I’ve decided to tell you guys a story about piracy.
I didn’t think I had much to add to the piracy commentary I made yesterday, but after seeing some of the replies to it, I decided it’s time for this story.
Here are a few things we should get clear before I go on:
1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.
2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a book’s fate at the publishing house.
3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art, though it is worthwhile to remember that every copy of a blockbuster sold means that the publishing house can publish new and niche voices. Publishing can’t afford to publish the new and midlist voices without the James Pattersons selling well.
It is only about two statements that I saw go by:
1) piracy doesn’t hurt publishing.
2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.
Now, with those statements in mind, here’s the story.
It’s the story of a novel called The Raven King, the fourth installment in a planned four book series. All three of its predecessors hit the bestseller list. Book three, however, faltered in strange ways. The print copies sold just as well as before, landing it on the list, but the e-copies dropped precipitously.
Now, series are a strange and dangerous thing in publishing. They’re usually games of diminishing returns, for logical reasons: folks buy the first book, like it, maybe buy the second, lose interest. The number of folks who try the first will always be more than the number of folks who make it to the third or fourth. Sometimes this change in numbers is so extreme that publishers cancel the rest of the series, which you may have experienced as a reader — beginning a series only to have the release date of the next book get pushed off and pushed off again before it merely dies quietly in a corner somewhere by the flies.
So I expected to see a sales drop in book three, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but as my readers are historically evenly split across the formats, I expected it to see the cut balanced across both formats. This was absolutely not true. Where were all the e-readers going? Articles online had headlines like PEOPLE NO LONGER ENJOY READING EBOOKS IT SEEMS.
Really?
There was another new phenomenon with Blue Lily, Lily Blue, too — one that started before it was published. Like many novels, it was available to early reviewers and booksellers in advanced form (ARCs: advanced reader copies). Traditionally these have been cheaply printed paperback versions of the book. Recently, e-ARCs have become common, available on locked sites from publishers.
BLLB’s e-arc escaped the site, made it to the internet, and began circulating busily among fans long before the book had even hit shelves. Piracy is a thing authors have been told to live with, it’s not hurting you, it’s like the mites in your pillow, and so I didn’t think too hard about it until I got that royalty statement with BLLB’s e-sales cut in half.
Strange, I thought. Particularly as it seemed on the internet and at my booming real-life book tours that interest in the Raven Cycle in general was growing, not shrinking. Meanwhile, floating about in the forums and on Tumblr as a creator, it was not difficult to see fans sharing the pdfs of the books back and forth. For awhile, I paid for a service that went through piracy sites and took down illegal pdfs, but it was pointless. There were too many. And as long as even one was left up, that was all that was needed for sharing.
I asked my publisher to make sure there were no e-ARCs available of book four, the Raven King, explaining that I felt piracy was a real issue with this series in a way it hadn’t been for any of my others. They replied with the old adage that piracy didn’t really do anything, but yes, they’d make sure there was no e-ARCs if that made me happy.
Then they told me that they were cutting the print run of The Raven King to less than half of the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, it’s just that the sales for Blue Lily didn’t justify printing any more copies. The series was in decline, they were so proud of me, it had 19 starred reviews from pro journals and was the most starred YA series ever written, but that just didn’t equal sales. They still loved me.
This, my friends, is a real world consequence.
This is also where people usually step in and say, but that’s not piracy’s fault. You just said series naturally declined, and you just were a victim of bad marketing or bad covers or readers just actually don’t like you that much.
Hold that thought.
I was intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle, and so I began to work with one of my brothers on a plan. It was impossible to take down every illegal pdf; I’d already seen that. So we were going to do the opposite. We created a pdf of the Raven King. It was the same length as the real book, but it was just the first four chapters over and over again. At the end, my brother wrote a small note about the ways piracy hurt your favorite books. I knew we wouldn’t be able to hold the fort for long — real versions would slowly get passed around by hand through forum messaging — but I told my brother: I want to hold the fort for one week. Enough to prove that a point. Enough to show everyone that this is no longer 2004. This is the smart phone generation, and a pirated book sometimes is a lost sale.
Then, on midnight of my book release, my brother put it up everywhere on every pirate site. He uploaded dozens and dozens and dozens of these pdfs of The Raven King. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one of his pdfs. We sailed those epub seas with our own flag shredding the sky.
The effects were instant. The forums and sites exploded with bewildered activity. Fans asked if anyone had managed to find a link to a legit pdf. Dozens of posts appeared saying that since they hadn’t been able to find a pdf, they’d been forced to hit up Amazon and buy the book.
And we sold out of the first printing in two days.
Two days.
I was on tour for it, and the bookstores I went to didn’t have enough copies to sell to people coming, because online orders had emptied the warehouse. My publisher scrambled to print more, and then print more again. Print sales and e-sales became once more evenly matched.
Then the pdfs hit the forums and e-sales sagged and it was business as usual, but it didn’t matter: I’d proven the point. Piracy has consequences.
That’s the end of the story, but there’s an epilogue. I’m now writing three more books set in that world, books that I’m absolutely delighted to be able to write. They’re an absolute blast. My publisher bought this trilogy because the numbers on the previous series supported them buying more books in that world. But the numbers almost didn’t. Because even as I knew I had more readers than ever, on paper, the Raven Cycle was petering out.
