In a dire article in London's Times yesterday, reporter Ben Hoyle opened with the self-evidently ludicrous statement that "book piracy on the Internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales." Internet piracy, no matter how pervasive, is not about to bring the worldwide production of literature to a grinding halt, just as rampant music piracy isn't stopping my neighbor's kid from playing his drum kit in the garage every day before dinner. But the piece does raise the real question of whether the best writers will continue to work to their full potential in a world where their main product can be had for free.

Tracy Chevalier, who wrote Girl With a Pearl Earring, chairs the UK's Society of Authors, and she recognizes that the Internet poses a very real danger for traditional publishing. Some of that is due to piracy, some of it is not, but Chevalier recognizes that the best response has to involve finding workable new business models for writers and publishers as the big advance/big blockbuster model changes in reaction to the web's ability to corral niche groups and small but passionate communities. Perhaps writers even need to stop charging for books.



Tracy Chevalier

"It is a dam that's cracking," she told The Times. "We are trying to plug the holes with legislation and litigation, but we need to think radically. We have to evolve and create a very different pay system, possibly by making the content available free to all and finding a way to get paid separately."

That sort of innovative thinking is likely to be far more productive in the long run than the sort of "sky is falling" rhetoric that opens the article. And it's not even clear yet that piracy is approaching the "rampant" stage... at least for fiction. Despite the premise that bestselling novels like the Harry Potter books are widely available online (which they no doubt are), it's hard to believe that millions of people are reading long-form fiction on computer monitors or even e-book readers like the Kindle, Reader, or iLiad. Actually, it's hard to believe that millions of people are reading much fiction at all; if they are, the publishing industry should be thrilled.

Nonfiction's troubles aren't made up

But fiction's share of the market has been dropping for years and is now largely the domain of female readers. Nonfiction dominates, and it's here that unauthorized online distribution of books poses the biggest threat. Cookbooks, travel guides, bringing-up-baby volumes—all have value in small chunks that are easily read onscreen. In fact, Chevalier admits to doing this herself.

"It's hitting hardest the writers who write books that you dip in and out of: poetry, cookbooks, travel guides, short stories—books where you don't have to read the whole thing," she said. "Cookbook authors are really struggling. I do it myself—if I want a recipe I go online and get it for free."



The final edition?

Perhaps this explains her forward-looking approach to dealing with the problem. If grabbing a recipe online is so convenient that even the boss of the Society of Authors does it, then questions about law become almost secondary. Given a value proposition that compelling, people will continue to get their recipes online. While fighting it may work in the short term (though it probably won't; see the music industry for an example), the longer-term solution is clearly to monetize this behavior so that those who give of their time and expertise to develop a superb eggplant and spinach risotto can get paid enough to continue to do so.

Publishing's Brave Digital Future™

Publishing has been, in many ways, a fortunate industry. It has had the luxury of watching the music and movie businesses handle similar content issues for years, and only recently has it faced similar problems. But that doesn't mean it knows what to do about them; as industry insiders we've spoken to admit, every publisher and author has a different vision of the future and a different strategy for making a living in our Brave Digital Future.

Those who do long-form fiction still have time to figure this out, but for the short-form folks, the time for action is here. Apart from the obviously illegal outlets, two big worries are Google and Amazon, with their Book Search and Search Inside the Book functionality, respectively. Both services are simultaneously feared and loved for their ability to drive sales... but the worry that they could expose too much content, cannibalize full volume sales, and cede even more control to non-publishers like Amazon.

Without a popular and workable system for micropayments, there's still no good way for most Internet users to pay (for instance) a quarter for legal access to a particular recipe, and it's not clear that most publishers would want to do this, anyway. Wedded to the book format like the music business has been wedded to the album, the temptation is to see such piecemeal sales as cannibalizing a larger revenue stream, though publishers have in fact begun to experiment. Such fears have been driving the Authors Guild lawsuit here in the US against Google's service, and the group also expressed concerns back in 2003 when Amazon launched its own search service.



Would you read an econometrics

textbook on a screen? Swedes would

Even longer-form works may start to be traded online, too, as e-book readers grow in popularity. Expensive books, such as textbooks, might also cost enough to make the inconvenience of not owning a physical copy worth it. We've already seen the launch of the Student Bay in Sweden, a site modeled on The Pirate Bay that hosts full scans of (expensive) Swedish academic books. And as far back as 2003, copies of The Order of the Phoenix were available in full online. And even before that, authors like Harlan Ellison saw some of their work show up in Usenet groups.

The obscurity curse... and cure

But how many novels are popular enough that they might spawn Harry Potter-like levels of interest? (Short answer: none.) Leaving aside the tiny pool of big-name authors, the truth is that nearly every writer in the world suffers from the opposite problem: lack of a reading public. As Tim O'Reilly famously pointed out in a 2002 essay on publishing, obscurity is a far bigger threat to most content creators than is piracy.

Authors should be able to choose how their work is available, of course, and not all will want it distributed freely on the Internet. But plenty of people will. As someone currently pursuing the tortuous path to publication with a novel of my own, I can vouch for O'Reilly's statement about obscurity, and I've also learned more than I wanted to know about literary agents, the big New York houses, the committees that evaluate any novel's potential sales, and the dangers of being labeled a "male author" in the minds of publishing execs.



Please read my book

Given the difficulty of breaking into print in the traditional way, the Internet looks to many aspiring authors like a powerful new way to distribute content and find an audience; it has promise, not peril. While cash is important (we all need to put diapers on our kids), selling paper copies of books certainly isn't the only way to collect, especially in the early stages of a literary career.

Just ask Cory Doctorow, who has made his work freely available for years and has written eloquently of the ways that increased recognition translates into physical book sales, speaking fees, and jobs at schools and universities.

Yes, authors should be in control, but they shouldn't be afraid. Business models will no doubt change as they have in other content industries, but writing and writers won't disappear so long as demand for the product exists. In fact, writers should be rejoicing at the huge advantage they have over other media: readers have an "emotional bond" with the medium of paper and have no plans to stop buying it.

Well, yet.