Lilith Saintcrow

I’m on the last push of revisions today, so this will be short. No, I’m not disappointed in the revisions. It’s something else.

I’ve found out that a fan I know (by name, even) has been uploading my work to a file-stealing site. (It’s not file-”sharing”. It’s file-STEALING, dammit.) It’s disappointing and hurtful to see a fan who claims to love my work uploading it to sites where people can steal it. It’s going to be awful hard to pay the rent if people continue stealing this way. Already this weekend I spent a lot of time (that I could have been using to write those books) on demanding that these sites take my copyrighted work down. It was sobering, disappointing, and hurtful to see this fan’s very unique “handle” used again on a file-stealing site, as the person who uploaded my work to be stolen.

I work very hard to make these stories. The publishers work very hard to bring them to people. When they’re stolen and torrented it makes it harder for both me and the publisher, but mostly me. The publisher, after all, is a huge company with profits. I’m a mom with kids to feed and a non-infinite bank account. Congress isn’t going to be financing a million-dollar bonus for me personally anytime soon, you know.

Comments are disabled on this post^[1] because I don’t want to hear a bunch of people defending file-stealing, and because I don’t want to hear a rant against DRM and how it makes it harder for “honest” people. Look, some people are assholes, and that’s why we have police, DRM, anti-theft devices, etc., etc. If human nature were different, we wouldn’t need these things. DRM isn’t perfect, true. But it’s what we’ve got right now to try and deter people from being assholes. Sure it gets cracked almost as soon as it’s created. But there’s no other choice right at this moment to try and protect artists, because some people–even people who claim to be “fans”–are going to be assholes and steal things.

It’s sad and disappointing. But it’s the way it is.

I’ve got to get some revisions done. See you guys in a bit.

[1] ETA: Comments are also locked because I will not abide speculation as to identity. Compounding the situation by holding up this person’s identity is not what I’m interested in. So do not ask, I will not answer, and comments remain closed. Thank you. And to those of you who have expressed support, thank you as well. I appreciate it more than I can say.

I’ve fallen into the rhythm of revision. It really doesn’t take that long to do when you can bring all your faculties to bear on a particular book. It’s like watching the jumprope on the playground, catching its beat so you can hop in. Which is about the only part of playing with other kids I ever liked, in school.

Anyway, we’re fifty pages or so into the second YA; second-draft revisions are going well. I halted last night just at the place where I had to make a significant architectural change. It was a good decision to stop there, because I was making various nasty notes to myself about how the story sucked and I hated the secondary characters and should kill them in various gruesomely interesting ways. This is how I know it’s time to step away from the manuscript.

Both the little ones are sniffling and coughing. Colds go through our house like wildfire. I keep telling myself it means they will have nice strong immune systems. This does not comfort me as much when I wake up with body aches and a husky voice. I am pouring down the fluids and taking my vities. (Vitamin C, CoQ10 and L-Lysine might not work, but they make me feel better. And the B vities DO work, I swear.) Since I have a writer’s mixer on March 7–at Cover to Cover Books, we’re going to play Ask The Working Writer–I can’t afford to lose my voice or be cranky at the end of the week. *crosses fingers* (You can RSVP at Facebook or MySpace. Technology, she is wonderful.)

The thing that is making me crankier than the cold this morning is the flood of torrenting. This career is hard work, and people stealing ebooks and torrenting them just makes me…well, I don’t want to go off into a long ramble of cusswords and spleen. I’m glad people like my work. I’m not so glad that people want to steal it. And when I’m spending time demanding websites take those torrents down, I’m not writing. Which means fans don’t get the books as quickly.

This really cheeses my buns. Torrenting ebooks is not freeing information or sticking it to the Man, or whatever people like to tell themselves. It’s stealing. That’s the only word that applies. Naturally I don’t like it when my work is stolen. And don’t even tell me “they’ll buy it if they like it” or “it’s publicity” or “people wouldn’t take YOUR work unless it’s free so why are you bitching?” All those arguments are red herrings, and insulting besides. So don’t go there.

Anyway. I’m thinking I can knock out another fifty pages revised and get total wordcount up by a few K. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Wish me luck and choco.

Plenty more stuff about Roy Blount’s op-ed in the New York Times concerning Kindle’s Text-To-Speech function. (My initial take on it was yesterday.) I’m just going to point you at Wil Wheaton, who got together links to Scalzi, Gaiman, and Doctorow’s responses. Doctorow’s in particular seemed to go over the line into enraged. YMMV.

I am left wondering if these guys read the same op-ed I did. I saw it as Blunt saying: “We need to be vigilant about our rights here.” I really wonder if others read stuff about the piece elsewhere on the Net that colored their response to it, calling Blount a big meanie etc. etc., and getting All Het Up.

