“Nobody should pay for art.”

doctorbluesmanreturns:

emeralddodge:

emeralddodge:

Hi, hello, my name is Emerald, and I’m an author. As in, I write books and sell them. Welcome to my TED talk.

Every once in a while, some Creature of Tumblr gets on their soapbox and says that pirating copyrighted books is a-okay because “nobody should pay for art.” 

This tells me a few things about them: first, they’re a terrible person who not only is okay with theft, but they don’t even have the guts to admit it, and second, they have no clue how much work and money goes into writing a book.

“But but! Authors just write and submit their book to Amazon! It’s not expensive!”

Here’s a brief schedule of my professional expenses:

Cover: $400 (and that’s the low end for non-premade covers)

Mailing list subscription: $45/month

Editing: About $2000/book

Proofreading: $300 (this is often a different person than the editor)

Workshop subscription: $9/month

Formatting software: $250

Writing computer purchased so I could use formatting software: $1000

Website: $50/month

Costs for print-on-demand: $50 for each book

Buy-in amount for promotional giveaways: $50-$100 a month

Facebook ads: $10-$20 a day/campaign

Key promos like ENT and Robin Reads: $50-$100 each

ISBNs: ~$300/bundle

BookBoast: $10/month

BookFunnel: $15/month

Instafreebie: $20/month

And those are just the expenses I can think of off the top of my head. This isn’t counting what my buy-in expenses were for the boxed set. That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

A crapload of money goes into each title–and no, I’m not rolling in the dough. I saved up and budgeted so I could launch my career, and like most authors, I don’t have a lot to show for it at the moment. 

My novels are not ~art~, they’re products of my time, energy, and resources, and if you’re going to use my products, I deserve to be compensated.

Pay for your books. 

I’ve received some feedback on this post, some of which is to the tune of, “Well, what about [famous author]’s books? It’s okay if I pirate their books because they’re rich enough.”

My reply to that?

Did I stutter? Pay for your books.

Also, do you actually think the full $20-or-however-much-it-costs goes into an author’s pocket? How do you think the cashier at Barnes & Noble gets paid? The artist who designed the cover? The printing company who actually bound the damn thing? The editor? The 22-year-old at the publisher reading slush? 

PAY FOR YOUR FREAKING BOOKS.

Honestly, if you absolutely can’t pay for a book, LIBRARIES EXIST AND MOST PLACES YOU EITHER RENEW YOUR LIBRARY CARD YEARLY OR PAY FOR IT ONCE AND DONE. 

Piracy is NEVER the answer unless the question is “what should I never do?”