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I thought wow! when I read this article. Paul Coehlo's book sales soared when he put his work online in Russia - a country notorious for piracy. Maybe Orson can consider putting some of his work online!
At the Digital Life Conference in Munich, Paulo Coehlo made the unconventional argument that sharing ebooks for free actually helps authors. For example, he cited that sales of "The Alchemist" in Russia soared from 1,000 copies sold to 100,000 (then 1 million) after the Russian translation was released online.
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Hello Theronsian. Card has actually made this argument himself, so I don't know how unconventional it actually is. However, until publisher's policies and copyright law changes, my understanding is that Card must still vigorously defend his copyrights from piracy, or risk losing publication rights or the support of his publisher. If I understand correctly, most publishers believe that free and unconstrained availability of their products online would hurt their profits. Therefore, if I'm such a publisher and you're a writer in my stable who condones unauthorized downloading of your own work, you become a liability, and I'm more likely to drop you.
Also, anything could happen with a file downloaded from unofficial venues. The download could conceivably include viruses or spyware; as an author, you wouldn't want people to associate you with that. People could also conceivably change your work, and you'd have no control over that. For instance, someone might think it funny to add crude pornographic scenes to, say, books about women of the Old Testament written by a prolific Mormon author. So it makes sense that if you're going to condone the downloading of your work, it should be through some controlled official site. (Like how Baen has lots of eBooks available for free download.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:For instance, someone might think it funny to add crude pornographic scenes to, say, books about women of the Old Testament written by a prolific Mormon author.
Wow... Uh, that was weirdly specific. Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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I was just amazed at how the free availability of the work drove sales so dramatically. It seems like Russians are starved for good content.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Jan 2008
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There's no worry about losing publication rights. Publishers can, of course, take issue with whatever they want, and I have no idea how his particular publisher would react.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I would say that if something of Card's were published on the internet with his implied approval, that counts as "first/initial internet publishing" or some such, making it impossible for him to sell his first internet publishing rights to someone else. Kind of like how publishing your manuscript on the internet makes it impossible for you to sell a publisher "first North American publication rights." Is my understanding wrong?
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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What counts as first publishing is pretty much anything the publisher decides is first publishing. Now, if he approved an internet publication, it would be better for avoiding legal battles to be more explicit about what rights were being transferred.
Some authors regularly publish (informally, and without publicity) nearly-finished drafts on their websites, yet sell first North American publication rights.
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