I’m Cranky, Therefore I Rant

I’ve grown to dislike being asked “Why do you write?”

My initial response is always “I want/need/enjoy it”. Then whoever asked the question shuts down and doesn’t really listen to anything that comes after that.

Want/need/enjoy doesn’t mean that I’m going to refrain from bitching when a particular work in progress feels like I’m slogging through quicksand, or moaning about a slow sales month.

Just because there are those who enjoy writing as a hobby, putting their stories up for anyone and everyone to read for free, doesn’t mean I’m selfish or wrong to place a price on my stories.

Self-publishing instead of being traditionally published doesn’t mean that I have less of a right to try and earn from my work.

Putting my creations online doesn’t mean they aren’t my property any longer.

If I were a traveling bard, you’d feed me dinner and give me a place to sleep in trade for the stories I’d regal you with.

You’d pay me for the entertainment in other words. Such an exchange has been acceptable likely almost from the emergence of the human species and the development of language.

I don’t believe that anyone who offers property they’ve created for free has forfeited their right to place a price on their future creative properties.

However, I do believe it’s wrong to think anyone has a right to choose how to distribute someone else’s property just because the originator has it available online or physically.

The internet isn’t some alternate reality where things work differently, no matter how some might wish that it is. Using the internet to disperse your property, either commercially or non-commercially, doesn’t automatically strip away all your rights as the owner of it.

And there’s my biggest problem with book piracy.

Every person who places a (e)book onto a torrent site/file sharing network, and every person who then downloads that (e)book is basically telling the author “You have no rights to your own property”.

Therefore, they are stealing something: the author’s freedom to choose. That freedom isn’t the same thing as control.

If an author puts up a free story and then another with a price tag on it, it’s merely common courtesy to respect their choice to do so, and to make your choice based on the options offered: read the free one or buy the (e)book. Or read the free one and buy the (e)book.

Those stories are their property; you don’t have the right, nor are you entitled, to demand or create alternative options in regards to their property.

Stop for a minute and take a look around your home. Probably everything in it is a matter of your time and effort spent acquiring it. You had to spend time working to earn the money to buy that TV, gaming console, computer, and etcetera.

Now imagine that I’m standing in front of your home and every person that passes by, I let go inside and pick something out. You come home from work to find a bunch of your stuff gone, and I tell you I let strangers have it.

You’re not going to just shrug and say “Oh well”. You’re going to be pissed as hell, whip my ass and/or have me arrested. Then you’ll be out more time/effort/money to replace those missing items – if they even can be replaced. I mean, that picture of great-great Grandma was a one of a kind!

Now consider an author’s home is their brain, and the property it holds is stories.

When you take a story, put it somewhere that any stranger can come along and take it for free, the author can’t replace that story property exactly.

The time/effort/money spent ‘acquiring’ that particular story is wasted.

In effect, you’re telling that author that he/she doesn’t have the same rights to their property as you do to yours, and that their time/effort/expense isn’t remotely of any consequence.

Again this isn’t about control or even illegality; it’s about respect and common courtesy to another person. The same respect and courtesy you expect to receive every time you make a choice about your life or property.

Even the most illiterate writer on the planet has the right to choose to place a price on their story properties. Your choices are to either purchase it, or to walk away.

The only other people you ever have the right to make choices for are members of your family: your children, until they reach the age of adulthood, or your elderly family members who can no longer make choices for themselves for whatever reason.

Making choices for people outside those two categories isn’t something you’re entitled to. Nor are you entitled to receive an author’s commercially available story property for free just because it’s not available in your country, in your public library the instant you want to read it or because you’re broke right now.

I guess being respectful, displaying common courtesy and working/saving to earn what you want is rapidly disappearing thanks to all of our technological advances and this strange feeling of entitlement that’s sprung into being.

It makes me wonder what we’re evolving into when respect, courtesy and working in order to receive something were necessary to create the civilization we’re now living in.

Note: I’m not talking about rare or out of print books that can’t be acquired any other way. It’s still illegal, but I can understand those.