“This e-book smells like a jockstrap and now my Kindle is sticky.”

So, I just read an article: “Amazon Poised To Sell Used E-Books.”

Let us, for a moment, set aside the super giant city-stomping questions this offers (like, “Will authors ever get paid again?” or “Can you really guarantee that the book will be deleted from the first user when transferred to the second?” or “Doesn’t this prove we’re all just renting content instead of buying it?” or “Isn’t this the next-door neighbor to the type of file-sharing that’s already supposed to be illegal?”) and instead, let’s focus on the ultimate philosophical question:

How the frosty fuck can non-corporeal content ever really be used?

Like, I buy a used CD? It’s the container that’s been used. The songs themselves — by which I mean the Platonic ideals of those songs — are in no way “used” and do not degrade with me listening to them. It’s only the physical compact disc that gets scratched up by your guinea pig or gets splashed with bongwater or ends up mangled by some early-generation Xbox player. Digital content remains the closest thing to that Platonic ideal of its original form.

In a book, pages get torn. In an e-book, unless we’re talking data degradation, the story never suffers. In fact, given the fact all this digital Internet stuff now lives in a magical glittery cloud of puckish 1s and 0s, we can already reclaim the perfect version of the content we procured. Hell, that’s why “e-book” is actually a completely wrong-ass name for what it is: a book is a physical device. The story is no longer truly contained, trapped not by a device or by a medium of transference but only by a file. So, again I ask, huh? How the hell do you “use” content that’s not-contained and unconstrained? (And this is why unauthorized file-sharing is so easy.)

Is this blog post “used” after the first person reads it?

Will it start to smell like Cheetos and beer?

Will it get fingerprints on it?

Will someone start drawing little penises shooting jizz bullets in the margins?

How the?! What the?! Wuzza? Wooza?

(For the record, I’m willing to admit that this may be something other than it sounds, as it’s not like this is some formally-announced thing. But my mind is a-boggled with the very notion of used digital content. The thing about the Internet is that it’s now, here, always on and forever new, and this feels like a kind of philosophical rebranding that is, at the best, befuddling, and at the worst, a scary prediction of how content gets treated.)

(And all this after this week’s piracy chatter.)

I met Laura at Chicon this past year, and at the time I met her I didn’t realize she had a book coming out — but once she started talking about it I was like, “Okay, you buried the lede on that one because uhh, holy crap, AWESOME.” I am now in possession of her novel and it’s a lovely creature whose covers I cannot wait to crack.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I’m Laura Lam, naturally. I grew up as the child of two hippies outside San Francisco and for some insane reason (well, my husband), I left behind the sunshine to move to cloudy North-east Scotland. I’m your pretty typical bookish girl who spends far too much time in front of a computer screen.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

Girl stifled by society. Boy joins a circus. Their stories combine in an unanticipated way in a magical circus where everyone has secrets.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

This story emerged from a lot of my pet interests—the circus, Victorian society, a decaying empire, industrialization and colonization, and gender studies. It’s a mashup of genres, but somehow it all came together and worked, or at least I hope so.

The main character sparked to life in a phone conversation with my other half, Craig, when he was in Scotland and I was in California. But I was afraid to write about that character for about a year, until I realized that his was a story I needed to tell. I started writing the character as a 27-year-old, but I kept running into walls on that story, so I decided to write about Micah’s backstory joining the circus as a teenager. I absolutely loved the setting and Micah’s younger voice and everything clicked.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

Every book is the culmination of experiences and interests. Though I have not experienced what Micah and Gene have, Pantomime explores topics that I am passionate about. The voice and tone and everything about it is a result of the life I’ve lived, the books I’ve read, the films I’ve watched, and the places I’ve visited. If you asked someone with zero interest in gender studies to write a book set in the circus, for instance, it’d be a very different book to Pantomime.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING PANTOMIME?

Writing characters that both are both similar and dissimilar to myself. All characters have aspects of the writer or someone the writer knows, though they may be exaggerated. In Gene especially, we react to things in similar ways, and some of Micah’s thoughts mirror my own, but at the end of the day they have gone through travails and experiences that I never will. Putting myself in their shoes was sometimes easy and sometimes very difficult. I also focus more on characters, at least at first, and I had some issues with plotting. As the first book of a series it was hard to know how much to reveal and how much to keep close to my chest for future books.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING PANTOMIME?

