I can’t. Please just don’t engage with me at this point. I have had it up to my eyeballs with this. I have made this response as cordial as possible, but hoo boy, I am seething at this. I think my eyeballs might be vibrating.
Dude… you’re so angry and irate and being senselessly rude about this that I’ve lost all interest in paying for and reading your book in the first place - only because you sound so mean-spirited and entitled.
‘Be nice about people stealing your work, or I won’t read it. I’m going to tone police the way you speak about people stealing your work, and use your work as leverage. Asking people not to steal from you is entitled, and you have to talk about it politely, or you don’t deserve a readership.’ Did I parse that correctly?
I’m not going to reply with scorching vitriol to that sentiment, but know that the temptation to do so is astonishingly present.
I fully understand wanting to be compensated for your work, and I am certain you poured so much of your heart and soul into this, but are you genuinely going to squabble over the internet about a small fraction of lost sales, only lost because the person wishing to read it cannot in any other capacity access it?
[Image description: a quote from the initial post, which reads ‘If you want to read my book but really can’t justify using the funds you have to do so (because hey, we’re all in different financial situations, I get it), I know it’s in a couple of library systems so it’s worth trying that. I’m reluctant to send out free ebooks now because the last time I did that someone put it on a pirating site, but you’re welcome to ask and I may decide to do so on a case by case basis.’]
Not in any other capacity, hmm? Except for the one I explicitly mentioned up there? Let’s ignore that one; it doesn’t play into the narrative of me being ‘angry, irate, senselessly rude, mean-spirited and entitled’.
Do you really think people feel good about not being able to afford books? You think they don’t feel some sort of shame over it? You think it does hurt them having the author chew them out over it?
I’m sure people don’t feel good about not being able to afford books. I’m not Jeff Bezos. I can’t afford a lot of stuff I want, books often included. That doesn’t mean I steal them. I either ask for them for gifts when possible, or I save up for them, or I find other (legal, not harmful) ways to get them, which are listed in this post here. And if people don’t want the author to ‘chew them out’ over it, then they shouldn’t keep replying to my post about how pirating books is harmful with comments about why they’re going to continue pirating books, especially when I’ve expressly asked people not to do that on my post.
I’d also like to add that none of the comments saying that they pirate books have been from my followers, or reblogged directly from me; none of them had any interest in reading my book. They came across this post through reblogs and are not familiar with me or my book (most people aren’t; I’m not exactly JK Rowling). These are people speaking hypothetically about pirating books in general. They haven’t reached out to me as an author they want to read and said ‘I want to read your book but can’t afford it’; they’ve seen an author explaining how piracy is detrimental to authors in general and they’ve chosen to comment ‘but I’m going to do it anyway’. I have asked people not to do this. They’ve done it anyway. I’m going to get annoyed.
Have a little perspective and understanding, my dude. I hope peace finds you, because your fans don’t deserve to be subject to you berating them for being too poor to fund their interests.
Do not patronise me like this. Do not. Don’t you dare speak to me like that, as though you’re some benevolent Zen Arbiter, deigning to grant me the merest moment in your ocean of infinity to float gently down from your cloud, from which moral vantage point you have objectively decided that my income is irrelevant, and spread your omniscient, calm wisdom upon me, an overly-emotional prole. Do not tell me that you hope ‘peace finds me’ when I am writing a post about how people pirating books affects my income and, by extent, my actual life. Y’know, the one I have to live in a capitalist society which relies on income. I am not ‘berating my fans’, namely because, as I mentioned, the people I replied to above are not people who follow me. I am also not shaming anyone for being unable to afford books; as I’ve said, I’m not a billionaire. I’m largely financial stable now, but this hasn’t always been the case. You absolutely need to recognise that this works both ways. Authors don’t make a lot of money from their books. When you speak of people being ‘too poor to fund their interests’, you neglect to mention that there are many authors who are too poor to pay their bills.
I’m not complaining about this because boo-hoo, I only made £5,000 in book sales this quarter and my Jaguar needs refuelling. I haven’t even broken £1,000 in book sales since I published it 3 years ago (as I mentioned before, this is in part due to my own decision to set a very low profit margin, hence why my book only costs £4.80; it’s the lowest I could set it whilst still making any money. I would probably put a higher value on my labour and work and do it differently next time. Hindsight is 20/20).
So in my case, my book sales supplement the money I use to buy food and go about my daily life, along with the salary I make from working 6 months of each year. I generally don’t work the other 6 because of my PhD workload, which is not funded. I don’t have much excess when I have to make a half year salary stretch to a year. I’m not on the breadline by any means, mostly because I’m able to live at home when I’m not working (which isn’t ideal, but is the best financial choice for me atm) but I am not in a position to keep losing income from people who don’t buy my book. I can cope with the odd lost sale here and there when someone sends the file to a pal, sure, but when someone is uploading my book as a mobi file on a pirate site, or asking for a pdf to be uploaded, then that’s a potentially endless pool of lost sales from people downloading that file.
I am absolutely sick to the teeth of people gaslighting me on this and telling me that what I really care about is getting rich and taking a big ol’ poo on poor people, rather than pointing out that book piracy overwhelmingly harms poor authors and marginalised authors, especially authors from working class backgrounds, disabled authors, authors of colour, and queer authors (of which I’m one, hello). I’m sick of getting hatemail about it. I’m a ‘capitalist elitist bootlicker’, according to one sweet anon, for asking for fair compensation for my labour. It is so, so draining. You’re making me out to be some abhorrent, illogical, unreasonable banshee - oh, sorry, I won’t put words in your mouth; I’m just ‘angry, irate, senselessly rude, mean-spirited and entitled’, after all - lounging about on my bespoke futon and wailing on Tungle dot net about how poor people steal my illustrious masterpiece and deny me my millions. That is categorically not the case. I am writing about how book piracy harms people who are already in a very low income bracket. Authors are usually the poor people too. That’s the part you’re not getting.
Do not tell me ‘I’m not going to read your book now because you’re being mean about people stealing your work.’ That’s honestly one of the most petulant, spiteful comments I’ve ever received on this blog. You don’t have to read my book! I don’t expect everyone to! Heck, I’m still frankly amazed when anyone does! Sometimes I have to pinch myself and check I’m not dreaming! But holding my work over my head - work that you fully acknowledge I ‘poured so much of [my] heart and soul into’ - like this and using it as some kind of twisted bargaining chip in an attempt to get me to just shut up about something that is actually affecting my life is just so, so mean-spirited and misguided. Don’t read it, that is completely and objectively fine, but don’t throw that fact in my face just because I’m not making myself supine and letting people steal from me.
I’m going to be logging off for a bit now. I don’t have the space to read any more comments like this. It honestly feels like this whole debate is sucking my soul out through my nostrils. It’s like screaming book piracy harms low income authors and that makes it bad! into the void, and having the void scream back why do you hate poor people so much, elitist scum?! I just wish the void would listen, really. Or at least stop calling me a bootlicker for asking people not to steal from me. Ho hum.
