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From the President's Desk February 2010 How Writers Are -- And Will Be -- Ripped Off by Salley Shannon "Who will know?" and "You'll never prove it" are well on their way to becoming the normal personal and corporate ethics in our industry. I really hate admitting that, because I also believe most people try to do the right thing and feel terrible when they don't. Yet the increase in idea theft, stories popping up on websites unauthorized, and books illegally downloaded are real. No amount of goodwill can wish them away. Is it that people no longer care about playing fair? I don't think so. It's rather that our diagram of what constitutes fair play is rapidly being redrawn in myriad ways, some of them obvious and many of them subtle. Idea theft affects writers who sell story ideas to print and online publications. Idea theft by an editor, which used to be something you heard about once or twice a year, is something we now hear about once or twice a week. The theft of chapters and even entire books via illegal scanning and downloads, even through the Google Book Search -- although of course it isn't supposed to happen -- appears to be ramping up, too. The other day, I mentioned to a writer buddy that I was about to do a column on book and story stealing via the Internet. He sighed. "I almost wish you wouldn't talk about illegal downloads," he said. "Talking about it is so unpopular. It makes people hate writers. "Remember how everybody loved Napster and was mad at the recording industry?" he continued. There is near universal agreement that the music industry hurt itself by refusing to acknowledge the new file-sharing era. It wasted years suing college kids, generating massive ill-will, and getting millions of otherwise law-abiding folks into the habit of routinely stealing copyrighted music -- and feeling virtuous while doing it. Today, "legal" music is pretty cheap, but folks are so used to getting it free that billions upon billions of dollars have been lost. Now the written word is being Napsterized. Bear with me on this, because even if you're a magazine writer or online writer and you have no present intention of writing books, sooner or later we all seem to get there. Plus, it's tremendously important to the future of all writers. Back in 2007, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) said publishers in the U.S. had lost roughly $500 million from book pirating. A 2008 survey in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that a quarter of college students had looked on websites selling pirated books to see if they could get their textbooks, and about 8 percent did it. (Pirate sites go up and down like the tide.) Let's talk about the Google Book Search, which allows you to read and download up to 20 percent of a book. We writers were told how great it would be for us -- a chance to sell all our old books! Folks researching a topic will find their way to them and buy. Note that Google is now scanning journals and magazines, too. Being part of the Google Book Search was pitched to us, collectively, with the idea it would help sales. I don't think it will. Or, not to the extent forecast. Here's why: Theoretically, you have to wait at least a week to get at more than the first 20 percent of a book you're reading through the Google Book Search. In reality, folks get around that. Log in using a different account or a different computer, and get another 20 percent. If you're in a hurry, your friend can get yet another 20 percent. In short order, you've downloaded an entire book. Of course, with some books, like a cookbook or a "how to" book, you often don't need the entire book, anyway. Twenty percent or 40 percent will do fine. No need to buy the book, ever. Thanks, Google! Talk about the law of unintended consequences: The Google Book Search, combined with the ease of scanning and file-sharing, already is killing book sales. Piracy is aided by the way more books are appearing as PDFs, which PCs and devices like the Sony reader and the Kindle DR both access. Scanning books may be too labor- intensive for Americans for a little while longer -- let's hope so. But there are a lot of folks in Nepal, Malaysia, and India, the piracy capitals, that have time to spare. Three things can save our ability to make a living. First, we must retain more of eBook profits than the 10 percent often foisted off on us in traditional contracts. (See related comments by author/agent/attorney Lynn Chu in the (January issue -- will open a .pdf file, go to page 6), "Voices on Writing.") Second, we must fight to keep eBooks inexpensive. This way it makes more sense to buy a book than to rip it off -- because file-sharing is now so endemic that to a lot of folks, it doesn't feel like stealing, and plenty don't mind the twinge even if it does. No settlement or massive new bureaucracy to sell eBooks will save us, despite good intentions, if publishers smack on artificially high prices -- which they desperately want to do. In the GBS settlement plan, the Authors Guild is trying to save us from Amazon's $9.99 eBooks, because major publishers are frantic about that price. They see it as ridiculously low. Indeed it is -- for a print hardcover. Not for an eBook. Print will be with us for a while longer. Yes. And I'm glad of that. Still, do you know anyone with an eBook reader who doesn't love it? It's ironic and terribly sad that, because they are so frantic to keep their same profit margins, publishers are cooperating with Google in killing themselves off. Meantime, they're hoping we writers won't notice that eBooks don't require the printing presses, paper, trucks, packers, and warehouses of the past, or that we're mostly doing our own publicity already. We're supposed to be afraid they won't publish us if we say no, give me 50 percent of eBook royalties, thanks. Which brings me to the third thing that will save us: remembering that all the power does not reside on the publisher's side of the table. In any format, books and magazines do not magically write themselves. Salley Shannon, mostly a magazine and online writer, is thinking about a book proposal. Because despite all our cares, writing is worth it, worth it, worth it. Email her at: president (at) asja.org
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