Writers, Pirates and Piastres

The funniest thing that has happened with writing over the past couple of decades is the so-called “online literature”.



A few years ago, writers had the opportunity to make money by literary work without the mediation of publishers, working directly with the reader. I talked about this a bit in the material " Writers prod ."



On this occasion, we can only repeat after the son of a Turkish citizen: "The dream of an idiot came true."



All communism has come. No more humiliation in front of the publisher, begging for the publication. No need to wait for months, or even years, for your book to be released. Do not give greedy people the lion's share of the money earned on your talent, receiving a miserable royalty of 10 rubles from a book. No need to fulfill their idiotic requirements, no need to replace the word "ass", simplify or shorten the text.



Finally, it became possible to work with your readers directly - face to face. Honestly and directly look into their eyes, invitingly shaking a cap with a trifle.



Finally, everything is honest: you, your books and your greedy readers.







However, pretty quickly I had to remember that honesty is one of the most unpleasant human qualities.



And it became clear that, having got rid of some problems, the writers raked the complete bosom of others.



When working with the publishing house, the writer had little to do - write the text that the publishing house would need, and not let the publishing house sit on its head, periodically seeking mutually beneficial conditions for cooperation.



When working with the reader, it quickly quickly became clear that everything had to be done on its own - and put the letters in the “zh-shy”, and steal pictures on covers, and catch new readers somewhere. If you call a spade a spade, then you, a talented writer Imenirekov, become an individual entrepreneur or, in Russian, a handicraftsman. And what is wrong? Craftsman, as all readers of Ushakov’s dictionary know, is “a person engaged in production at home for marketing, a craftsman”.



And since you have to engage in entrepreneurship not in the usual reality, but in the notorious “computer network Internet”, now you are becoming not just an “engineer of human souls about fellow travelers,” but also a real Internet project. And you must implement this Internet project, and it is extremely desirable - successfully. And your books, I apologize for the rude word, are not only hmm ... works of art, a product of human genius, but also just a product sold on the web.



And this dualism of the new working conditions, this alloy of an ivory tower with a storehouse, this combination in a single bottle of high mountain literary and low creature selling are not only the source of many lulz, but also make one way or another solve many problems associated with managing this accident Internet project.



I’ll tell you about some of them, if there is interest.



But the topic of the first article suggests itself - this is the theme of piracy , which any author who is trying to make literary work on the Web faces.



I must say right away - I understand perfectly all the toxicity and debatability of this topic. Therefore, I will try to be accurate in the formulations, despite the “ayuli-drove-stile” cultivated by me in the articles.

Question one: Does Internet piracy harm book sales on the Web?

Alas, the answer is clear - yes, it hurts.



When the book was published on paper, the question was still debatable - I did not come across any convincing refutations of the argument that the audience buying the paper and the audience downloading files on Flibust are practically disjoint audiences.



With network sales, it makes no sense to deny the obvious - both pirates and authors selling their books are targeted at the same audience.



Moreover, there is a well-reasoned opinion that it was the intensification of the fight against piracy that made the phenomenon of “professional network writers” possible. The flagship of electronic book sales, Liters, was a subsidy project for EKSMO for many years, and only after the tough anti-piracy law of 2015 became profitable.



There are different opinions about how much the share of illegal consumption has decreased (I came across numbers that in the first months fell from 98% to 90%, but I don’t know what they are based on), but the fact remains - the number of purchases of e-books since the second half of 2015 increased sharply.



So, the popular author Pavel Kornev somehow laid out a sales schedule for his books in Liters (in pieces), and there were no new items there, only old editions. It seems to be quite visual:







I will make a reservation that, of course, you should not reduce the growth of legal sales to anti-piracy activities. At least no less important was the factor of the appearance of convenient services for online purchases and the ability to pay “in two clicks”. But it would be strange to deny his role - just leaving Filibusta underground sent thousands of computer-illiterate crowds towards legal stores.

Question two: Did anti-piracy law solve the problem of book piracy?

Alas, the answer is no less unequivocal - no, I haven’t decided.