Most of what I know about writing. Pantomime is the first book I completed. I wrote it all chronologically, and then writing buddy and fantasy author Anne Lyle pointed out that it meant the pacing was way off, and the problems set up at the beginning didn’t match the problems at the end. In my edit I alternated between Summer and Spring viewpoints so that they were two intertwined plots, and that worked much better as they each had their own problem to solve.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT PANTOMIME?

I love that it dares to be different. Gene and Micah are not your typical YA protagonists in many ways, and I love them both. I think they’re strong yet flawed and are trying to make sense of the world they’re in and who they want to be.

I also really love the world. There’s so much for me as a writer to explore, and that I hope a reader will enjoy exploring. The first book focuses on the small corner of the circus, a little microcosm that prides itself on staying apart from society. Everyone there is a freak, and so being freakish is normal. That world around the circus blossomed as I wrote this book and the 75% of the other book I wrote with the elder Micah Grey (which I’ll revisit one day), and so I look forward to exploring it more.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Probably have a better game plan going in. I wrote Pantomime in very slow dribs and drabs and the first draft took 15 months, though I was working on different projects. I also wrote without a cohesive outline.

That meant that during the revision request from Strange Chemistry I received I had to basically gut it, rearrange it, rewrite half of what I had and add 25,000 words. Now I outline and edit as I go (the vomit draft method doesn’t work for me), and I write faster and hopefully stronger as well.

I also would have researched the publishing process more than I did so I didn’t accidentally make an ass of myself, which happened once or twice. I shake my head at my past self.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

Technically it’s two, but I’ll cheat a little as one is so short:

“The aerialist stepped onto the tightrope. The rope bent slightly under her weight and I held my breath, frightened she would fall.

But her feet were steady as she made her slow, steady crossing in midair. She looked so dainty and delicate as she walked, pointing her toes when she lifted a foot, holding the parasol aloft, as though she could bend her legs, propel herself upwards, and fly away. The light filtered through the lace, shadows dappling her skin. When she finally made it across, I let out the breath I had been holding and clapped as loudly as I could.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

I’m currently hard at work on the sequel. Agent edits have dropped so I’m taking my rough-around-the-edges draft and making it shine. Pantomime 2 (title to be determined) takes a different focus to its predecessor, while it still focuses on the theatrics and magic that Pantomime contains.

Pantomime: Amazon / Amazon UK / B&N / Indiebound

Laura Lam

@lr_lam

Yesterday I wrote a thing about my thoughts on book piracy (or whatever you want to call it, including “thievery” or “unauthorized file-sharing” or “warez” or “Dave”), and there I suggested that we make today — February 6th — International Please Don’t Pirate My Book Day, where authors and writers and creatives of all types hop online to share their thoughts about piracy. This, then, is my entry serving that goal. If you join in, let us know.

It’s not about the money.

I mean, maybe it is. In the long run. About the money.

I need money, being a human being who lives in a capitalist society and all. I have bills to pay. A roof to keep over my family’s head. I have to keep my Internet turned on. I have to buy whiskey. I need to afford all those unusual sexual devices in the shapes of various mythological figures (though I find “Hephaestus’ Forge” more than a little uncomfortable).

So, to clarify, it’s not just about the money.

I have this notion. I believe that art has value. I believe that this value is not purely or even necessarily monetary — art and stories make the world go around. They change the creators and they change the audience. They make us think and feel. They teach us things. They challenge us. And, at the base level of it all, they can entertain us when we’ve just plain had a dogshit day.

The value of art being separate from money does not unfortunately remove the artist from this world of ours, a world that is at times comfortably and other times crassly capitalist. Because the artist lives in this world and not some other perfect world (WHERE WE ALL HAVE PET UNICORNS WHOSE HORNS ALSO SPRAY DELICIOUS WHISKEY INTO OUR MOUTHS wow that got phallic really fast), we must then suggest that for the artist to create the art that moves us and challenges us and entertains us, the artist must be given a means by which to survive.

“Starving artist” is a cliche that, like most cliches, comes from a real place.

It’s hard to make money with art. Not impossible. And maybe “hard” isn’t even the word.

But it is, at times, a challenge.

