• Thanks for sharing that link, so I didn’t have to. 🙂

      Seriously, though it says a lot that a bestselling author like Maggie had this happen with the highly anticipated last book in her most popular and critically acclaimed series to date, thanks to “fans” who couldn’t be bothered to pay for the books they were reading.

      It appears to me that publishers are taking a head-in-the-sand approach to piracy because they can’t figure out any way to stop it, so they argue that it’s not really that big a factor and punish the author for the diminishing sales returns instead. Maggie’s post demonstrates that “series fatigue” isn’t actually what’s happening no matter how much publishers would like to believe otherwise, but I fear that her message will largely be falling on deaf ears until publishers actually come up with a workable game plan for stopping piracy.

      Thanks for the article, Stephen. Glad you found my FB post thought-provoking.

      • You’re welcome 🙂 At one point, she shared that post again to explain why eARCs weren’t being distributed before the release of one of her most recent books, since the eARCs were what was being pirated.

  1. Vincent says:

    You have to define property before you can claim theft. Some people think wages are theft, which is ludicrous. Likewise, intellectual property is not a legitimate form of property.

    Here’s a free e-book on the subject. Obviously, the author doesn’t care if you download it.

    https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0

    • You have to define property before you can claim theft. Some people think wages are theft, which is ludicrous. Likewise, intellectual property is not a legitimate form of property.

      Here’s a free e-book on the subject. Obviously, the author doesn’t care if you download it.

      https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0

    • Well, I’m not a lawyer, but from the media law class I took ages ago… There are factors that matter in copyright, such as whether or not the thing in question is in a fixed, tangible format. An ebook, or roleplay post, etc. still counts as a fixed, tangible format, from what I understand. And supposedly, with art, there’s the idea that someone CAN’T copyright, say, a pose or an idea, but they can copyright the particular piece they made. And if they obviously went and copied something from someone’s piece too closely, they are in danger of copyright infringement, or at least getting called out for copying.

      If someone wants to give their work away for free to the community, more power to them. That can be helpful. I use free programs, such as Krita, which is kind of like Photoshop (krita.org is the website). But, expecting everyone to claim no ownership over their work, especially if it’s ‘just intellectual property’ isn’t right. Just because someone wants things to be free and is fine with giving their work away for free doesn’t mean everyone else has to.

  2. […] to some late-night book editing, I’m pulling from this earlier article at my own site. Next week, I’ll conclude the Realm Makers 2019: One Hundred Graces series. […]

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