I love reading. This year’s goodreads reading challenge goal is 80 books, and I read 101 last year. Books are wonderful - I love the texture of the paper, the smell, the weight of them in my hands. But physical books in NZ are expensive. For example, A Wrinkle in Time from UK based BookDepository is $12.56 with free shipping, while Paper Plus, Whitcoulls, and Penguin Publishers NZ sell it for $17 or more. (I know there’s a lot of reasons for this, but…)
I love ebooks too - the convenience, the compactness, the cheapness… in fact, I have over 2000 ebooks sitting on my computer and kindle. I have way less than that in actual books. The thing is though, I have pirated a LOT of those ebooks. I thought it was ok, because the books I really enjoyed or the authors I really liked - if I could, I went to Amazon, or the Author’s website, or Smashwords, or wherever and bought the heck out of those books. Or I would pirate the first in a series, and buy the rest (then go back and buy the first one because I want them to match). Either way, if I liked a book I would support the author.
Because of the genre of books I prefer, a lot of my favourite authors turn out to be self published. It’s even more important then to make sure you buy the book, because otherwise they can’t afford to continue to publish. Even with traditionally published works, sales impact the publisher’s likelihood of continuing to support and publish a series - and there is almost NOTHING worse than having a series stop halfway through.
On this point Maggie Stiefvater, bestselling author of the Shiver and Raven Cycle series, wrote her own story about how ebook piracy affected the sales of the third book and the physical publishing numbers of the fourth book in the Raven Cycle. I’ve linked the post, because I think it’s important to read it in her own words, but the gist is that piracy of ebooks caused the publishers to cut the number of physical books published to less than half despite evidence that support for the series was growing...and how not allowing an e-arc (advanced reader copy) of the last book meant she is now able to write a second trilogy in the same ‘verse.
Until I read this, I wasn’t really aware of the actual impact of piracy on e-books and book sales. But I should have been - I know most author’s don’t earn a lot. “Famous” authors are few and far between, and a lot of the authors I enjoy have day jobs. This article explains a lot better than I can the arguments for and against piracy.
I am a lot less likely to pirate books now than I was a few years ago. Unless I actually cannot get a book because I'm in the wrong country or something, it’s actually a heck of a lot easier to just buy the book. Plus, I use services like bookbub which gives me alerts to ebook deals in the genres of my choice.
The video below is a Dutch campaign against ebook piracy - the description went through google translate, so I’m sorry for mistakes!
Deanna x
