People often don't understand that while yes, you will hurt the publishers, you will hurt the authors first and worse. When our books don't make money, our publishers drop us. Simple as that. They have hundreds of authors; they keep making money. But the authors they discard wind up in serious shit.
I've spoken often and at length about how impressed I am by indie authors, because I do not have the executive function to be my own publisher. I get dropped by one, I go looking for a new one. I run out of options, I'm pretty well fucked.
I have a friend whose general policy is to download whatever books they can’t get easily from the library, but then to buy signed/hardback/preordered copies of books by authors they have loved with their book budget. What do you think of something like that?
People think authors get a living wage, which as you know is false. One of my published friends split a 5k advance with her co-writer. Three years of work went into that very entertaining book...well below min wage. They both have day jobs. Book is on IA. Plz support libraries who paid for a license
i genuinely don't understand how you got from "i am being screwed by my publisher" to "i should help them extract money from libraries". they are paying you as little as they can get away with, you shouldn't also be doing free pr work for them too.
My debut came out last year, and my advance was broken into 4 payments (on signing, turn in, pub, year after pubbed) and those advance payments have been critical to my survival, over 4 years. If I can’t sell my next book because people pirate this one, I’m screwed. I’m Autistic and disabled.
After fighting this fight forever, I've accepted the pirates just don't care. There's no magic message which will persuade them that authors are the most vulnerable, most exploited people in a complex system. They want the books? They'll take the books. It's our fault for playing the publishing game
The task here is for these authors dependent on these revenues to find alternative ways, even if that takes adopting more radical politics, and NOT embedding this terrible system even further. you see that, don't you.