A non-Sherlockian author rant
Yahoo have earned my anger today. In the following link http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/Seven-things-buy-online-yahoofinanceuk-3173405030.html they mention 7 things they say you should never buy online. Amongst these are books with Yahoo encouraging people to swap books and generally do what they can to get books for free. I stress that they don't recommend theft as a way of avoiding payment.
I'm sorry but is anyone looking out for the author in all this? We're not all Dan Brown or J.K Rowling with millions in the bank and film deals. The vast majority of writers (if they're full time) get by on relatively modest incomes and an even greater number of us (including myself) have to juggle our writing with a conventional day job in order to live. The last thing we need is a major (and wealthy) I.T. company encouraging people to avoid paying for what they read.
We authors only get paid when a new book is sold. From then on every time it is re-sold or swapped - we get nothing. If we all collectively stopped writing what would you all do? The business of writing needs to provide worthwhile returns or writers will simply stop writing.
I'm sorry but is anyone looking out for the author in all this? We're not all Dan Brown or J.K Rowling with millions in the bank and film deals. The vast majority of writers (if they're full time) get by on relatively modest incomes and an even greater number of us (including myself) have to juggle our writing with a conventional day job in order to live. The last thing we need is a major (and wealthy) I.T. company encouraging people to avoid paying for what they read.
We authors only get paid when a new book is sold. From then on every time it is re-sold or swapped - we get nothing. If we all collectively stopped writing what would you all do? The business of writing needs to provide worthwhile returns or writers will simply stop writing.
Ugh I totally agree! It's so irritating the way big business and also readers seem to think all authors are sitting in gilded tower with a golden typewriter and oodles of spare time and money to lounge about with.
ReplyDeleteIf it's not that they're thinking, the other is that all writers are just providing a public service and should be grateful anyone even notices. Feh.