[ugjka]

So how exactly pirating the books give money to the writers?

[shakna]

The more people who pirate my books, the greater my sales across all platforms. That's not hyperboly - its something I track.

Individuals who pirate my books are also more likely to buy them in the future.

Piracy is just about accessibility and trust. If the person can't afford to take a chance, they pirate. And if you win them there, they'll buy.

(Nit: Zero of that applies to corps. Thanks Anthropic, Meta, and everyone else.)

[SCdF]

I am guessing this works for you because more people reading = more people talking = more readers discovering and potential sales?

It would be interesting to see at what point of notoriety that is no longer true. Like is this still a factor for Stephen King, or at that point is it really just lost sales?

[qmr]

Are you looking forward to tens of ... dollars from that recent suit?

[gruez]

>The more people who pirate my books, the greater my sales across all platforms.

You think more piracy leads to more sales, but surely this is correlation, not causation? It seems far more plausible that popular books get pirated and bought more, hence the correlation.

[blagie]

The cycle has been:

Piracy -> Friendly ways to buy -> Unfriendly ways to buy -> Piracy -> ...

Unfortunately, giving money back to writers involves hopping through piracy. At that point, a new, consumer-friendly service will sprout up. Everyone will use it.

Over time, the service will want to profit-maximize, and will adopt anti-consumer techniques. Leading people to go to Pirate Bay. Leading to friendly services.

Rinse, repeat.

[lotsofpulp]

How many times has this happened, such that it can be called a cycle?

There are other possibilities, such as people simply not writing as much anymore, or higher quality writers existing the market due to lack of sufficient return.

[portaouflop]

Instead of lining bezos pockets get your ebooks from above sources and go to a real bookshop to buy hard copies of books you like especially - you can give them away and so support the actual author while not supporting bozo

[wltr]

I pirate all the books, I treat that as a public library. I don’t read most of them. The ones I have read and found good, I talk about them, write about them, and I can buy them. For myself, plus as gifts to others. I just dislike buying highly marketed book that turned out to be useless.

If I’ll ever to become an author myself, I don’t see any issue with that.

[rs186]

I use the local public library from time to time (physical/via Libby) while reading on my kindle otherwise. Libby is something else, but for the physical books, I just see zero difference between going to the library in person, checking it out and returning it later vs just pirating it online. It's not like the publisher does not get any more money. OK there is a difference where there is a limit to the number of copies available, so some people have to wait, just typical of public resources. But I noticed that most books I borrow are always available, especially with interlibrary borrowing. So what difference does it make?

In the end I pirated more often. I am not proud of that, but I also don't see how any of this makes any difference. It's not like I'll ever buy the book with my own money.

[buyucu]

If they sell a PDF that I can download, then I'll give my money to them. But I'm not giving money for DRM.

[trcf22]

How different is it from going to a public library?

[Mindwipe]

Almost every country in the world apart from the US pays authors for library lending.

[throwbway37383]

You should check out Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin. To put it briefly, you've been fooled.

You're making an argument that empowers the likes of Amazon, not "writers", and it's by design that you've been fed that story.

[keanb]

Where in the message did he claim that pirating the books compensated the writers?

[nashashmi]

Book authors should make money from concert ticket sales, not books. /s