Dogpile the luddite!

[chaotic_nipple]

According to the current Vice President of the Science fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, authors who put their work online for free are "Webscabs" who are stealing food from the mouths of the children of those writers who don't chose to "give away their work".

I remember at DragonCon a few years ago, there was a panel on the "Future of Ebooks", and right after John Ringo gave a spiel about how every book that was put up for download on the Baen Free Library sold more paper copies afterwards, one of the other writers on the panel made the same argument. John's face went through such amazing contortions, I wish I'd had a video camera...

Comments

[dracphelan.livejournal.com]

I never understand this attitude. No matter what numbers are presented, these idiots can't understand the free books are advertising. They have the attitude that the people who are reading for free would have bought the book if it was not free. This is just not true, especially with new authors and/or series. I call it the RIAA syndrome.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

Indeed. An enormous amount of the free stuff on the internet is not in fact worth paying money for.

All of the Harry Potter fanfiction in the world has not hurt J.K. Rowling's sales in the least...

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

One _could_ argue that the poor quality of that fan-fic hurts her reputation, and therefore costs her sales. Personally I'm inclined to dismiss such arguments, though.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

Well, yes, one *could* make any number of absurd arguments, but it seems like they'd be a waste of time...