Which is where this whole issue of “unauthorized file-sharing” comes in. Meaning, you or someone else downloads my book without paying for it. I don’t consider this stealing. And without effective data on the subject, I don’t even know if it’s really hurting me at all.

Hell, maybe it’s even helping. (More on that in a moment.)

This isn’t about that.

This is about what people see as the relative value of art. File-sharing expresses the value of that art at baseline of almost zero. It takes ridiculously little effort to click a button and tickle the Internet and make it poop out my book onto your respective e-reader. I’d be impressed if you had to… I dunno, throw a trash can through a window and grab my book off the shelf before the ED-209 police-bot tromps over and fires a photon torpedo up your slurry-chute — at least then I know you really wanted that goddamn book. But file-sharing is so… simple, so effortless, even careless it feels like it dismisses the entire thing we do.

So, let me be clear about it: it’s hurt feelings I’m talking about. I get a twinge in my gut when you pirate my stuff. A tiny little prison shiv of sadness.

And maybe you don’t give a lemur’s left nut about that. I don’t see why you would. Certainly if you’ve nabbed my book by some illicit Internet means you probably have your reasons for doing so. Some of those reasons might not even be terrible. Many of my books are DRM free and are not exactly expensive, but just the same, maybe you’ve got your knickers in a twist about blah blah blah whatever. Maybe you want to stick it to me. Or to my publishers. Or to Amazon. And this is your way of voting with your not-dollar, a splinter in the eye of commercial publishing. Maybe you don’t have access and I don’t realize it — certainly the International Internet Laws are both byzantine and bizarre. I don’t know if you can buy my book in Papua New Guinea.

If you pirate my work, I don’t hate you. I don’t think you’re scum. I mean, unless you’re taking my work and slapping your name on it. Or you’re somehow making money off the pirating of my work. Then you officially get squished sloppily into the “scumfuck” category, thanksmuch.

Here’s all that I’m asking:

I’m asking you to try to support art. Which means, when you can pay for it, please do pay for it. The more content drifts toward free and open access, the  harder it will be for the content-creators to continue creating content, at least until some major paradigm shift in crowdfunding or patronage models offers up a revised revenue stream that won’t cause me to starve and die.

If you find that some component of the books doesn’t work for you — some kind of DRM or issues of access, I might suggest pirating the book but then paying for a physical copy. And then taking that copy and either using it to shore up a crooked table or, even better, donating it or passing it along to a friend. Don’t donate directly to me; my publisher helped make my books exist. Publishers catch a lot of shit for a lot of shit. Some of it is deserved. But the truth is, my books — and most of the books you’ve loved in your life — are due to the publishers getting to do what they do. They’re an easy target but they deserve some back-scratchings once in a while.

If you find the pricing practices of an author or publisher problematic, you should at least let that author or publisher know. Voting with your dollar (or with your unauthorized file-sharing) only has value when the author/publisher knows why.

At the very least, if you nab a copy of my book from some shady smut-shellacked Spam-Bot peddling them in some dimly-lit corner of the Cyber-Webs and you happen to like it, I’d love for you to tell other people about it. And maybe, one day, consider buying some other book of mine.

That’s what this guy did. He grabbed Blackbirds without paying for it.

And then bought all my other books.

Which is, you might say, a way to ethically share files, unauthorized or no.

Mostly, I just want you to think about the artists and authors and even the people in publishing once in a while. We like what we do and we want to continue to have the means to do it. If that means you buy the book through normal means, great. If that means you ethically support the ecosystem through other, less authorized means, hey, I can’t stop you.

Just be aware of what’s happening. Be aware that you’re not the only person involved in this exchange. This story didn’t fall from the heavens, dropped out of some heavenly sphincter. It took work. And love. And pain. And time. Think beyond the button-click it takes to snatch it from the etheric 1s and 0s. Take time to realize that art and stories have value.

To you, to me, to that guy over there.

Art is rad.

Stories are awesome.

Try to pay for them once in awhile.

Especially if they’re mine, ’cause I’m saving up for that fucking whiskey-jizzing unicorn.

News for you Australian-types out there:

I’m one of the guests of honor at GenreCon in Brisbane this year!

