The most interesting thing that has happened to writing in the last couple of decades is the so-called "net literature".
A few years ago, writers had the opportunity to earn money through literary work without the mediation of publishers, working directly with the reader. I talked about this a little in the material "«.
On this occasion, one can only repeat after the son of a Turkish citizen: "An idiot's dream came true."
Well, communism has arrived. No more humiliating yourself in front of a publishing house, begging for a publication. You don't have to wait months or even years for your book to be released. No need to 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", to simplify or shorten the text.
Finally, it became possible to work with your readers directly - face to face. Honestly and directly look them in the eye, invitingly shaking a cap with change.
Finally, everything is fair: you, your books and your greedy readers.
True, I quickly 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 full bosom of others.
When working with a publishing house, the writer had few worries - to write a text that the publishing house would need, and not to let the publishing house sit on its head, periodically seeking mutually beneficial terms of cooperation.
When working directly with the reader, it quickly became clear that you have to do everything yourself - and put down the necessary letters in “zhy-shy”, and steal pictures on the covers, and catch new readers somewhere. If you call a spade a spade, then you, the talented writer Imyarekov, become an individual entrepreneur or, in Russian, a handicraftsman. And what is wrong? A handicraftsman, as all readers of Ushakov's dictionary know, is "a person engaged in production at home for sale on the market, an artisan."
And since you have to do business not in the usual reality, but in the notorious "Internet computer network", now you are becoming not just an "engineer of human souls about fellows", but also a real Internet project. And you must implement this Internet project, and it is highly desirable - successfully. And your books, I apologize for the rude word, are not only hmm ... works of art, a product of human genius, but simply a product sold on the network.
And this duality of the new working conditions, this fusion of an ivory tower with a storehouse, this combination in one bottle of high mountain literary and low creaturely sales are not only the source of many lulz, but also force one way or another to solve many problems associated with managing this unexpected internet project.
Some of them, if there is interest, I will tell.
But the topic of the first article suggests itself - this is the topic piracy, which is faced by any author who is trying to earn literary work on the Web.
I must say right away that I perfectly understand all the toxicity and debatability of this topic. Therefore, I will try to be careful in the wording, despite the “aylyuli-let's go-stile” cultivated by me in the articles.
Question one: Does online piracy harm online book sales?
Alas, the answer is unequivocal - yes, it hurts.
With the “paper” edition of the book, the issue is still debatable - I did not come across convincing refutation of the argument that the audience buying “paper” and the audience downloading files on Flibust are practically non-overlapping audiences.
With online sales, it is pointless to deny the obvious - both pirates and authors selling their books are addressed to the same audience.
Moreover, there is a fairly well-reasoned opinion that it was the intensification of the fight against piracy that made the phenomenon of “professional online writers” possible. The flagship of electronic book sales, Litres, was a subsidized project for EKSMO for many years, and only after the tough anti-piracy law of 2015 did it become profitable.
There are different opinions about how much the share of illegal consumption has decreased (I came across figures that fell from 98% to 90% in the very first months, but I don’t know what they are based on), but the fact remains that the number of purchases of e-books since the second half of 2015 increased sharply.
So, the popular author Pavel Kornev somehow a schedule of sales of their books on Litres (in pieces), and there were no new products, only old editions. I think it's clear enough:
I will make a reservation that, of course, one should not reduce the growth of legal sales to anti-piracy activities. At least no less important role was played by the emergence of convenient services for online shopping and the ability to pay "in two clicks". But it would also be strange to deny his role - one Flibusta going underground sent crowds of thousands of computer-illiterate people towards legal stores.
Question two: Has the anti-piracy law solved the problem of book piracy?
Alas, the answer is no less unambiguous - no, I have not decided.
Well, yes, Flibusta is underground and its audience has dropped significantly. Well, yes, the sale of books in the process of writing / laying out made it possible to “bracket” the 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 display on Flibust harms, and quite strongly.
As an example, here is a sales chart for one very popular book on Avtor.Today:
Comments, I think, are unnecessary.
Thus, we can state that the fact that the book is pirated harms "long" sales. If we talk about the influence of this factor on project management, I note that the opinions of project managers are divided.
Many authors, in an effort 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 as a file are less likely to be pirated. On the other hand - this brings a fair amount of inconvenience to readers, which clearly 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 this and that. Although, most likely, the fact is that popular authors are spying on anyone, at least close the download, at least don’t close it.
On the other hand, with the decline of Flibusta, not everyone is pirated anymore, which gave rise to social stratification among the authors, and a new name-calling in numerous writers' meetings: “Yes, you are generally Elusive Joe!”.
A final note on this issue - displaying on Flibust harms sales, but does not cancel them. As already mentioned, a decreasing percentage of the audience goes to the pirates after the need to penetrate the library “through the back porch”. Good books are also sold when laid out on Flibust, and in quite marketable quantities - your humble servant in less than six months of being on Avtor.Today received an amount of more than 100 thousand rubles for the leisurely sale of the only paid volume "They go to battle ..." . This despite the fact that I'm far from a top author.
The third, fundamental question is 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 unequivocal answer, I can only state my own thoughts on this matter.
Moreover, contrary to custom, I will start from the end - first I will tell a guess, and then I will try to substantiate it.
The reason for pirate survivability is described in one phrase: Technological progress has pushed creativity and ethics against their foreheads.
And now a little more. Three important marks.
First: what happened? With the development of technological progress, the means of replicating information have become so simple and accessible that any, even the most illiterate person, can use them. Both in terms of replicating information, and in terms of distributing the copies created.
