Viewing profile — Zonulet

Based on the prose of the DroneXL piece, I think it would be more accurate to say that Claude adds its own angle.

I am an author, I'm published by one of the publishers involved, and I'm very happy that they're doing it.

I am an author in the middle of my career. I make my living on book sales. Personally I would prefer not to gamble my survival on this airy assumption that "people would figure it …

Why are you making the assumption that giving our books away for free doesn't affect our sales?

I think your maths is off. A literary novel is a success if it sells 10,000 copies in hardback. I'm pretty sure that doesn't entail getting the book in front of a hundred million p…

I don't understand where you're getting the idea that books are something "no one will pay for". Sales of books are generally stable or rising. They are not like buggy whips. I als…

2018 was also the first time in five years that overall revenues fell – 2018 was still better than 2014 and 2015. The idea that we should scuttle the entire publishing industry and…

If all book sales were electronic, that might indeed invite a reassessment of publishers' value in securing distribution. But ebooks are only about 20% of book sales (and that figu…

Here in the UK, if you go to a library and take out a book, the author does get compensated, it's called the Public Lending Right. Apparently in Denmark they've had it since 1941 s…

You're admitting what most anti-copyright people don't want to admit – if instead of bookshops we only had the Emergency Library, certain classes of works would indeed go away, inc…

In the UK, revenue from ebook sales grew 3% between 2018 and 2019. Where is your evidence that the business model of "counting copies" – i.e. selling books to people who want to re…

The percentages aren't particularly relevant to me, because I live off advances, not royalties. Sales are still meaningful, because they help determine what advance I get next time…

I am an author and I making my living from book sales. You're right, I'm absolutely obsessed with money, in the sense that I need money to buy food and pay my electricity bill.

This exists in the UK, it's called Unbound. They've been around for ten years and they've done... fine. Some decent books. But their business model has not exactly conquered the wo…

No, this is just my point. Among people on message boards, for whom copyright is oppression and piracy is second nature, paying for media is a voluntary donation. For the average p…

I can assure you there are a lot of great books that would not have been written if the authors first had to either 1. become beloved enough on the internet that they could crowdfu…

Once this change is made, won't somebody just start a website that looks exactly like the Amazon Kindle Store except everything is free to download, and it's legal? You don't think…

Right, but authors getting a shitty percentage from their publishers is a complaint that's literally as old as publishing itself, it has nothing to do with the model being "obsolet…

Wait, I thought the argument from the anti-copyright people was supposed to be that piracy doesn't hurt sales, not that piracy takes away livelihoods?

Every author who's published by a traditional publisher will agree with you that the system has problems, but I guarantee you won't find many who think the whole thing needs to be …

What are your options if your book is going to take years of work and you don't already have a following?

Business models like self-publishing and Kindle Unlimited have worked really well for romance and fantasy novelists who can publish six books a year and have fans who plough throug…

>I understand why authors find arguments like mine upsetting. Their "pay a toll per copy" business model is obsolete. It's been obsolete for years. I am an author in the UK. Revenu…

Actually as an author I am very sympathetic to what happened to musicians and I desperately hope it doesn't happen to us too.

I am a small time author myself. If someone gives away a pirated copy of one of my books for free, but includes a readme inviting people to buy the book, I do not feel they are 'mi…