A few quick points...: seanan

A few quick points...

So the discussion on my latest book piracy post is fascinating, and I fully intend to answer comments. However, right now, I'm not feeling terribly awesome, so I'm going to take some cold medication and go lay down. I just wanted to address a few high-level points first. Forgive the brevity, I really feel like crap.

Point the First: "Not everyone who illegally downloads your book would have bought it, so you shouldn't act like they would have."

True! That being said, I know enough people who have illegally downloaded books and then bought them, or have told me to my face (or via email) that they were planning to buy the book, only then got it for free, that I feel some consideration of the number of illegal copies is warranted. Just going off what I do know, I tend to assume about one person in ten represents a "lost sale." This accounts for new readers only, not people downloading copies of books they already own.

Point the Second: Downloading copies of books you already own is a morally gray area.

True. I completely understand and sympathize with people who download virtual copies of books they already own. Unfortunately, a) I don't own the e-book rights to my books right now, and thus can't say "sure, have a PDF with proof of purchase," and b) the methods for getting those downloads are non-legal. There's not a private literary speakeasy where you have to send in a photo of yourself with your legal physical copy before you get the download link. And so while I can understand the moral ambiguity of it all, I can't endorse the practice.

Point the Third: It's not piracy, it's copyright infringement.

Okay, true. For precision of language, I should call it copyright infringement. But the people who sometimes post intentionally inflammatory things on message boards aren't actually trolls, they're just being mean. In some cases, the prevailing language of the land is going to win out over precision. I apologize for any confusion.

Point the Fourth: "Does this mean you don't like me because I initially read your book in a sub-legal format?"

Did you buy the book? I mean, really, that's where my concern is here: In whether I can feed the cats. I first discovered the X-Men because my friend Lucy had an older brother who wasn't careful with his comics, and I didn't pay for those, either. As I said above, I can't condone illegal downloading, but once you've paid for the material, I lose all personal animosity.

Point the Fifth: Books and music aren't the same.

Most the research on illegal downloads has been in the music arena, and the numbers aren't the same. According to iTunes, the single song I have listened to the most often is the cover of "Livin' La Vida Loca" by Spork, which I have listened to 342 times. The single book I have read the most often is IT, by Stephen King, which I have read, if guessing generously, eighty times in the last twenty years. Many people don't re-read, or do so only sparingly. So saying that illegal downloads increase sales when you're only looking at music is like saying that breeding mice increases the elephant population.

Point the Sixth: Cory Doctorow does it.

Cory Doctorow is also recognized by my spellchecker, which doesn't recognize my name. He chose to distribute over the Internet, and it worked out awesomely for him. He's also doing Internet-savvy fiction, with a keen edge of interest for the online crowd. I write urban fantasies about women with silly names. We don't have the same target audience; it's mice and elephants again.

I'll come back and participate in the discussion more one on one later. Now? DayQuil and sleep.

...go 1 level up... Expand

Wrong

urban_terrorist

November 6 2010, 14:28:16 UTC 6 years ago

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Actually it is an argument you can make to an up and coming writer. Free samples will increase your sales. What writer doesn't want increased sales?

It's a numbers game. Say they give out 1,000 free dead tree copies of Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the Toby series. Seanan makes nothing from those 1,000 copies. It's a cost to the publisher - I don't know exactly how much, but since Amazon sells it for $7.99, let's say the cost is $2.00 (I have no idea if these is a reasonable cost or not - I'm just tossing numbers). OK, so it costs the publisher $2,000.

Now assume that a lot of people like the book enough to buy the second two, and the third when it hits the shelves in April. Exactly how this works (maybe George hates the book, but passes it on to Carrie who loves it) doesn't matter. What matters is how many people will buy. Say sales of the second two books increase by 1000 copies each. It's nice, but there's not enough money there to make a difference.

So instead the publisher gives out an ebook, in PDF (the most easily read) format. Total cost is really low, because they didn't have to cut down trees, ship them, etc. 300,000 copies are downloaded, and who knows how many go around the file sharing networks.

But sales of the second two books increase - maybe they sell 10 or 20 thousand more copies than the first book did. Seanan is happy. The publisher is happy. Everyone makes some extra money, and when the fourth book is published in 2011, it fairly flies off the shelves.

As I said, it's a numbers game. But the free copies have to get to the right audience, and getting them there is the hard part. Offering free copies of Rosemary and Rue to a biker gang probably wouldn't increase sales, and may have negative health effects on the person involved. Offering them to teen girls at all of the local high schools would probably be effective. Offering them at SF cons would be effective.

Here's a question that only Seanan knows the answer to. How hard would it be to get back the Ebook rights to Rosemary and Rue? Are they actually doing anything with it? OK, they are. It does appear to be available for the Sony reader, but it's not available for the Kindle or the IPad, the two most popular platforms, which means that they probably are not selling a lot of copies. And at $6.99 I'm damned sure that they aren't, since you can buy the dead tree version for $7.99. In my opinion their pricing is idiotic. For that matter, so is their marketing. It took a fair bit of searching to find. The dead tree edition is easy to find using the same search techniques.

OK, we've been talking around Seanan.

Seanan, this is for you direct. The next time contract negotiations come up, hang onto the ebook rights. Seriously. I doubt that you are being paid a lot for them at present because you aren't Steven King (only you and your agent know). So it probably wouldn't make that big a difference to your bottom line. Then market the ebook yourself, with a bit of help from your friends and fans, and see what happens. Maybe make it a free download, with a donate button, and offer your compact discs on the same page, along with a couple of free MP3s. Offer special deals, personally signed copies, Seanan McGuire songbooks, give them other freebies, such as studio quality pictures of you and your furry co-conspirators. See what it does to your website traffic, and your sales. If sales of that book are higher, and the only difference is offering a free ebook copy, you have your proof.

Yes, all of this takes time, which you currently don't have a lot of. Problem is that you can't trust your publisher to do all of the work, in addition to your books, they released how many other books that month? Their attention is divided. Yours isn't.

And as I said, fans, like me and the others here, will try to help. We want you to write lots more books, and that means that you have to be making a decent living doing it, and preferably a lot more than that. We want you to be a huge success, so that you are encouraged to write more.

Lots more.

Damn, but you are good.