analog devices. And the whole bit of the keyboard interface to the screen has always been very kludgy to me, and unnatural. Using my Palm and all these devices you’re talking about, there’s something about them I just don’t like. And if anybody is going to like computers, it’s me.

CURTIS: I say you guys are too old! There are generations growing up today who access information on a keyboard, for whom reading on a screen and manipulating information on a screen is second nature.

EPSTEIN: Are these the same kids who bought all those copies of Harry Potter?

CURTIS: The point is, children are growing up completely comfortable with handheld devices, whether it be a pager, a GameBoy, a reading device, a handheld radio. These same children can walk to school with a single multimedia device that will carry all their homework. This is already happening. Then you’re just one step closer to a device that is not only a homework device and a schoolbook device, but also a reading-for-pleasure device. And those same devices, which today have only limited capacity for carrying text, those same devices will carry video. They’ll be in color, they’ll carry audio, they’ll carry music. You’ll be able to play a movie on it, play a game, call home, send an e-mail.

[INSIDE]: So despite all the turmoil that the Web has been going through, you still believe the industry will be radically transformed. Which traditional publishing jobs as we now know them do you think are going to get squeezed?

EPSTEIN: There will come a time when young people in publishing won’t even know what the words ”sales conference” mean. Or ”returns.” Or ”warehouses.” If it’s possible for the contents of the book to be delivered from the author’s mind via his or her Web site, then we can eliminate buying paper, ordering a printing, storing the books in a warehouse, sending reps out on the road to sell them. Marketing books will be different than dealing with Barnes & Noble and Borders, and taking returns. Those functions represent about 35 percent of a publisher’s revenue, or a little bit more. Those sums will be redundant; you won’t need to do that in the future. And the people who perform those tasks will probably be redundant, too. I’m sorry to say that, because some of them are good friends.

[INSIDE]: So who gets all the money publishers won’t be spending on printing and storage and distribution? Authors?

EPSTEIN: I think so. The authors in this case will contribute much more value to the publishers than in the past, so they’ll be entitled to a larger share of proceeds. I think 50 percent will be the minimum, and it may be 60 or 70 percent. But I think a Web publisher with a stable of 20 or 30 authors could do very well even with 15 percent of the proceeds. And, of course, the price to the end user will be much less because the costs of publishing will be much less.

CURTIS: There are authors who will say, ”Well, you can’t pay me an advance, but the idea of getting a 50 percent royalty in the long run becomes very intriguing.” And as the industry shifts to such a model, you’re going to find the whole nature of thinking about advances changing. And advance prices may very well come down.

BROCKMAN: Do you think you’re doing your clients a favor?

CURTIS: Remember, you’re talking to a publisher.

BROCKMAN: All right, fine. But who’s representing your old authors?

CURTIS: I am. I am. I think crossing the traditional lines where one can be both agent and publisher is a very attractive model. It gives maximum flexibility. As long as my authors are aware—full disclosure—and I conduct my business with integrity, the authors are really getting the best out of the flexibility.

EPSTEIN: I think in the electronic future, the competition will not only be represented by advances to authors, but by authors’ shares of revenue. I think there will be tremendous pressure on that 50 percent. There’s tremendous pressure right now for publishers to pay more than they can afford for a book. In the future, authors will be contributing most of the value, and all Web site publishers will be approximately alike. There will be some brilliant ones, some less brilliant ones, but my guess is they’ll be pretty interchangeable.

BROCKMAN: I love Bertelsmann, and I love HarperCollins. Why? Because no one else is going to fork over millions of dollars on a book deal. Authors like that.

EPSTEIN: That’s like saying Willie Sutton likes banks.

[INSIDE]: What do you think will be the biggest change in how buyers get and read books in the future?

EPSTEIN: My hunch is—and it’s more than just a hunch—I think books will not be downloaded in any electronic form, they will be downloaded in a printed form on a machine that is capable of printing one copy at a time on demand, automatically. There will be no human intervention except to load the paper in. These machines will be at innumerable random locations. Like ATM machines, except for books.

[INSIDE]: Do you think ”big publishing” will cease to exist?

EPSTEIN: Of course I think so. These companies won’t be broken up, but they’re untenable as they now exist. For one reason, trade-book publishing has never been profitable, and it can’t be profitable. It’s not in its nature to be profitable. It’s been sustained historically by other publishing operations in the same corporation-textbooks, bibles, whatever. Or by rich people like Bennett Cerf [co-founder of Random House in 1925], who were very passionate about doing this but didn’t have to make a living doing it. When these people got to the point of wanting to sell these businesses, they were getting old and had no succession. They sold their business to corporations; the corporations thought these were glamorous businesses. They used words like ”synergy,” thinking that one thing leads to another. But that doesn’t happen in the real world.