The Ronan trilogy nearly didn’t exist because of piracy. And already I can see in the tags how Tumblr users are talking about how they intend to pirate book one of the new trilogy for any number of reasons, because I am terrible or because they would ‘rather die than pay for a book’. As an author, I can’t stop that. But pirating book one means that publishing cancels book two. This ain’t 2004 anymore. A pirated copy isn’t ‘good advertising’ or ‘great word of mouth’ or ‘not really a lost sale.’
That’s my long piracy story.
Reblogging for the post itself, but also a bit with regard to parallel issues in art piracy and figure recasting.
Living with my parents has become a hell to endure, and my dad has been upping his abusive asshole game continuously over the past months thinking that was somehow going to convince to not be a transman anymore. Nearly a month ago I came back home from work to find that he threw out my “boy” clothes because he was sick of “dealing with my delusions”, he keeps threatening to send me to a concentration camp or to force me to see a religious counselor and misgendering me while putting an emphasis on the she whenever im around while my mom just stands there in the background doing nothing. His actions have been getting more and more hostile, and I can’t take it anymore.
So I’m going to run away to go live with my brother since I’ve just turned 18, he agreed to it but we’re both practically broke we can’t afford the entire cost of the trip from Vermont to Kentucky. I still need an extra 120 dollars. Guys if you can please spare a dollar or two I would forever be grateful, or please just reblog this or boost it !!
I really need to get away from my trashy transphobic parents as soon as possible, so any donation or reblog would be sooooo appreciated !!
cute underwear is the best cure all for low self esteem
hey, guys. this is my comic. i drew it. if you see it floating around, please make sure it is sourced to me. it has been posted and reposted and stolen and mis-credited so many times in the past couple years it’s honestly exhausting.
i drew this like three years ago and even recently i can barely go through a day without seeing someone reposting it, usually unsourced or to the wrong source, and ALWAYS a gross, ugly jpeg artifacted version of it. one time buzzfeed even reposted it and sourced it…. to someone else’s instagram. and that’s only the times i see!!
I’m sure you’re sick of seeing my donation posts. I’m sick of making them. But despite all my best efforts, I’m just as bad off as I was a year ago.
My name is Olita. I’m an autistic woman trying to survive in this capitalist hellscape. My job only gives me four hours a week: my income per month, after taxes, comes out to less than $200. I’m trying to find more work but the job market where I’m currently living is abysmal. My monthly rent is $550, and I also require money for transportation to and from work.
After paying my bills, my goal is to lease a car from Lyft for $250 and move down to Sacramento with a friend. This will secure me a far more stable income in addition to reducing my rent costs drastically. I have been trying to accomplish this for about a year but haven’t had a penny extra to save.
My paypal is temprecover1339@hotmail.com. I also have a Ko-Fi account, if you’re more comfortable with that. Even a dollar helps. If you can’t donate, please signal boost this.
I have $550 in rent due on the 5th. I’m making more money now but my new job only pays out every two weeks, so my next check will come well past the deadline. After transportation costs for the last week process, and I pay my internet bill, I will have $5. I need money to continue going to work as well as buy food.
i the first time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job the second time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job the third time i hurt a child my boss tells me i am good at my job i like my job i am good at my job positive reinforcement
ii my boyfriend hates picking me up after work he says its the sterile environment schools shouldn’t look like a hospital, he says i feel exhausted as i reflect on the sterile, clinical building then i remember that this isn’t a school this is a treatment center
iii i’m so sorry but that is not earning your token stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down stand up sit down
iv he asks me if i’ll do the horsie song i’m sitting in the shade and he plummets into my lap before i can respond it is a rare treat for him to speak i can’t help but indulge him, so i sing “this is how the ladies ride, up and down, side by side this is how the horsies go, yippity yi, yippity yo!” he laughs and thanks me before bolting back to the playground
v i lose count of how many times i hurt children i don’t know if its the hundreth or thousanth or millionth time i hurt a child i’m holding a spray bottle of vinegar he spits it out after the third time sobbing, he tells me that he hates his life and wants to die six years old the kid sitting next to him cannot speak, and instead starts wailing i’m a bad person, i think i hesitate my boss tells me that i am not doing my job i go home and cry the next day i don’t hesitate positive punishment
vi my boss calls all the classroom staff in for a meeting she tells us that we need to stop being so affectionate with the children it is unprofessional and inappropriate, she insists she warns us that we will be put on corrective action for any future offenses a week later he asks me if i will sing the horsie song so i sing him the horsie song after our sessions are over, my boss calls me into her office i am put on corrective action but that’s how you do the horsie song, i argue i warned you, she reminds me
vii i am told there will be a few positions open for full time i am encouraged to apply i begin filling out the application i think about the pay raise i think about having my own classroom i think about training new staff i think about what we do i turn off the computer before i finish the application i leave the center and never come back
viii my new job is much better but the center is still open less than five minutes away from my apartment hundreds of children still spend their days there stand up sit down no longer seeing it doesn’t make it any less of a material reality
ImmortalWave 