Second: how did it turn out? In particular, the fact that it is de facto impossible to maintain the exclusive right to distribute products created by creative people - musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc. Now everyone is his own printing house, and a recording studio, and a factory for the production of rolling copies of films.
Third: what made it worse? The fact that at about the same time the entertainment of people has become a well-established and powerful business industry with huge incomes that no one wants to lose. The remark about income concerns writers to the least extent, well, they do not determine the norms of copyright.
On the part of copyright holders, the main strategy of resistance to progress was chosen, which is also described in one phrase: “Everyone who uses masterpieces that were not obtained with the direct blessing of the creators (and their descendants) are thieves and scoundrels.”
But then the situation reached an impasse. Copyright defenders are increasingly blocking free distribution, consumers of copyright products, in full accordance with the saying "water will find a hole" invented new and more sophisticated methods of distribution.
A new question arises: why? Why do consumers behave so badly?
Why do they not heed the persuasion and continue to use illegally distributed copies? Manufacturers usually explain this by saying that people are inherently vicious and, if there is an opportunity to steal with impunity, they will certainly steal. Therefore, they must be beaten harder on the heads in order to keep them from this unseemly act.
Without completely denying this opinion, nevertheless, I note that the same technical progress has greatly facilitated, for example, outright theft. For example, instead of a traditional medieval shop, the goods in which were exhibited inaccessible to the buyer and guarded by a hefty owner with a club under the counter, we now have supermarkets where you can pick up whatever your heart desires. But, nevertheless, theft in supermarkets, although it has increased, has not at all acquired a mass character and, by and large, remains the lot of a relatively small group of outcasts.
Why? It's very simple: people consider shoplifting to be theft, and society itself, condemning theft as a phenomenon, in every possible way prevents its spread. But downloading a movie from the network or a file with a book from a pirated library is not considered theft by the en-mass society.
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: according to traditional ethics, the actions of copyright infringers are not theft.
Opponents of free distribution are not fighting people - they are grappling with an ethical system that is already many, many centuries old.
Within this ethic, selfless sharing is not a bad thing, but a good thing to do. If a person received something legally, and then without any selfish intent gave it to me, then he is not a thief, but a benefactor. And I'm not a thief, but just a lucky one.
Because sharing within traditional ethics is good.
It will be extremely difficult to convince people who grew up on the song “Share your smile, and it will return to you more than once”, and on the cartoon “Just Like That”.
If not impossible.
Because ethical systems are not formed “from a lantern”, as a rule, their postulates are laws derived by sweat and blood, the truth of which has been confirmed by the millennia of the life of this very society that observes them.
And this historical memory says that stealing is bad, because stealing threatens the stability of the existence of society. And altruism is good, because it is a very effective factor contributing to the survival of society. And that's why parents usually convince kids in the sandbox that it's a good idea to let Vanechka play with the car, even if it's 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 film on DVD with his own money that is of interest to me, then, after watching, spends his own time - translates it, inserts subtitles there and in the final uploads it for everyone, including me, and asks for nothing in return, - from the point of view of the layman is very similar to the altruist.
I fully admit the idea that, in fact, just an ethical norm is 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 without fail, and those who did not fulfill this condition pretty much dropped their social status in the eyes of others. Now this is no longer required. Perhaps the cultural altruism of online pirates is in fact, in a changed world, the same social atavism as blood feuds - I fully admit this option.
But the trouble is that ethical standards are extremely conservative. In order to change them, it takes, firstly, time, and secondly, very serious and very intensive propaganda work. Roughly speaking, it is necessary not only to ban dueling, but also to explain why it is not good, but bad.
And it is with this that 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 not of online piracy, but of online writing as such in terms of copyright?
And here again there can be no unambiguous answer, but only my opinion. In my opinion, not very good.
Because today's freedom, when network authors do what they want, and are completely free to express themselves, will not last long.
Yes, as long as they don't pay attention to us. But no one is interested in us solely because there is little money here, and a small audience. Sooner or later, this situation will change, and the owners of sites where authors post their products today will start to bang on the issue of copyright compliance, just as they do with paper publishers today.
And what is being done in paper publishing houses - recently at the Avtor.Today forum writer Alexander Rudazov, published by Alfa-kniga publishing house:
Censorship is not happy. Okay, the usual cutting out obscene vocabulary up to the ban on the word "ass". I have long been accustomed to this, it is familiar. A ban on quoting is much worse. You can not quote any work whose author died less than seventy years ago.
I have already encountered this before - for example, the epigraphs to the "Battle of the Hordes" and "Dawn over the Abyss" were banned. There are lines from Theogony and Abu-l-Atahiya. Yes, it was written hundreds of years ago, but the translations are much more recent. And it was impossible to quote them. I then got out by finding the originals in Greek and Arabic on the Internet, running these passages through Google translator and writing my own texts on this content.
But this time it's impossible. I quote Chukovsky, Mikhalkov, some Soviet and modern songs there - and not just for the sake of fun, an important plot element is tied to this. I, alas, completely forgot about this obligatory rule of the publishing house when I wrote. And now we need to cut it all out. Will have to cut. I would have preferred that the book did not come out on paper at all than with such truncations, but it's too late, it's already in the works, there's no turning back.
Disappointing, damn disappointing. Just universal sadness.
Perhaps I will not publish the next book on paper at all.
I beg your pardon. Next time we will talk about the degrees of freedom in the implementation of the project "Handicraft of human souls with the Internet."
Source: habr.com