Patricia V. Davis
A few years back, I was in the audience listening to a speaker at a prestigious writers’ conference as he warned us about book piracy and how many potential sales authors stood to lose as a result.
“I know for a fact that people are pirating my work and even selling my books illegally online,” he said, clearly not happy about that.
He went on to inform a roomful of mostly new writers that he’d even caught some reviewers ─ legitimate ones ─ selling their review copy of his book on eBay after they’d reviewed it. “When giving out review copies of your books, be sure to write ‘review copy’ in it, to help prevent that from happening,” he cautioned. He continued in the same vein about illegal copies being obtained for his ebooks, as well, and I observed several audience members taking notes diligently on his piracy prevention suggestions.
The problem is, I’d personally never heard of him before that conference, and if you ask me even now, I couldn’t tell you the title of even one of his books.
What does this mean? I’m getting to that.
Let’s take another scenario: Me, as a teenager at a neighbor’s garage sale. She had a bin of old paperbacks that she was selling at ten cents each. Obviously we’re going way back here, before the internet even existed, so in essence, her reselling of those paperbacks at ten cents each was that era’s equivalent of today’s online book piracy. I bought a paperback that looked intriguing ─ why not, at that price? ─ and took it home to read. I became so enraptured by the story, that I read it all in one sitting, then raided my babysitting money which I’d saved for something else, walked all the way to the local bookstore and bought another of her books at the full paperback retail price that same day. Over the years, I’ve repeatedly bought her titles, and sometimes, if I’m feeling famished for the quality brain candy novels that she writes, and something new she’s written looks particularly appealing, I won’t even wait for the paperback version ─ I’ll spring for the hardback price of 25 dollars plus tax. (Yes, even this day of eReaders and iPads, I still buy hardback books.) So, the novel that I bought “illegally” hooked me into becoming a lifelong fan of this author. Her name is Nora Roberts and obviously I’m not her only devoted fan because she’s worth approximately 60 million dollars. But the conference speaker who’d advised new writers to “watch out” for book thieves was correct ─ Nora never got a penny of the ten cents my neighbor stole from her by reselling her book.
So my first reason for not giving a fig if my books are pirated on eBay, resold at garage sales or passed on from person to person? Nora Roberts. If I hadn’t found that book at that garage sale at such a tempting price, her name on the cover of a paperback would be just another author’s name whose work I don’t know. I would wager that a good portion of her millions of fans learned about her the same way I did ─ from a paperback bought for ten cents.
My second reason is that when Harlot’s Sauce came out in 2009, a friend sent me an email that went like this: “I loved it! I loved it so much that I lent it to my mother and told her she had to read it. She loved it, also and passed it on to my aunt, who gave it to my cousin. My cousin loved it too! We all can’t wait until your next book comes out!”
Thrilled over my first email praise, I read it to my husband, who having majored in economics was not nearly as excited. “So, four people read one copy? Let’s see ─ you make about a dollar in royalties on each copy of that book. So what you’re saying is ─ you made 25 cents per reader?”
“We’ll see,” I responded to his cynicism.
Sure enough, the friend’s cousin, whom I’d never met, belonged to a rather large book group, as book groups go. She really had loved the book, because she presented it to her group who then purchased 50 copies of Harlot’s Sauce. And one of the women in the club invited me to speak at her organization of Italian American Women, and there went another 125 copies. So from one copy being read by four different people, I sold an additional 175 books, and who knows how many more from those?
I could go on, but you get the point, which is: If you have a dog-eared copy of one of my books that you’d like to lend to someone, or even sell to someone for ten cents, go ahead─ I won’t call the Feds. For me, at this point in my writing career, it’s not about how much money I’m making; it’s about how many readers I have access to and whether or not those readers are enjoying my work. I’m a long way from a sixty million dollar income, but I do know this for sure ─ people are reading my books. Monthly, weekly, and occasionally even daily, I’ll get an email or Facebook message from someone who says, “Hey, I just finished your book, and I loved it. When are you going to write another one?” And sometimes, that note is from someone who lives in Australia. Or Indonesia. Or someplace else I’ve never been. Now, that’s the true miracle of the worldwide web. Or maybe, book piracy.
The third and last reason that I’m listing here today (although, believe me, there are many more than three) on why I don’t care who pirates, lends or sells my published books is probably the most important reason of all. It has to do with some of my former pupils in the NYC Public School system whom I will never forget. The ones who were poor and lived in group homes, the ones whose parents were about 15 years older than they were, the ones who didn’t speak English as their first language but had to translate for their mothers and fathers ─ those were the students who seemed most fascinated by the stories I read to them in English class, because they had never been exposed to them. Can you imagine never knowing Jack London, or Harper Lee, Roald Dahl or even Judy Blume? These authors and many others opened up worlds for me as a I grew up and I believe I passed on my love of their work to my pupils. The only way those young people would ever be able to read a book would be because someone had read it to them, as I had, or given it to them. Eighteen years after teaching at that school, I ran into a former pupil, now in her 30s and she exclaimed, “You’re Mrs. V, my former English teacher. Oh my God — A Tale of Two Cities — I will never forget how much you made me love that book.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not of the ilk who believes that all of us artists have to be broke in order to be “true” artists. Quite the contrary. I want to make money on book sales and lots of it. But I also give away plenty of my books when I feel someone will benefit from my work, or just because I want that particular person to read it. And I’m also looking at the bigger picture of how an author can build a platform. It’s not by hoarding one’s work, or expending energy worried about how many ebooks have not been accounted for. The irony in thinking like that is this: When you get well enough known, it’s much harder to be pirated without someone noticing. I know Harlot’s Sauce has been printed in Chinese but so far, I have received not “yuan” penny for that translation. (Ha ha) But when JK Rowling’s work was pirated in China, her publishers in the US were able to put a stop to it right away. And that was only because she was already famous. Will fame happen to all 3 million authors who put out a book this year alone? Can their publishers afford the money and time it takes to create a huge marketing campaign for each book they publish? Hardly. The slower, more possible way to get known is by word of mouth.
So go ahead, steal my ebooks. And then send me an email and let me know how you liked them.
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Patricia V. Davis is the author of the bestselling Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece and The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know. She is the founder of The Women’s PowerStrategy™ Conference
I’ve had my books filched, too, Patricia. Here’s the way I look at it, my passion is all about inspiring and teaching daughters and sons, from all walks of life, to write mother memoir. It’s essential, heartfelt work! Whether first time writers or professionals, when TellTale Souls write and share their stories, I’ve accomplished what I wished to do. If they can’t afford the nominal price of “TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit,” I’d be happy to I give them one, if they’d simply ask. Reward is in the doing.
I’ve read some of the responses to your work, Lynn. People are definitely benefiting from it!
That is the best, most succinct explanation I have heard or read about why you should not worry about who “steals” your book. I will be bookmarking this article. Every aspiring writer who ask me that question or worries about this, i will send to your article. I agree with you all the way, and when I was young, I found most of my favorite authors through libraries and shared books, so who gets any money from that?
Having people read and love your work and finding you is how it all begins.
It’s the same as when we give out samples or when in your case, you give a talk on designing a website, Linda. People want to know what they’re going to be buying, especially today when very few of us have money to throw away on something we won’t like. So glad you liked my post!