[INSIDE]: So you think synergy is a myth?

EPSTEIN: Of course.

CURTIS: I agree. Many publishers are acquired by entertainment complexes and conglomerates that have the idea that the books an editor acquires this morning will be on the producer’s desk this afternoon. And we’ll buy not only the audio, we’ll do the movie, we’ll do the merchandising. And it never materializes.

EPSTEIN: That synergy business never amounted to anything. When GE bought RCA and found that it also bought a company called Random House, it took one look at it and said, ”This isn’t what we wanted. There’s no way to make money at this. We’ve got to get rid of this.” Eventually, a very, very rich man bought Random House [S.I. Newhouse of Advance Communications] because he liked the idea and he wanted to be associated with it. He ran it as well as he could. S.I. was a pretty good businessman. And after 12 years he saw the same thing: you cannot make money doing this. So now, Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck have bought all these imprints, the ghostly remains of once-interesting publishing companies. And once they get rid of their redundant overhead, combine the warehouses and that kind of thing, they, too, will end up with a bunch of unprofitable trade-publishing companies.

CURTIS: You will see a day, I think and hope, when the fast companies eat the slow ones, and the small companies will eat the big ones.

EPSTEIN: But the price of entry will be very low. So there might be a great many little companies that do this. And I think the more the better.

CURTIS: You can make a profit selling 100 copies of a book, and you contrast that to a company like Random House or Harper or Bertelsmann that loses money selling 500,000 copies of a book. This is a bizarre world.

BROCKMAN: I tell you what, Richard. You represent that first book. I’ll represent the one that loses money.

CURTIS: I have the greatest respect for you, [John], but it’s kind of a strip-mining way of approaching publishing—get your money out quickly. It’s basically a way of making huge short-term profits.

BROCKMAN: You say that as a wise man looking down from the mountain. If you’re representing an individual, you have a fiduciary responsibility to do the best you can, every deal you make. That’s what I do. I like to do good books, but it’s about business, something nobody’s talking about at this table. Maybe you guys are working with the wrong authors. The whole world is not The New York Review of Books. I’m just saying that the culture’s changing, and people may be reading different things.

[INSIDE]: So is it good, then, that the chain book stores exist and flourish?

BROCKMAN: It’s not a bad thing for the public that people all over America can get to a bookstore.

EPSTEIN: It’s a wonderful thing, but they can’t find all the books we would like to sell them or all the books they would like to find.

BROCKMAN: No, you mean all the books you and your friends write to each other … You talk about, with sadness, the sophisticated, independent booksellers. But I don’t feel like I have to have a relationship with people who work in bookstores.

[INSIDE]: O.K., but a lot of people have relationships with books themselves—with the physical paper-and-ink product. What happens to that emotional and cultural resonance when you go from having a physical object to a virtual one?

CURTIS: Everybody saves the books that he or she reads. Your home library is basically a repository and extension of your intellect and your memory and your mind. So when I’m surrounded by my books, I feel like I’m surrounded by the totality of what I’ve read. And if that didn’t exist there, I don’t know if I would be the same person. But on the other hand, half of the books that I’ve read are no longer there, because they got sold, they got given away, I moved.

[INSIDE]: So will e-books replace ”real” books, or will the next generation have both?

EPSTEIN: They’ll co-exist.

BROCKMAN: For people our children’s age, nobody knows. They’ll figure it out for themselves

• He’s ripped off hundreds of books.
• He can rip yours off in five minutes. It’s so easy even a caveman can do it.
• He painstakingly proofreads the books he steals.
• He has ethical and moral standards. And a conscience…of sorts.
• Though piracy’s toll is in the billions of dollars, he thinks the crime is overrated.
• But he admits it’s a crime.

That’s a thumbnail profile of a book pirate. I’ve condensed it from an astounding interview with one conducted by C. Max Magee on his website “The Millions”.

After pondering the phenomenon of book piracy, a crime estimated to drain over $3 billion annually from legitimate copyright owners, Magee decided the best way to understand it was to ask a practitioner. “Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out. After a few hours of searching – stalled by a number dead links and password protected sites – I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk.”

The perpetrator’s handle is “The Real Caterpillar” and, as is so often the case, he is far from a noble Robin Hood. “He lives in the Midwest,” writes Magee, “he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands.”