Obviously, this is extremely flattering to be invited, and to also get to travel to the opposite end of this little blue-green marble in order to meet friends and fans. I SEEK TO LEARN YOUR AUSTRALIAN WAYS. Please teach me. And also please protect me from your army of venomous creatures. (Seriously, every time I read about Australia it never fails to mention something about your unholy host of venomous creatures. I think everything has venom over there. “The average Australian Cattle Hound has venom glands near its dew-claws, and when it nibbles on its paws it creates a toxic hell-froth inside its muzzle and…”)

Seriously, though:

Fucking. Excited.

Thanks to the kind folks of GenreCon for having me. Hope to see some of you there!

Details on GenreCon here.

Here’s the deal. I want to talk a little about book piracy. I’ve been blabbering about the realities of publishing recently, and this is one of them. It seems easy to assume the post should be as short as, “HEY FUCK THOSE GUYS,” and to a degree, yeah, absolutely. But it’s a sticky wicket, this wocket, and so it deserves a way-too-long-post from yours truly.

(The tl;dr –? I don’t like book piracy but recognize it’s a very complex issue for a lot of reasons.)

Grab and oar and let’s sail the foam-tossed seas, buccaneers.

1. It Stings A Little

We’re all egomaniacs with improbably frail egos, and we all have our little Google Alerts for our names (mine’s easy because who the fuck else is named Wendig?). We see when our books pop up on file-sharing sites or when some forumite somewhere is asking for a free copy of one of our e-books. We see it. And it stings. And it doesn’t sting because we think about lost revenue, exactly — it stings because silly as it may seem it hurts our feelings that you don’t feel our work is worth the same amount of money as an inhaled cloud of dog flatulence. It erodes us, like the ocean eating the shore. We pretend that it’s professional. But sometimes, it feels personal.

2. A Big Mushy Poopy Pile Of Gray

It’s that stung feeling that leads us to get angry about piracy and turn it into a very black and white issue where we talk about pirates as if they are the same scum who pillage villages or punch orphans or whatever. We think of them as dehumanized robbers, evil robot invaders with all the value of a bloated tick clinging to that spot between our shoulder blades we just… can’t… reach. But we have to take a moment to recognize that piracy — like with so many of our modern challenges — is actually a very gray, very smooshy, very non-concrete issue.

3. You’ve Probably “Pirated” Something At Some Point

Ever copy a CD for someone? Or, if you’re a cranky old man like me, have you ever made a mix tape for someone? (The art of the mix-tape is a lost one.) Ever lend a book to someone? Buy or sell a used book? Copy a VHS tape? Give someone your DVD copy of Emmanuelle VIII: Porny French Chick Soft-Core Boning A Bunch Of Moon Colony Astronauts? But here you stammer, “Tha– bluhhh — fnuhhh — that’s different.” And it is in terms of magnitude, but take away magnitude and you still have theoretically lost revenue. (It’s why companies resisted allowing devices that copied content.) It can’t be wrong when someone downloads your book but okay when you copy a cassette tape — that’s like saying, “It’s okay for me to steal five bucks from that guy but not okay for you to steal five bucks from those 1,000 guys.”

4. Except It’s Kinda Not Theft, Exactly

It’s easy to call this stealing, but it’s not. Stealing is the act of taking something that does not belong to you — and here, “taking” implies that the other person does not get to keep it. This isn’t stealing. This is getting water on Gremlins. This is doppelgangering. This is motherfucking multiplication. That’s not to say it’s right or fair or legal, but you cloud the issue every time you call it “stealing.” Yes, it feels like stealing. But this is copying. Illegal duplication.

5. Arrr, Shiver Me Kindle

The “thing” that gets pirated is, from the author-publisher’s perspective, our story. Our, as the phrasing goes, intellectual property. The “thing” that gets pirated from the perspective of pirates is a file. They’re not stealing a book off a shelf. They’re copying an e-book file in the same way you’d copy and transfer a Word doc, a Quicktime movie, an Excel spreadsheet, a filthy animated GIF of Bea Arthur simulating hand-sex. This is important (not Bea Arthur hand-jobs, but rather, the pirate POV) in that it explains how easy it is to do — and how easy it is to justify.

