Ben Hoyle reports in the (London) Times that the UK Society of Authors forecasts that book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.
The article says, “The internet is awash with unlicensed free digital copies of individual chapters or in some cases entire books. Prominent victims of book piracy include Jamie Oliver and J. K. Rowling but the most vulnerable writers are less well-known poets, authors of short stories and writers of cookery books.”
I can attest to the fact that you don’t need to be famous to be a victim: I found a complete copy of my “Your Writing Coach” book online as an unauthorized PDF. I asked the hosting site to take it down and they did, but it reappeared within a few days with a slightly different file name. Once again I demanded that it be removed, and it was, but this feels like a futile chase.
I also traced it to another site based in Russia, and they also removed it, although with the snide comment that they were doing me a favor as reading the book online probably would make people want to buy the hard copy (oh, sure).
I informed my publisher but they are pessimistic about being able to find any legal remedies when the hosting sites are in countries like Russia.
So I agree that we’re moving toward a crisis but one of the suggestions that the Society of Authors came up with, government funding of an academy of salaried writers, seems like a terrible idea. Isn’t that what they used to have in Eastern Europe? And having said all that, I don’t think there exists any force in man or nature that will actually stop writers from writing.
(for free monthly tips on being more creative and productive, sign up for our Brainstorm e-bulletin--just email a request to [email protected])