Here are a few revelations in his own words:

• I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions. I have been out of the book scene for a while, concentrating on rare and out of print movies instead of books because it is much easier to rip a movie from VHS or DVD than to scan and proof a book
• I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may
• Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale
• In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing…however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks
• I’ve spent anywhere from 5 to 40 hours proofing the OCR output

And, finally: “In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers.”

Two persons mentioned by Caterpillar as having been stolen from are Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison. Both have published privacy or anti-piracy statements on their websites. You may read Helprin’s here but it says in part: “You agree to comply with all copyright laws worldwide in your use of this site and to prevent any unauthorized copying of the materials.” Ellison’s is an all-caps fist-shaking no-prisoners Jeremiad which you may read in its entirety here. Here’s a taste:

A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!

Caterpillar laughs at them. “One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop,” he says, “are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison – attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time.”

For the full flavor of Magee’s interview read Confessions of a Book Pirate in its entirety here.

We are Harlan Ellison’s literary agents. Our e-book company is publisher of some thirty of his books. Though we cannot express ourselves as colorfully as he, we support his position completely. His work and property, the work and property of countless other authors, our own labor and investment and that of all legitimate, reputable publishers worldwide are being stolen. Those who file-share copyrighted books are receiving stolen property. We ask those who take and those who receive to consider whether there is any difference between having your literary property robbed and your purse stolen. For one victim’s answer, read Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn’t Think So.

Richard Curtis

If for no other reason, e-books are the perfect vehicle for immediately correcting errors in published books. And if the errors are serious enough to damage a person’s reputation or otherwise incur potential legal liability, a prompt correction and withdrawal of the offending text demonstrate the sincere determination of the those who messed up to set the record straight without delay.

Such might be the recourse of Charles Pellegrino and his publisher Henry Holt in expunging material in his otherwise highly acclaimed account of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, The Last Train From Hiroshima.

According to William J. Broad in the New York Times, a section of the book cites recollections of someone who says he flew in an observation plane accompanying the bomber that released the a-bomb, the Enola Gay. But the man, Joseph Fuoco, “never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer,” says Corliss’s family. “They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor,” writes Broad.

The author of the book “now concedes that he was probably duped” and plans to “rewrite sections of the book for paperback and foreign editions.”

If normal production timelines apply, that means that the paperback might not come out for a year after hardcover publication, or six or nine months if Holt accelerates release of the reprint. Foreign editions? Foreign publishers need to translate the book first, so don’t expect a correct edition to appear overseas for many months as well.

If there was ever a case for e-books, this is it. Pellegrino and his publisher could remove the controversial passages for an e-print and write an apology that might remove not just the insult of the offending passages but also the injury of making the Corliss’s family wait, brood – and, perhaps, call a lawyer. As of this writing, however, there is no e-book edition. It undoubtedly has been “windowed”, the term used by publishers to describe the holding back of an e-book edition until the hardcover has had its run. Though controversial (see Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Prints), windowing is sound strategy for many books and might have been fine for Last Train too had it not been for this alleged error, which if true is embarrassing at the very least but potentially damaging as well.

Holt should consider crash-releasing Last Train in e-book.

Here’s the Times article.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Saving up for that iPad? Maybe you should check out the JooJoo first.

JooJoo? That’s one of a host of tablets in one stage or another of development or release. In fact, in the next year or two we’re going to have more tablets than a hypochondriac’s medicine chest. Some compare favorable to Apple’s iPad in price, power, specs and features. If you’re willing to do a little comparison shopping it might be worth waiting and sitting out a dance or two before making your choice of slate or tablet.

Gizmodo has made it easier to do that shopping with a post called Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. Android Tablets & More

Here’s the short version:

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it’s also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking (only first party apps like music and email can multitask). The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there’s the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn’t really have apps, can’t multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

If you want to read about any of these in detail, click on the links below.

Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]
Lenovo IdeaPad U1: [Lenovo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 9: [UMPCPortal, Archos]

By the way, do you know the difference between a slate and a tablet? Nobody does – the terms seem to be interchangeable, but the Gizmodo guy likes “slate” if for no other reason than “tablet” is overused.

RC

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough has written more than a dozen novels, one of which, The Healer’s War, won a Nebula Award in 1989. She has collaborated with Dragonriders of Pern author Anne McCaffrey to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna Series.

Like The Godmother, Song of Sorcery is a light-hearted contemporary fantasy adventure. Colin Songsmith sings a song to an old witch who takes an unlikely revenge. The witch’s granddaughter rescues him from the dire threat of being eaten alive by a cat. It gets wilder and wilder from there including encounters with a lovesick dragon.