6. It’s The Internet’s Fault

The thing we love about the Internet is also the thing that makes piracy craaaaazy easy. The Internet distributes information very quickly and efficiently. And it does so by connecting people quickly and, drum roll please, efficiently. The Internet has increased demand for non-corporeal information delivery, meaning: MP3s and YouTube movies and, of course, e-books. It’s ghosts and vapor. Couple this with the fact that we’re used to a culture of wide open access to a bunch of free shit, (again, YouTube or Pandora or Hulu) and you start to see that piracy is as much about cultural attitude and rapidly-evolving technology as it is about “crime.” The Internet connects people. It offers technology to move lots of data really quick. It provides moist, open access 25/8. It’s no wonder that illegal fire-sharing is the result: that’s like running a marathon and not showering and wondering how a cluster of jock-itch spore-pods decided to grow from beneath your sweat-frothed undercarriage.

7. Broken-Ass Data

We don’t have a lot of great data on book piracy. Some will tell you there is — there ain’t. We have almost no idea what impact it has in a practical sense. We need better — or any — data.

8. Theoretically Lost Revenue Rather Than Actually Lost Revenue

Every stolen e-book is lost revenue in a theoretical sense. If the book costs five Amazon ducats, and the author would’ve made twenty solar chits from that pile of ducats, then when a pirate copies that book without buying it, that equals a small pile of theoretical ducats-and-chits that do not go to the publisher or the author. But from a practical sense, that’s not accurate. It’s not actually lost revenue — I didn’t steal a Blu-Ray player off a truck so that the device can no longer be sold. If you’re thirsty and I pour you a glass of water from my tap (or if I don’t like you I scoop it out of my toilet bowl ENJOY THE TASTE OF A THOUSAND FLUSHES JERKPANTS), then Dasani or Aquafina may say, “That’s lost revenue because that person with the free fucking water isn’t buying our water, that asshole.” You can see where that logic falls apart.

9. DRM Probably Creates More Piracy Than It Deters

Digital Rights Management is when the company that owns or distributes the content places a metaphorical chastity belt on the content itself to ensure it doesn’t go sleeping around with other distributors or wayward devices. It’s also notoriously weak and often annoying. Implementation of DRM is frustrating and frustration will lead to piracy rather than away from piracy. It’s like the old Leia-telling-Tarkin, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

10. Piracy Helps Some Authors

The “piracy hurts authors” meme is obvious — theoretical or no, it surely represents some lost sales, and further, sometimes the versions of our work that get passed around are incomplete or are early drafts, which only makes us look like amateur hour a-holes. But, you also have to recognize that piracy has helped some authors (Adam Mansbach tells a story about how Go The Fuck To Sleep‘s pages leaked all over the Internet before release, and at first he was pissed off about it — until he realized pre-orders had skyrocketed as a result.) The problem here is, this is not an outcome you can foresee and control: an author can “control” piracy in much the same way you “control” a housecat or a housefire. Or worse, an arsonist housecat who started a housefire to get back at you for that shitty store-brand food you’ve been giving it. Jerk.

11. Pirates Have Their Reasons (Even If Many Of Them Are Crappy)

Pirates don’t appear to illegally share files because they relish being shitheads. They have, like any antagonist in any story, reasons for what they do.

12. Sometimes It’s About Lack Of Access

A reader may be driven to book piracy because that reader lacks access to the book in some way. A reader in a territory where the book has not been released may have no other way to get the book (and this is sometimes why you’ll often find your book on some torrent site in, like, Flarzblargistan). Further, publishers and libraries have not yet become besties-forever on the subject of e-books: so, many digital books (and even print books) are not available through a library service. A book may not even be an e-book yet (cough cough the final Wheel of Time book). Or it may not be platform-agnostic and lives only on, say, the Amazon Kindle, or the B&N Nook, or the Toyota Yaris (that’s an e-reader, right? I’m pretty sure it’s an e-reader).

13. Sometimes It’s About The Cost

The excuse is sometimes that e-books are just too expensive. The hardback is $15, the e-book is mysteriously three dollars more. And there exist plenty of justifications for why that price is as high as it is, just as there are plenty of justifications for why someone thinks that price is too high no matter the excuse. A customer has very little interest in why a price is too high — they only believe, sometimes rationally, sometimes not, that it is. And it’s here that a customer can be turned to the Dark Side of the Capitalist Force and choose instead to seek the book for free. A spurned customer will become an eager pirate if it’s easy enough.