One thing Scalzi said was that he pitied the person who thought TTS was a replacement for audiobooks or someone reading work aloud, implying that therefore this tech wouldn’t take off and be a threat. Look, that’s not the point. I understand ebooks and am glad my work is accessible that way, but I don’t read them. (This is purely personal preference, here.) I prefer paper and I pity people who don’t have the sensual experience of a book in their hands. I can still insist that I get my royalties from ebooks and that torrenting is stealing.

It doesn’t matter that a computer reading it isn’t the same experience as a human reading it. The point is that the technology is there and someone is going to try to figure out how to make it workable to steal. Just like people figured out how to make ebooks easy and workable to steal. This is just human nature, folks. Someone is going to do it; plus, this is a new way to distribute and spread author’s works, we need to look at those rights and get them codified in contracts JUST LIKE AUDIOBOOKS AND EBOOKS. It’s that simple. I don’t see anything wrong with saying so, or with Blount saying so from his platform as president of the Author’s Guild. I like AG and am a dues-paying member because I think it’s valuable for the legal help alone, though God knows I don’t want to ever have to use that. So, I disagree. Not vehemently or anything, but I really totally disagree with the points being made so far in that corner of the Interwebs.

Anyway, that’s probably my last word on the whole issue, since it seems emotions are getting involved and that means nastiness can’t be far behind. Besides, I’m spitting distance from finishing this short story, and I want it done and out of the way early so I can fix the second YA book.

It’s snowing here, off and on–it’s too warm to stick and we’re getting spatters of desultory hail too. It’s good writing weather. Hell, any weather is good writing weather. Especially when you’re writing an antihero half-vampire in suburbia.

I do love my job.

Let’s talk, you and me. Let’s talk about money.

I like money. It makes it possible for me to feed my children and my book habit. I work damn hard every day for the money I get. Right now I’m on a jag of seven-day workweeks getting stuff done. I’m glad to have the work. I’m glad to have earned the work by being a professional.

But there’s something I’m having trouble with this morning. It’s the assorted silly and ugly responses to Roy Blount’s (president of the Author’s Guild) op-ed piece in the New York Times–the one where he says quite reasonably, “But people who want to keep on doing creative things for a living must be duly vigilant about any new means of transmitting their work.”

He’s talking about the Kindle 2′s voice capability. And in the blogsphere this morning I’ve come across many responses, most disagreeing with him for various specious reasons. These responses are mostly people who do not make their living from writing. This issue is bound up, with me, with the issue of DRM and piracy and a lot of others.

There is this persistent baseline assumption hanging around that artists don’t deserve to get paid because what they provide is a luxury. (It’s very Puritan of us.) This unconscious line of thinking says, “Why should artists bitch if I want to get their work for free? There’s lots of people willing to work for free–the Internet is awash with free fiction, free art, free free free and all for me!”

Yeah, and as Harlan Ellison obliquely noted in his famous rant, you get what you effing pay for. And there are a lot of people wanting writers to work for nothing.

I am cranky this morning, so I can boil my response down to two words. F!ck that.

I am not saying that everyone who calls themselves an artist deserves a mansion. Far from. Traditional publishing provides a popular product because of quality control. The gatekeepers and wickets an author has to go through to get traditionally published are just that: quality control, because a publisher is laying out cold hard cash to produce the books on paper. (This ties in with that huge post on epublishing I’m still planning.) Good e-presses have quality control as well, and guess what? Their books cost more because of that quality control. People pay more for professionally-produced audiobooks and music because of quality control. There are people selling podcasts–not just handing them out for free–and that money goes toward quality control–better tech to capture the voice, better stories, more in-depth reporting, etc., etc. (Publicity podcasts for free are a different animal. Don’t use them as a red herring.)

Blount’s point here is that authors deserve to get paid when there is a new means of transmitting their work. Those rights need to be guarded. Not just because we have to eat like the rest of you–but because YOU want quality fiction. Don’t you?

We could be nice and sweet and let our work get taken for free, a chunk at a time. And starve to death. Then, no more quality fiction.

Don’t tell me that the wave of the future is all free stuff. (To begin with, the Internet is not ubiquitous yet. It just feels that way to anyone in it.) Look, I can produce a better product when I take more care with it. That’s just the way it is. When I am properly paid for the care I take–when it’s possible (even if hard work) for me to feed my kids on what I make from writing–I don’t have to spend eight to ten hours at the office then come home and scrape up energy to write. I can spend those eight hours writing. (And then usually another three or four writing too, but that’s another blog post.)