And don’t miss Scarborough’s aptly named collection, Scarborough Fair and Other Stories.

RC

In Tangled Vines by Janet Dailey, elegant 90-year-old Katherine Rutledge runs her family’s Napa Valley winery. Her estranged son runs a rival winery and an alcoholic neighbor, Len Dougherty, lives on 10 acres of the Rutledge vineyard given to his family as compensation for the accidental death of his father. Meanwhile, beautiful, ambitious Kelly Douglas, a rising TV newscaster is assigned to prepare an in-depth report on the Rutledge winery, which is in negotiations to merge with a French winery. Kelly long ago escaped Dougherty, her physically abusive father and doesn’t want to go back home. Then, there’s a murder in which her father is the prime suspect while complications arise via a budding romance with Sam Rutledge, Katherine’s grandson and the manager of the Rutledge winery.

E-Reads publishes over fifty Janet Dailey novels. Visit her author page for a full selection.

WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.

AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH AND A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!

THIS IS NOT ONLY MY FIGHT, I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHOSE WORK IS BEING PIRATED. HUNDREDS OF WRITERS’ STORIES, ENTIRE BOOKS, THE WORK OF A LIFETIME, EVERYONE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV TO ROGER ZELAZNY: THEIR WORK HAS BEEN THROWN ONTO THE WEB BY THESE SMARTASS VANDALS WHO FIND IT AN IMPOSITION TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE GOODS. (BUT GAWD FORBID YOU TRY TO APPROPRIATE SOMETHING OF THEIRS…LISTEN TO ’EM SQUEAL!) THE OUTCOME OF THIS CASE WILL AFFECT EVERY WRITER, EDITOR, PHOTOGRAPHER, ARTIST, MUSICIAN, POET, SCULPTOR, ACTOR, BOOK DESIGNER, PUBLISHER AND READER. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE ANARCHY OF IGNORANT THIEVES RIPPING OFF THOSE WHO LABOR FOR AN HONEST PAYDAY, BECAUSE THEY CONVENIENTLY HONOR THE LIE THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE THEIRS FOR THE TAKING.

LOOK, THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO. IF THAT DEMENTED, SELF-SERVING MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD “INFORMATION” PREVAILS, AND EVERY ZERO-ETHIC TOT WHO WANTS EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING, WHO EXISTS IN A TIME WHERE E-COMMERCE HUSTLERS HAVE CONVINCED HIM/HER THAT THEY’RE ENTITLED TO EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING PREVAILS, AND THEY ARE PERMITTED TO BELIEVE INFORMATION MUST BE FREE, WITH NO DIFFERENTIATION MADE BETWEEN RAW DATA AND THE CREATIVE PROPERTIES THAT PROVIDE ALL ARTISTS OF ANY KIND WITH AN ANNUITY, TO ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, THEN WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE EGREGIOUS INEVITABILITY OF NO ONE BUT AMATEURS GETTING THEIR WORK EXPOSED, WHILE THOSE WHO PRODUCE THE BULK OF ALL PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL ART FIND THEY CANNOT MAKE A DECENT LIVING.

DO NOT, FOR AN INSTANT, BUY INTO THE CULTURAL MYTHOLOGY THAT ALL ARTISTS ARE RICH. A FEW ARE, BUT MOST HAVE A HARD ROW TO HOE JUST SUBSISTING, HOLDING DOWN SECOND JOBS. MOST CREATORS PRACTICE THEIR ART BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT. IF IT WERE ONLY FOR THE BUCKS, THEY’D FARE BETTER AS DENTISTS, PLUMBERS, OR STEAM FITTERS. I’M FIGHTING FOR MYSELF, OF COURSE, BUT I’M ALSO DOING THIS FOR AVRAM DAVIDSON, WHO DIED BROKE; FOR ROGER ZELAZNY, WHO HAD TO WORK LIKE A DOG TILL THE DAY HE PITCHED OVER; AND FOR GERALD KERSH, WHOSE WORK WAS REPRINTED AND PIRATED IN SIXTY-FIVE COUNTRIES, WHILE HE HAD TO BORROW MONEY FROM FRIENDS TO FIGHT OFF THE CANCER. THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO, GANG… AND NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP!

FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS, MY ATTORNEY AND I HAVE FOUGHT THIS ALONE. ALTHOUGH WE ARE LOATH TO ASK, WE DO NOT HAVE THE ENDLESS DEEP POCKETS AND LAWYERS (14 AT THE LAST COUNT) THAT BENEFIT LARGE, ARROGANT CORPORATIONS. WE NOW NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP. AS TO THE MONEY BEING SPENT FOR THE DAVID-vs.-AOL GOLIATH LAWSUIT: YEAH, IT’S BEEN A BEAR. WE’RE ABOUT FORTY GRAND OUT OF POCKET, AND I’VE HAD TO SELL OFF A FEW PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AND MAGAZINE FILES TO MEET ATTORNEY COSTS. BUT WE’RE ABOUT TO ENTER THE “DISCOVERY PHASE” OF THE LITIGATION, AND AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH, ET AL ARE CLEARLY TRYING TO “PAPER US OUT,” AND WHAT WE’VE SPENT UP TO NOW WILL SEEM LIKE A FART IN A SIROCCO. SO, YES, OH YES LAWD, CONTRIBUTIONS ARE GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED IN THIS FIGHT TO STAMP OUT INTERNET PIRACY.

TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY DEAD CERTAIN THAT NO ONE CAN EVEN REMOTELY SUGGEST THAT CONTRIBUTIONS WENT ANYWHERE BUT TO FIGHT THIS INFRINGEMENT OF WRITERS’ RIGHTS, WE ARE SETTING UP A NEW POST OFFICE BOX ADDRESS, SPECIALLY AND ONLY FOR RECEIPT OF CONTRIBUTIONS TO WHAT WE ARE NOW CALLING KICK INTERNET PIRACY. AND ALL CHECKS MUST BE MADE PAYABLE DIRECTLY TO OUR ATTORNEY, M. CHRISTINE VALADA, TO HELP COVER COSTS AND LEGAL FEES. (AND WHEN WE ARE ASKED, “WELL, WHAT IS KICK AN ACRONYM FOR?” WE RESPOND, “IT’S FOR KICK ’EM IN THE ASS!”)

IF YOU WANT TO HELP PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS, AND THE CAREERS OF WRITERS WHOSE WORK YOU ENJOY, PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION—A FEW BUCKS, OR A LOT OF BUCKS—TO:

KICK INTERNET PIRACY
POST OFFICE BOX 55935
SHERMAN OAKS, CA 91413

When the publishers of #1 bestselling print book Game Change held back the e-book edition instead of issuing it simultaneously with the hardback, furious Kindle owners staged a populist revolt, assigning en masse a mere one star in their Amazon reviews.

Whether or not this tactic discouraged potential buyers from purchasing the book or influenced the publisher to change its scheduling strategies, it demonstrated how strongly Kindle owners feel about the timing and pricing of e-books. It also demonstrated that either they have no patience for the subtle and complex thinking of publishers, or publishers have not done a very good job of explaining the issues to them.

Michael Cader, publisher of Publishers Marketplace, thinks publishers could be doing a better job of demystifying their decision-making processes. “Publishing people who care about these pricing discussions need to get in the online forums and start issuing press releases and find other ways to address readers honestly about price,” he said in a recent editorial. “The price landscape, and shift to an agency model, is honestly baffling to most people and there are a lot of price myths out there.” He also criticizes the media for failing to accurately represent the publisher’s viewpoint.

The task is formidable, largely because Amazon has reinforced the sense of entitlement that many e-book buyers feel. Setting the prices of e-books and timing their release is not only subtle and complex, it is far from scientific. There are as many exceptions as there are rules. (Indeed, because of its timeliness and high media exposure, Game Change might have been a good exception to the wisdom of “windowing” e-prints). All that head-scratching, P&L calculating, market analyzing and soul-searching are no match for the simplicity of an Idea Whose Time Has Come – the one called “$9.99″.

Try to recommend high prices and postponed gratification to someone who wants his $9.99 e-book and wants it now. Amazon is losing money on every sale? Shrug. E-books are the equivalent of mass market paperback reprints? Shrug. The agency model will enable publishers to recover power they conceded to Amazon? Shrug. There are plenty of e-books selling for more than $9.99? Shrug.

Cader is absolutely right that the industry and media must find a way to overcome public misperceptions: “If these things don’t get said, forcefully and clearly, to the press, in forums, and directly to readers by authors and publishers, the messages won’t get heard.”

Richard Curtis

The one figure we neglected to mention in reporting December ’09′s record-breaking sales is – what was the total for all of 2009?

The answer is $166 million.

This figure is more than three times the $53.5 million posted by the industry in the prior year.

RC