14. Sometimes People Are Just Dicks

A lot of the reasons for book piracy amount to: “Because I want it.” It’s not driven by evil, but rather, selfishness. Selfishness is rarely seen as that; it’s often bound up in excuses that make a person feel okay for what they’re doing, but at the end of the day, it boils down to acting upon one’s wants without considering the needs of others. (And here let me wax political: the myth of America is that we’re a troop of hard-working capitalists who pulled ourselves up by our boot-straps, and you can see this in all the talk of our personal liberty, our individual rights, but the reality is, that individualism can sour and become the reason we refuse to ever play advocate for others — couple that with our crass consumerist tendencies and you start to see why I want it so I’m going to take it becomes such an easy decision to make. Further, the door swings both ways, and explains why a publisher will implement high prices and DRM regardless of the market wisdom that suggests it’s a craptastic idea that hurts instead of helps readers.)

15. Downloader As Potential Fan

Consider the possibility that the person who has downloaded your work is not your enemy but rather, your fan. Maybe an old fan, maybe a new one. You may say, “I don’t want that fan, that fan is a thieving fuckswab,” and you are within good reason to say so. (This is definitely the reaction you feel when someone walks up to you and tells you they love your new book and you rock and high-five and oh by the way I downloaded that book for free. Your immediate response feels like it should be, “Oh, cool, well, I downloaded my semen onto your toothbrush for free, you little shit-ferret.”) Just the same, consider the possibility that this person could be an evangelist for your work. Consider that they could be an engine of that most potent of marketing creatures: the slippery eel known as word-of-mouth.

16. Your Pirated Books Might Not Be Your Pirated Books

You will sometimes find your book smeared across the Internet in the gooey handprints of a chocolate-spackled toddler, but be advised, that might not be chocolate. You’ll see a site and it’s like, “OH MY GOD I SEARCHED FOR MY NAME AND THEY HAVE 80 BILLION ITERATIONS OF MY BOOKS AND NOW MY BUTTHOLE HAS TIGHTENED UP WITH SO MUCH ANGER MY BODY IS BEGINNING TO IMPLODE.” But do realize that programmatically some of these sites are there to deliver viruses and spyware: the actual download of your book may just be some shifty, shitty .exe file that is meant to harm the user and doesn’t have a single word you wrote inside its code.

17. The Danger Of Letting Legislation Be The Answer

It’s easy to say that we want the political process to protect us creative-types from this sort of intellectual intrusion, but remember: politicians frequently co-opt causes and use them as Trojan Horses to shepherd other more problematic legislation into existence. You may just want to firm up intellectual property rights, but they want to punish some kid who lip-synced to a Justin Bieber song on fucking YouTube. They want to make it okay to spy on your Internet traffic. They want to lock up the Internet in an AOL-flavored box and hand the key over to a bunch of untrustworthy companies (“THE INTERWEBS: SPONSORED BY THE BLACKWATER-MONSANTO CONGLOMERATE. PLEASE INSERT DNA STICK SO THAT WE MAY SEND AGENTS TO YOUR HOME TO ELIMINATE YOUR WEAKNESS I MEAN WHAT NOTHING.”). They want control and need an excuse to take it. Do not give them that excuse.

18. Our Primary Source Of Revenue Is Our Books And, Oh, By The Way, We’re Fond Of Not Starving And We Also Like Paying Our Mortgages And Feeding Our Kids And Sweet Jeebus This Header Really Got Away From Me Didn’t It?

Artists and authors need to eat. If our books won’t feed us, we’ll stop writing them. Yes, yes, we’re capitalist swine. Just the same: no, really, we need to eat. And pay bills. Which is why we’d like it if you bought our books instead of just, y’know, plucking them out of the ether.

19. Publishers Need To Eat, Too

Just a reminder through all of this talk: artists need to eat. Further, publishers need to eat, too. Er, not the actual publishing companies themselves, because as it turns out corporations are not actually people so much as they are unthinking entities. No, I’m talking about the people in publishing. The people who love books. Who edit them. Who do awesome covers. Who make phone calls and do marketing and all the crazy shit a book needs that you didn’t realize it needs. It’s frequently the artist and author who, understandably, is seen as the one who suffers here — but a book is the product of a whole ecosystem of people. Some pirates will offer to give the author money directly, but this is why some authors — like Pat Rothfuss — will say, “Fuck no, my publisher is why this book exists and the people there deserve their cut.”