But the unspoken assumption in a lot of people saying that the Author’s Guild is greedy, or that DRM didn’t work for the music industry so it won’t work for publishing, or throwing any number of red herrings up to say professional writers shouldn’t get paid for their work–which is essentially what I’m seeing all over the place–is that writers do not DESERVE fair pay for their effort, because what they produce isn’t important.

If it isn’t important, why should we produce it at all? Do you really want to wake up one day and have nothing but shoddy fanfic[1] for free on the internet in the place of books, quality ebooks, and quality fiction? Yes, you and I know it’s not going to happen. People love their books and music too much.

But do not expect those of us who write or play–those of us who produce these things you enjoy–to act as if it’s happened, or to live on air. We are not effing epiphytes. Don’t expect us to roll over and play dead when there’s a new means of transmitting our work and there’s a question of rights to it. Naturally a lot of people want shit for free. That’s human nature. It’s also human nature to say, “I spent a lot of time and effort on this shit, pay me before you use it.” That’s what an economy IS, tension between those two points.

The trouble is the persistent assumption that artists don’t deserve to be paid at all. That basic assumption is all bound up in the myth of the suffering artist–that you have to be a self-destructive, penniless, alcoholic jerk to create Great Arte that will sell for millions after you die in a garret. Screw that. I want to be a well-rounded decent human being and use my life doing the things I love, creating what I believe I was meant to create and making a reasonable living from it.

Slight side note here: Don’t even start with the “Well, everyone wants to do that–and nobody would do the sh!t jobs if we all had the means to be Artists and Do What We Love.” This is not true. This profession, like any other, depends on professionalism and hard work. There are a lot of Speshul Snowflakes who expect to be paid for essentially producing nothing, which is NOT what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the writer who consistently produces sellable product, and gets through those quality control checks publishing has evolved. The proportion of “writers” willing to work hard enough to eventually make it is small. The means to do what you love comes with hard work and discipline. This is universal. So don’t say I’m advocating that every Speshul Snowflake get a stipend. Because I’m not.

I’ve achieved a certain small amount of success doing the thing I love, and of COURSE I’m going to want to continue to be paid for the work and effort I put into it. Sure, tomorrow sales could tank and the world could decide I’m a bad writer (I already know I’m not a writer for everyone) and I may have to go back to flipping burgers, fixing plumbing, delivering pizza, doing insurance analysis, something.

But that is going to be because you, dear Reader, don’t want me anymore. I don’t want it to be because you want me, but I can’t make a living because some asshole decides he has a god-given right to steal and torrent my work, or because Amazon decides I don’t get a slice of those (insert rights here) rights just because THEY want all the money, world without end, amen. It’s natural for huge corporations to have to be forced to give up any cash at all, whether to their workers or what-have-you.

Naturally I am going to support the Author’s Guild and argue that I deserve to be paid for my work. That’s why I’ve worked so damn hard to get through those quality control wickets and be a goddamn professional.

People in our culture tend to be shocked and offended when artists want to get paid, because it strikes right at the heart of the Puritan assumption that all art is luxury and suspect, and therefore Not Worth Anything. (Except gloating over in the middle of the night.) Add in the human propensity to want things for free, and you have a cocktail of assumptions swirling around, and an overly-strong emotional response when those assumptions are challenged.

I used to think that I could argue with people over this issue and that they would eventually admit that I deserved to make a living too, if I was producing a quality product. (Yes, I know products and businesses fail all the time. But these people are asking me to fail at making a living because they don’t want to pay for something they use, not because they don’t want the item in the first place.) Now I am to the point of just shrugging my shoulders and saying, “Of course you want shit for free. That’s human nature. But don’t expect me to roll over and give it, and don’t expect me to be quiet about it when you want me to give up my rights–they’re called rights for a REASON, you know–or when you expect me to work and produce these things you want for free when I’ve got rent to pay and kids to feed and books to buy.”

I think it’s incumbent upon artists to be businesspeople too. And expecting shit for free is not how business is conducted.

I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me, and they will talk about how I’m shortsighted and how electronic rights are meant to be free or are going to be free anyway in the future so why bother fighting now, or how the Kindle’s voice capability is just for the reader and not for the writer, and on and on. But all I keep hearing under all that is the ugly assumption that writers and artists are assholes for expecting to get paid for work that’s gone through the quality control wickets. And while it might be a widespread assumption in our still-very-Puritan culture, I don’t have a lot of patience with that dreck anymore.

Especially not today, when I woke up cranky.

Over and out.

[1] I like fanfic and think it’s great practice for beginning writers, as well as a stage each writer goes through. But the overwhelming percentage of fanfic I’ve ever seen is, well, only fanfic-quality. This isn’t a bad thing–but do you want this to be the only fiction you have access to? Do you?