Well, yes, Flibusta is underground and her audience has considerably decreased. Well, yes, the sale of books in the process of writing / laying out made it possible to “make brackets” of pirates. And yes, it is the money received in the process of laying out the book that gives up to 80-90% of the income from it.



But the sales of the finished book, the calculation on Flibust is harmful, and quite strongly.



As an example, the sales schedule of one very popular book on Author.Tudey:







Comments, I think, are superfluous.



Thus, we can state that the departure of the book to pirates harms “long” sales. If we talk about the impact of this factor on project management, I note that the opinions of project managers are divided.



Many authors, trying to protect themselves from posting on Flibust, close the possibility of downloading a book, leaving only reading on the site. It is believed that books that cannot be downloaded with a file are pirated less frequently. On the other hand - this brings a fair inconvenience to readers, which obviously does not contribute to sales - not everyone wants to be chained to the screen for their own money. So another question is why there is more harm to sales, from pirates or from the inability to download. The question remains debatable, popular authors do both, and so. Although, most likely, the fact is that popular authors are being pirated for anyone, at least close the download, at least do not close it.



On the other hand, with the decline of Flibusta, not everyone is pirated, which has created a social stratification among the authors, and a new name-calling in numerous writers: “Yes, you are the Elusive Joe!”



The last comment on this issue is that laying out on Flibust harms sales, but does not cancel them. As already mentioned, an ever-smaller percentage of the audience goes to the pirates after having to enter the library “through the rear porch”. Good books are also sold when laid out on Flibust, and in quite marketable quantities - your humble servant received less than 100 thousand for the leisurely sale of the only paid volume, "They're going to battle ..." . rubles. This despite the fact that I am far from a top author.

The third question, fundamental - what are the prospects for book piracy in Russia?

The question is actually very important - without answering the question why book piracy in Russia turned out to be so tenacious, we will never understand how to deal with it.



Here there can be no definite answer, I can only state my own thoughts on this matter.



Moreover, contrary to custom, I will start from the end - first I will say a guess, and then I will try to justify it.



The reason for the pirate survivability is described in one phrase: Technical progress pushed creativity and ethics between their foreheads.



And now a little more. Three important tags.



First: what happened? With the development of technological progress, means of replication of information have become so simple and accessible that they can be used by any, the most illiterate person. Both in terms of replication of information, and in terms of distribution of the created copies.



Second: what did it turn out to be? In particular, the fact that maintaining the exclusive right to distribute products created by creative people - musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc., is de facto impossible. Nowadays, each one has his own printing house, a recording studio, and a factory for the production of rental copies of films.



Third: how did this get worse? The fact that at about the same time, entertaining people has become a streamlined and powerful business industry with huge incomes that no one wants to lose. The authors of the income remark are least concerned, well, copyright rules aren’t determined by them.



From the side of the copyright holders, the main strategy for resisting progress was chosen, which is also described by one phrase: "All who use masterpieces not obtained from the direct blessing of the creators (and their descendants) are thieves and villains."



But then the situation came to a standstill. Copyright advocates are hindering free distribution more and more actively; consumers of copyright products in full accordance with the saying “find a hole in the water” invented ever newer and more sophisticated methods of distribution.

A new question arises: why? Why are consumers behaving so badly?

Why do not they heed persuasion and continue to use illegally distributed copies? Manufacturers usually explain this by the fact that people are initially vicious and, if there is an opportunity to steal with impunity, they will certainly steal. Therefore, they must be beaten harder on the head in order to deter this unseemly act.



Without completely denying this opinion, however, I note that the same technological progress has greatly facilitated, for example, direct theft. For example, instead of the traditional medieval shop, the goods in which were displayed inaccessible to the buyer and guarded by a hefty host with a baton under the counter, we now have supermarkets where you pick up whatever your heart desires. But, nevertheless, theft in supermarkets even increased, but did not become mass at all and, by and large, remains the lot of a relatively small group of marginals.



Why? It is very simple: people consider shoplifting to be theft, and society itself, condemning theft as a phenomenon, in every possible way prevents its spread. But the society of en-masses does not consider downloading a movie from the network or a file with a book from a pirate library theft.



That is, the main thesis of copyright supporters about theft is perceived by consumers of the products of these authors as false.



