Author Tess Gerritsen looks at book piracy.
From her post...
Over on Galleycat, it’s Piracy Week, which coincidentally matches exactly what I wanted to blog about. We’re both addressing this topic because of last week’s Publishers Weekly article about e-piracy, in which publishing losses from illegal downloads are estimated to be three billion dollars. Of the titles they tracked, the average number of illegal downloads was 13,000.
I confess to being a voice of doom on this topic. A good friend of mine is a legendary singer/songwriter, a man who wrote one of the defining songs of our generation. He made a fortune in the music business and is still very much in demand on the concert circuit, but he says that with rampant illegal downloading of tunes, there’s no way he would be able to achieve that success today. He’s already a big name, so he can make a good living playing live concerts. But these days, if you aren’t already a big name, the only real money in music is if you sell your tune for advertising jingles or write theme music for TV. “I feel sorry for truly talented young musicians,” he says. “No one will be able to do what I did thirty years ago Piracy has destroyed the industry.”
And that, I fear, is what lies ahead for writers.
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