Free? Not really...

The convention season is pretty much over and I'm in writing mode, which means I'm not leaving the house very often these days. And that means I'll be focusing on the "online" part of this column, scouting out some of the best online resources about books and authors (other than Fresh Fiction, of course!).

Lately I've found myself up against a darker side of books online, and that's the illegal file sharing and posting of books for downloading. There are legal free books online. Project Gutenberg offers thousands of books that are in the public domain -- mostly by dead authors who are no longer worried about how their careers progress. This is a wonderful resource for classics, and if you need to satisfy your Jane Austen urges when you can't get to a library or the bookstore, this is the place to go. Science fiction and fantasy publisher Baen Books offers the Baen Free Library, which offers free downloads of a good selection of their titles. Some publishers also offer free downloads of books for promotional purposes, as part of a marketing campaign for a book or author.

But what's distressing to me both as an author and as a reader is when people post the complete text of currently available, copyrighted novels for free download. That cheats authors, publishers and readers. First, the authors. Yes, authors do get paid an advance for their work, but what "advance" means is "advance against royalties." It's based on what the publisher thinks the book is likely to earn in royalties in the first year or so of publication, and the author then earns any royalties beyond that advance based on each copy of the book sold. If the book doesn't earn what the publisher expected it to, then the publisher isn't likely to offer that author another contract. The publisher is out that money paid to the author and offers that advance because it expects to receive that much money from sales of the book. Even though we think of publishers as big businesses, those big businesses employ people who work for their paychecks, and if the publisher isn't bringing in money, those people may lose their jobs.

How does this affect readers? When you buy a book, you're essentially casting a vote for that book with the publisher and with booksellers. Each sale is counted, so it's not like television, where you're only measured as a viewer if you're a ratings household. If people are illegally downloading the books you like instead of buying them, or if people are illegally posting books online so that thousands of others can download them, that means sales that aren't happening, and that means the publisher may not see that author, that series or that kind of book as worth publishing. Authors could lose their careers, series could be cut off without the author's planned resolution or genres may fall out of fashion with publishers (based on the books I've seen on these sites, if you like paranormal romance or urban fantasy, the popularity of those genres may be under-reported at the cash register).

This is not the same as getting a book from the library because with a library there's a physical copy that only one reader at a time can read. If lots of people want to read that book at the same time, they have to get on a waiting list. If the waiting list is long enough, the library has to order more copies of the book, which means more sales. If people don't want to wait for their turn on the list, they have to buy their own copy, which means more sales. If someone loves the book and wants a copy to keep after returning it to the library, that means more sales. One copy of a book at a library can really only be read by about twenty to thirty people a year. It's similar with a used bookstore -- one copy can only change hands a few times. But one digital copy of a book can be downloaded by thousands of people, and once they've downloaded it, they have it permanently. At just one of these file sharing sites, I saw that one of my books had been downloaded nearly 800 times in a very short space of time. At my career level, that's a big number of potential lost sales. While someone like J.K. Rowling won't starve if she loses a few thousand sales, newer authors and mid-list authors might not be able to afford to keep writing -- and that's if they can get contracts.

I beg those who love books not to patronize these sites, and definitely don't put books up for file sharing, and spread the word about this among your friends. There are plenty of legitimate e-book outlets where sales of electronic copies of books will benefit authors and publishers. The people who put all the hard work into producing books deserve to be paid for their work instead of having their work stolen.

Until next time ... Shanna

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Shanna Swendson writes "Fairy Tales for Modern Times" and is the author of the Enchanted, Inc. series about a Texan in New York City, a magical NYC. Visit her website or blog for more information.