Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Bertagna  Hi Mark,
It is wrong and it's pretty widespread (if that's any comfort). There was a big discussion about this a while ago on the Achuka children's book website. An author threatened legal action to Achuka and the upshot was a big debate and lot of bad online publicity for the author. So there are big risks in complaining.
I thought hard about it and eventually was persuaded by Darren Shan's argument that the way to look at it is as a kind of free publicity. If someone thinks your book is worth selling on ebay then it's a compliment. Darren thinks it has definitely worked in his favour.
There are plenty of good reasons for you not agreeing! But the reality is, to be honest, that publishers see it this way too, so it's a lone, brave author that takes a stand. I also don't mean to be cynical - and I would far rather people paid me for the book I've spent several years writing - but I think if there are a handful of copies on ebay then Darren is right, it can be a positive thing. People are seeing the cover of your book at the very least and a bidding war might make the bid losers (and others) seek out your book. I would be worried if there were too many copies on ebay though.
What I find much more pernicious and worrying is those Amazon sellers - who had my new book (£10) on sale days after it was published - at £1. How is this possible?! Neither Amazon nor its sellers responded to complaints other than with a 'suggestion' that unhappy authors can have their books removed altogether from the Amazon site. This stunned me until I read a report that said Amazon makes a much bigger profit from its sellers than from its own hugely discounted fiction sales.
It's a murky old business. There's an entire industry making piles more money out of books than the authors ever do. It feels all wrong. Makes me want to weep. 
Didn't mean to depress you even more! Just trying to find a positive slant on the murky stuff..... |
I follow almost exactly the same lines along a music-industry approach.
I am studying Sound Engineering at university and whilst not (currently) an artist myself, it annoys me that 90% of people I know pay for 10% of the music they own. That means that an awful lot of people download most of their music without a second thought for those who wrote it, those who performed it, those who recorded it, etc, etc...
Of course, in the music industries case they take the opposite stance and are aggressive as they can be. Which has either
(a) No effect whatsoever. (I don't know anyone who has stopped downloading music illegally)
or
(b) Annoys everyone who likes music. (I know that as a legitimate music purchaser: 98%+ of my music is legal, I get very annoyed by DRM, copy-protection and all manner of junk that the music industry come up with)
In some ways, Mark, you could consider yourself lucky!
I just checked ebay and didn't find anything untoward, by the way. Although search for DVDs and CDs (especially hard to find originals) and you'll be lucky not to find a few dodgy ones.
Anyway, what I'm really trying to say in all this, is that all of the media industries are suffering in some way but all have much to gain in the digital one-world 21st century economy.
And I feel your pain.
Keep up the good work.
I sent a message to you (Mark) via your publisher contact on your website (how I found this site) so hopefully that will get to you. Anyway, to explain who I am:- I'm Dan the sound engineer from Spring Harvest minehead in the skyline, I got Imperial Spy signed by you. Loved it!
sb1