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 $20-or-however-much-it-costs goes into an author’s pocket? How do you think the cashier at Barnes & Noble gets paid? The artist who designed the cover? The printing company who actually bound the damn thing? The editor? The 22-year-old at the publisher reading slush?
PAY FOR YOUR FREAKING BOOKS.
Honestly, if you absolutely can’t pay for a book, LIBRARIES EXIST AND MOST PLACES YOU EITHER RENEW YOUR LIBRARY CARD YEARLY OR PAY FOR IT ONCE AND DONE.
Piracy is NEVER the answer unless the question is “what should I never do?”
Tag: libraries
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Can we figure out a way to do this to student loan debt.
I would read Ayn Rand to pay down my student loans
Our library ran the expenses and realized we spent about 3,000$ MORE than what we got back in trying to collect late fees. So? We dropped them completely. No late fees. Period.
If you keep a book, it auto renews two times. Then it comes up as overdue. If your overdue items exceed a certain amount, your account freezes. You can’t use any of the local libraries anymore until you return the items or claim them lost and pay for them. If someone else is waiting for the book, you can’t renew. Its that simple.
And guess what. Not only did we save money, but we /got more materials back/. More materials were turned in than declared lost as compared to before. There was no stigma to it. If you had already paid for the item, the money was credited back to you.
Because the people late fees actually affected were children and elderly adults – people unable to regularly get to the library. And the stigma of late items was dropped. Attitude and mindset are important.
we still have no late fees. And we are considered to be one of the top public systems in our state. People from out of state PAY to get library cards for a year because our online Overdrive system is amazing, and we have a ton of partnerships and interlibrary loan systems in place. AND we suffer less losses of both materials and patrons due to our “no late fee” policy.
Serve your public. Don’t belittle them.
This is perfect. This is absolutely perfect
Girls don’t want boys. Girls want to glide down ladders in their own private library while their red cloak flutters behind them, owning swords and many chocolates, with fast WiFi at all times.
Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Wales. It was founded in 1894 by former Prime Minister William Gladstone and built by John Douglas in the late 1890s-early 1900s.
Follow us on Instagram too: https://www.instagram.com/yup.that.exists
Can we figure out a way to do this to student loan debt.
I would read Ayn Rand to pay down my student loans
Our library ran the expenses and realized we spent about 3,000$ MORE than what we got back in trying to collect late fees. So? We dropped them completely. No late fees. Period.
If you keep a book, it auto renews two times. Then it comes up as overdue. If your overdue items exceed a certain amount, your account freezes. You can’t use any of the local libraries anymore until you return the items or claim them lost and pay for them. If someone else is waiting for the book, you can’t renew. Its that simple.
And guess what. Not only did we save money, but we /got more materials back/. More materials were turned in than declared lost as compared to before. There was no stigma to it. If you had already paid for the item, the money was credited back to you.
Because the people late fees actually affected were children and elderly adults – people unable to regularly get to the library. And the stigma of late items was dropped. Attitude and mindset are important.
we still have no late fees. And we are considered to be one of the top public systems in our state. People from out of state PAY to get library cards for a year because our online Overdrive system is amazing, and we have a ton of partnerships and interlibrary loan systems in place. AND we suffer less losses of both materials and patrons due to our “no late fee” policy.
Serve your public. Don’t belittle them.
Wide Spread Interests 