Three thimgs:

1. I prefer CC-rights, gradable to include spreading of digital copies or whatever the *author* wants. And though it may be right that authors are losing money, *how* much money is each loosing? Bestseller XX losing $50.000 out of an income of $20 mil is hardly worth crying over. YY losing $2000 out of 10.000 is not good. Don’t difuse the issue by trying to create a RIAA of writers - text has origin, of course, but there is a difference between types of text: Slogans, single poems, collections of poetry, short stories out of context, short story collections, novels, serialized novels, essays, essays in context… etc. And where some types of text could lose out to just one reading, other types could spike interest or be a call for more text or an ouvre. Don’t be square, be fair - to content producers as well as *illicit readers*

2. I have downloaded many digital books throughout the years - copies of retail-versions or home-scans. Most were books that would never find their way to my country, and I would never be able to hold or smell them, much less get a feel for their level or tone.

An excursion into 5-30 pages of a digital copy (I do despise reading a booktext on a computer screen) and I can decide if I want to own this book. This has saved me the purchase of many a book. Being able to sniff at it beforehand. Has also introduced me to authors I had never heard of.

3. The publishing business, be it for authors or translators, is a shitty mess of greed and abuse on various levels - totally unnecessary, if we had backing. But publishers tend to regard newcomers as people hungry for exposure, and subsequently treat them as such - rather than as producers of content, equal to any plastics manufacturer or grain grower or plumber or any other kind of job resulting in a physical product.

Being a writer and translator myself I sympathise with collegues getting good contracts and have their (our) rights protected. But I would much prefer that people thought about this really really well, before deciding on joining any kind of “global rights union”. Not that defence of rights is a bad thing - but just think about how difficult it would be to go back. In such a union rights of authorship might on paper belon to the authors, but the whole idea of ownership would be sold to 1 billion people and the law, creating even more criminals in the process.

It is a well known fact today that people download stuff, which other people upload and make vailable on the net. People download becaus it is a natural process to want that which is free. Fighting against this natural urge makes criminals, not richer authors.

The public should not treat authors fairly, or more fairly than they already do. The public - in old days called the mass or the masses - is not comprised of individuals. It is a MASS. Or several MASSES, depending on topic, culture, nation borders, analog or digital location etc. Thus appealing to the mass is like swatting the swarm of bees to hit one.

Thimk instead. Don’t appeal. Open doors to collaborations, incite people, make them want and desire and crave, and make them work for it.

The same goes for the publishers: Make them want your work. By not being submissive.

Or publish yourself. The advertising budget for that is easily what is saved by not going through ordinary channels. Refuse to publish full digital works, or have them be different from the printed matter and vice versa. If digital works start to circulate, endorse them or denounce them as “bootlegs”. Or find a way to sign one copy and then re-circulate it. Make correspondences between digital files and analog, never make them alike. Publish digital chapters. Make different endings, conclusions, appendixes. Diffuse the issue of ownership, and make sure you as author know more than anyone about what’s out there.

donøt give up. Consumers are not enemies. They are you, with more or less the same craving for variation and self control over consumption. Go with the flow.

Flow with the flow. And take a break now and again to assess the situation.

Thimk.

oh, yes, I mean what I say: The public as MASS - that is me looking at other people, not an individual looking at himself as part of a mass - should not be concerned with me. They should be concerned with getting the best deal *for their interest in the matter*!

So, I as content provider must make it interesting for them - to *not* cheat me out of pay for my hours invested.

RH