Why?



For the simplest reason: under traditional ethics, the actions of copyright infringers are not theft.



Opponents of free distribution do not fight with people - they grappled with an ethical system that has been around for many, many centuries.



Within the framework of this ethics, selfless sharing is not a bad thing, but a good deed. If a person received something legally, and then without any mercenary intent gave it to me, then he is not a thief, but a benefactor. And I'm not a thief, but just lucky.



Because sharing within the framework of traditional ethics is good.



It will be extremely difficult to convince people who grew up on the song “Share your smile, and she will come back to you more than once”, and on the animated film “Just like that”.







If not impossible.



Because ethical systems are not formed “from the lantern”, as a rule, their postulates are later derived by blood laws, the truth of which is confirmed by the millennia of the life of this very society that observes them.



And this historical memory says that to steal is bad, because theft threatens the stability of society. And altruism is good, because it is a very effective factor contributing to the survival of society. And that is why the parents in the sandbox usually convince the children that in a good way they should let Vanya play with the typewriter, even if it is yours.



And this is indeed so, it is no coincidence that altruism exists not only in humans, but in almost all animals, from birds to dolphins.



And a person who buys a movie on DVD with his own money that is interesting to me, then, after watching, spends his own time - translates it, cuts in subtitles there and puts it in the final for everyone, including me, and does not require anything in exchange - from the point of view of the layman very similar to an altruist.



I fully admit the idea that, in fact, just an ethical norm has become outdated; this has happened more than once or twice in the history of human society.



Once upon a time, in response to bad words, a man was required to kill the offender, and if he did not fulfill this condition, he would drop his social status in the eyes of others. Now this is no longer required. Perhaps the cultural-treasure altruism of network pirates is actually in the changed world a social atavism like blood feud - I fully admit this option.



But the trouble is that ethical standards are extremely conservative. In order to change them, firstly, time is required, and secondly, very serious and very intensive propaganda work. Roughly speaking, one should not only prohibit dueling, but also explain why this is not good, but bad.



And with this, the opponents of the dissemination of information have the most serious problems.



Because the current copyright system, formed under the pressure not of common sense, but of the greed of copyright holders, is becoming more and more ugly. And we smoothly move on to the last, fourth question:



Question Four: What are the prospects for not network piracy, but network writing as such in the aspect of copyright?



And here again there can be no definite answer, but only my opinion. In my opinion - not very good.



Because today's freemen, when network authors do what they want and are completely free to express themselves, will not last long.



Yes, until they pay attention to us. But we are not interested in anyone solely because there is little money, and a small audience. Sooner or later, this situation will change, and the owners of sites where authors post products today will begin to grunt on the issue of compliance with copyrights in the same way as they do today with paper publishers.



And what is being done in paper publishing houses - recently, at the forum "Author.Tudey" the writer Alexander Rudazov, published in the Alpha-book publishing house, said:

Censorship is not happy. Okay, the usual cutting out obscene vocabulary right up to the ban on the word "ass." I’ve gotten used to it for a long time, it’s familiar. The ban on quoting is much worse. No work can be quoted whose author died less than seventy years ago.



Previously, I had already come across this - for example, the epigraphs to The Battle of the Hordes and Dawn Over the Abyss were banned. There are lines from Theogony and Abul al-Atahia. Yes, it was written hundreds of years ago, but translations are much more recent. And it was impossible to quote them. I then got out, finding the originals in Greek and Arabic on the Internet, drove these passages through a Google translator and wrote my own texts on this content.



But this time this is impossible. I quote Chukovsky, Mikhalkov, some Soviet and modern songs there - and not just for fun, this has an important plot element. Alas, I completely forgot about this mandatory rule of the publishing house when I wrote. And now we need to cut it all out. Will have to cut. I would prefer that the book does not come out on paper at all than with such truncations, but it’s too late, it’s already in work, it’s impossible to turn back.



Sorry, damn sorry. Direct universal sadness.



Perhaps the next book I will not publish on paper at all.

Then we say goodbye. Next time we will talk about the degrees of freedom in the implementation of the project “Handicraft of human souls with the Internet”.