It's so annoying XD

A streak of 92!! Go, go go go go GO !

Me: oohhhhkay I'll set myself a calendar reminder for the 25th.
SLC: yeah whatever
SLC:
SLC: IT'S THE 22ND AND YOU HAVEN'T PAID YOUR STUDENT LOAN WE ARE GONNA FUCKING OWN YOUR WHOLE LIFE AND WERE SENDING YOU TO COLLECTIONS

In the end, the result is that you get less representation, less diversity, and less uniqueness in books because the only people who can afford to keep writing are the ones who write for a paycheck.

Publishing has to change. But stealing from other poor people isn't the way to do it.

20/20

I would hazard a guess that most authors won't mind if people who can't afford the book or who don't have books available in their area found a free copy. But that's not what's happening. And I think people using this as an excuse know that, too.

19/

I'll make another thread about the excuse of "they weren't going to buy them anyway," but essentially, that isn't always the case.

A lot of piracy comes from people who could otherwise afford the book, but they don't WANT to pay for it.

18/

And because most good representation currently comes from the indie sector, that means those books stop existing.

I saw an author on here who was posting fellow indies, only to see an uptick in the piracy of those books.

17/

But if you pirate from an indie author, they go from breaking even to claiming their book as an expense. If they are struggling to make ends meet and they have to drop an expense, one of the first things they'll have to look at is their hobby. Writing.

16/

...that author isn't likely to get another publishing deal. Considering the advance for non-formula books and first-time authors isn't great, this means an author might get paid once for a book, and find themselves unable to ever publish again. At least the author got paid.

15/

The author has their advance and the publisher has done enough marketing to sell the book wide and profit from it.

If you pirate tradpub that are not best sellers, well, this is more of an issue. The author has their advance, but if the book doesn't profit... 14/

But more than that, I have a story to tell, and I can't tell it in the formula tradpub wants me to write it in.

So this is where piracy becomes a problem.

If you pirate tradpub best sellers, it's generally not an issue.

13/

You're getting representation from indie authors, who again, are generally publishing their books because they want to tell a story. It sure would be nice to make a career out of writing, but generally we're just hoping to recoup costs. At least I am.

12/

The point is, the people getting enough money to survive and provide for themselves are the people writing the formulaic novels. This formula does not (generally) include representation for disabled/POC/neurodivergent/queer/etc. Because tradpub thinks those won't sell.

11/

As you can see, that's just not enough for an author to live on. But it IS enough to recoup the costs of the novel--at least in part. And getting something back is really important, especially for people who are struggling already.

10/

You'll be lucky to break even. Sometimes you have to accept you're publishing just because you have a story you want to tell. Most books will never sell more than 500 copies. With retailers like Amazon taking a cut, this might come to about $1500 over the lifetime of the book.

9/

But indie comes with a whole other slew of problems. There is no advance and you have to incur all the costs yourself. You also have to market. When you have all this dumped on you, you quickly realize that you will likely never make a profit. 8/

And it's not because the AUTHOR failed. It's because the thing they were paying the publisher for--to market and sell their book--was not being done.

This is why a lot of authors turn to indie publishing. It's not because tradpub is hard, it's because, for a lot of people, it's unfair.

7/

There's a whole conversation to be had about tradpub doing insufficient marketing for some books while overhyping others, but in the end, when the under-assisted book fails, it's very unlikely that author will ever be published again. 6/

That isn't all at once. It's over the course of a year.

And because tradpub has caught onto the fact that they can force authors to do their own marketing through social media, they dedicate all their marketing to their formula-written books, and don't tend to help other authors out at all.

5/