On Torrents

Time was, torrents meant those wild, voluminous streams of water overseen by the Norse god Aegir. But the modern world complicates everything. These days we're into murkier waters, and people talking about torrents are mostly referring to illegal downloads of copyright material.

Now that e-books are gaining ground piracy is on the rise, and it's threatening the publishing industry like never before. I believe this could devastate authors and effectively silence some of our most interesting voices.

This is our culture. The collective thoughts of an age are at stake here. Can we afford to lose that?

Publishers are not greedy, bloodsucking parasites who squeeze every last penny out of authors whilst they play sudoku and have pedicures.

They're not. Publishers actually add a lot of hidden value to our literature.

What has this got to do with piracy? Well, when you pirate a book you take away the publisher's funds for doing what they do, and for investing in new talent. So the argument that they're making obscene profits and putting nothing back just doesn't wash.

On Warpcore SF I've reviewed quite a few self-published novels in the past. I don't cover them any more, but the experience taught me two lessons:

1. Good publishers make a very noticeable difference to the quality of the finished work.
2. Self-published books don't sell.

In detail

I once attended a talk by Eleanor Goymer, Head of UK Rights for HarperCollins, on the inner workings of the publishing industry. I didn't think there was enough to fill a half-hour slot, but in the end she talked for two hours about what they do without needing to waffle at all. There's more to it than many realise.

Most obvious is the proofreading. Spellcheck is not a good substitute for this, and when a book is full of typos and bad grammar it really interrupts the flow of the narrative.

Then there's editing. A great book is often the work of a writer and a fantastic editor, or even a team of them, because it often takes someone else to point out where cuts need to be made or things added. Authors are too close to their babies to see them objectively.

There's also artwork, translation, blurb-writing, and layout. They're small things, but it all adds up. These are all things self-published authors have to arrange instead of concentrating on new stories. The same applies to marketing. Authors already spend a lot of time on marketing, but if they had to do the whole thing alone they'd either fade into obscurity or seriously reduce their output. If you think word of mouth is any substitute, consider this list of little-known, self-published and independently-published books. How many have you heard of?

Publishers also work on legal matters, contracts, rights sales, production, arranging distribution, and a host of other business activities. Although it has no direct impact on the books, all of this frees up writers to do what they do best.

Diversity

So perhaps you don't care about typos, and you've decided you'll put up with poor editing. If the style and presentation don't matter to you, what about the message itself?

Publishing operates on very low margins, and publishers will often take a gamble on new authors, not knowing whether their investment will pay off. If everybody downloads illegal copies these margins will get even tighter. Publishers will be less inclined to take risks on radical new writing and exciting new cross-genre fusions. Shelves will be full of homogeneous, populist books, safe and unadventurous. This has already happened in the film and music industries, where piracy has had more time to take root. Do we really want Pop Idol for books?

Authors

Most authors get paid very little, although it's hard to quantify this because you have to ask who you're going to count in your statistics. Anyone who writes full-time? Or anyone who has a book out, even if it's a self-published edition that sells less than 50 copies? Even Terry Pratchett didn't give up his day job until 1987, when Mort came out. So if your image of writers is of people so rich they don't have to watch every penny, forget it. Many of them have to fit their writing around day jobs and part-time employment, particularly early on in their careers. Piracy means they earn less money, which means they have to do other kinds of work to make up the difference. Something's got to give, and it'll either be the quality or the length of their novels. Either way, it's the readers who will suffer.

Don't take my word for it, though. Shiloh Walker has written about the effect of torrents on her output.

Author Brenna Lyons has more to say on the subject, as do Paul Cornell, Saundra Mitchell and Lilith Saintcrow.