20. That Old Chestnut

Some will say that obscurity is a fate worse than piracy. That may be true. That may not. Like all such pithy sayings, it’s always more complicated than what the pithy saying contains — but it is worth considering, isn’t it? Is a pirated book, at the least, a positive sign that people know of and want that thing you wrote? I mean, it’s not a compliment exactly, but…

21. The Napster Conundrum (Which Is Not The New Dan Brown Novel)

I, like many early intrepid Internet yeomans, once used the services of Napster before it became a paid site — meaning, I used to grab all the free music my poor little hard drive could hold. Here’s the trick, though: that was also a period of my life where I bought more music than ever before. Not saying the same thing is true with book piracy, but it’s worth a mention. (I don’t grab anything off torrents or file-shares anymore; I pay, or I don’t play.)

22. Let Your Publisher Fight The Battle

It’s a tremendous waste of time trying to play the vicious Whack-a-Mole game of finding and calling out every instance of book piracy of your work. Do that and you’ll end up awake for 37 hours straight, twitching, drooling, peeing, seeing thievery in all corners of your life (“I SEE YOU POTTED PLANT, YOU SONOFABITCH. YOU’RE TRYING TO STEAL MY EMAILS WITH YOUR PHOTOSYNTHETIC MIND!”). If you see it, alert your publisher. Don’t fight the battles yourselves. Your time is better spent writing new and awesome things.

23. Combat Piracy By Adding Value

Piracy is predominantly about digital, so bring value to the work beyond the digital. Do not restrict digital, but consider limited edition physical prints, or other deals like, say, “Buy a physical copy, also get a digital copy.” (More publishers need to be doing this, stat.) Or maybe, “Buy a physical version of the book, get a taco.” Because FUCK YEAH TACOS, SON.

24. Fight The Culture Of Piracy Rather Than The Pirates Themselves

The problem with piracy, like most ingrained problems, is not one of crime, but one of culture. It is a tremendous waste of emotional and intellectual energy to combat individual instances of book piracy: you’re better off yelling at the waves rolling in and knocking over some kid’s sandcastle. In fact, to carry that metaphor: you don’t fight the effects of climate change, you fight climate change itself. You don’t fight the symptoms of a disease, you fight the disease. You don’t fight individual bears, you fight the culture of bears. … okay, maybe not that last one.

25. The International “Please Don’t Pirate My Book” Day

Here’s what I’m proposing:

Tomorrow, February 6th, will be Please Don’t Pirate My Book Day. On that day, you writer-types should take time — as little or as much as you can manage — and hop online to talk about piracy. About how it has affected you, or what your thoughts about it are, but most importantly, why you’d like people to pay for your book instead of, say, just taking it.

Speak your mind, whatever that may mean.

So, tomorrow: blog post, Tumblr text, tweet, whatever.

Talk about book piracy and how you feel about it, specifically.

I’ll do it. Won’t you?

(Probably not, and that’s okay. I know that you’re busy. After all, you’re not answering my texts. I’ll just sit here in your shrubs and keep eating these Goldfish crackers while flipping through my iPhone photos of you on the toilet. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.)

Fireside is a fucking great magazine.

Brian White put together three full issues via Kickstarter, featuring powerful stories across all genres by some incredible writers (Blackmoore, Bear, Howard, Liu, Grintalis, etc). Further, he pays his authors very well — well above what is sadly an unevolved base professional rate.

Fireside’s back with a new Kickstarter, this time transitioning from a print magazine to an online-only and e-book presence. And, in this iteration, I’m on board, too.

In fact, I’m on board with a 12-part serial storytelling experiment (tentatively titled “The Forever Endeavor”). It’s been a story I’ve wanted to write for a long time but which is challenging for reasons that will become apparent should the Kickstarter reach its goal — it’s not exactly a mainstream story and it’ll be funny and sorta fucked up and something of a noodle-cooker in terms of how it boggles my brain (and hopefully yours). So, I’m excited to have a forum to put this thing to paper — er, “paper” — and get it into people’s heads.

Plus, Brian’s got other great writers joining in, putting me in some excellent company — Ken Liu, Delilah Dawson, Karina Cooper, and the mighty Lilith Saintcrow.

Plus: design by Pablo Defendini!

And that artwork by Galen Dara, c’mon. C’mon.

Anyway.

Want in? Then put me to work.

The Kickstarter is now live.