imrontucker

[imrontucker]

[imrontucker]

I’ve decided to tell you guys a story about piracy.

I didn’t think I had much to add to the piracy commentary I made yesterday, but after seeing some of the replies to it, I decided it’s time for this story.

Here are a few things we should get clear before I go on:

1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.

2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a book’s fate at the publishing house. 

3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art, though it is worthwhile to remember that every copy of a blockbuster sold means that the publishing house can publish new and niche voices. Publishing can’t afford to publish the new and midlist voices without the James Pattersons selling well. 

It is only about two statements that I saw go by: 

1) piracy doesn’t hurt publishing. 

2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.

Now, with those statements in mind, here’s the story.

It’s the story of a novel called The Raven King, the fourth installment in a planned four book series. All three of its predecessors hit the bestseller list. Book three, however, faltered in strange ways. The print copies sold just as well as before, landing it on the list, but the e-copies dropped precipitously. 

Now, series are a strange and dangerous thing in publishing. They’re usually games of diminishing returns, for logical reasons: folks buy the first book, like it, maybe buy the second, lose interest. The number of folks who try the first will always be more than the number of folks who make it to the third or fourth. Sometimes this change in numbers is so extreme that publishers cancel the rest of the series, which you may have experienced as a reader — beginning a series only to have the release date of the next book get pushed off and pushed off again before it merely dies quietly in a corner somewhere by the flies.

So I expected to see a sales drop in book three, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but as my readers are historically evenly split across the formats, I expected it to see the cut balanced across both formats. This was absolutely not true. Where were all the e-readers going? Articles online had headlines like PEOPLE NO LONGER ENJOY READING EBOOKS IT SEEMS.

Really?

There was another new phenomenon with Blue Lily, Lily Blue, too — one that started before it was published. Like many novels, it was available to early reviewers and booksellers in advanced form (ARCs: advanced reader copies). Traditionally these have been cheaply printed paperback versions of the book. Recently, e-ARCs have become common, available on locked sites from publishers. 

BLLB’s e-arc escaped the site, made it to the internet, and began circulating busily among fans long before the book had even hit shelves. Piracy is a thing authors have been told to live with, it’s not hurting you, it’s like the mites in your pillow, and so I didn’t think too hard about it until I got that royalty statement with BLLB’s e-sales cut in half. 

Strange, I thought. Particularly as it seemed on the internet and at my booming real-life book tours that interest in the Raven Cycle in general was growing, not shrinking. Meanwhile, floating about in the forums and on Tumblr as a creator, it was not difficult to see fans sharing the pdfs of the books back and forth. For awhile, I paid for a service that went through piracy sites and took down illegal pdfs, but it was pointless. There were too many. And as long as even one was left up, that was all that was needed for sharing. 

I asked my publisher to make sure there were no e-ARCs available of book four, the Raven King, explaining that I felt piracy was a real issue with this series in a way it hadn’t been for any of my others. They replied with the old adage that piracy didn’t really do anything, but yes, they’d make sure there was no e-ARCs if that made me happy. 

Then they told me that they were cutting the print run of The Raven King to less than half of the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, it’s just that the sales for Blue Lily didn’t justify printing any more copies. The series was in decline, they were so proud of me, it had 19 starred reviews from pro journals and was the most starred YA series ever written, but that just didn’t equal sales. They still loved me.

This, my friends, is a real world consequence.

This is also where people usually step in and say, but that’s not piracy’s fault. You just said series naturally declined, and you just were a victim of bad marketing or bad covers or readers just actually don’t like you that much.

Hold that thought. 

I was intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle, and so I began to work with one of my brothers on a plan. It was impossible to take down every illegal pdf; I’d already seen that. So we were going to do the opposite. We created a pdf of the Raven King. It was the same length as the real book, but it was just the first four chapters over and over again. At the end, my brother wrote a small note about the ways piracy hurt your favorite books. I knew we wouldn’t be able to hold the fort for long — real versions would slowly get passed around by hand through forum messaging — but I told my brother: I want to hold the fort for one week. Enough to prove that a point. Enough to show everyone that this is no longer 2004. This is the smart phone generation, and a pirated book sometimes is a lost sale.

Then, on midnight of my book release, my brother put it up everywhere on every pirate site. He uploaded dozens and dozens and dozens of these pdfs of The Raven King. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one of his pdfs. We sailed those epub seas with our own flag shredding the sky.

The effects were instant. The forums and sites exploded with bewildered activity. Fans asked if anyone had managed to find a link to a legit pdf. Dozens of posts appeared saying that since they hadn’t been able to find a pdf, they’d been forced to hit up Amazon and buy the book.

And we sold out of the first printing in two days.

Two days.

I was on tour for it, and the bookstores I went to didn’t have enough copies to sell to people coming, because online orders had emptied the warehouse. My publisher scrambled to print more, and then print more again. Print sales and e-sales became once more evenly matched.

Then the pdfs hit the forums and e-sales sagged and it was business as usual, but it didn’t matter: I’d proven the point. Piracy has consequences.

That’s the end of the story, but there’s an epilogue. I’m now writing three more books set in that world, books that I’m absolutely delighted to be able to write. They’re an absolute blast. My publisher bought this trilogy because the numbers on the previous series supported them buying more books in that world. But the numbers almost didn’t. Because even as I knew I had more readers than ever, on paper, the Raven Cycle was petering out. 

The Ronan trilogy nearly didn’t exist because of piracy. And already I can see in the tags how Tumblr users are talking about how they intend to pirate book one of the new trilogy for any number of reasons, because I am terrible or because they would ‘rather die than pay for a book’. As an author, I can’t stop that. But pirating book one means that publishing cancels book two. This ain’t 2004 anymore. A pirated copy isn’t ‘good advertising’ or ‘great word of mouth’ or ‘not really a lost sale.’

That’s my long piracy story. 

[imrontucker]

Your platitudes about defying harassment are great and all but none of you comic pros are listening to the real complaint that kicked all this up in the first place. The work is BAD. Characters with long histories are being awkwardly changed to fit a political agenda instead of servicing a good story. Marvel doesn't feel like Marvel so fans are fleeing. Sales are down. What are you going to do about it?

First off, they’re not “platitudes.” Either you believe other people should be treated with respect and be free to exist online without being stalked or fearful for their safety or you don’t. It’s cut and dry. Condoning that, whatever your end goals may be, camps you out with people who are disrespectful at the top end and downright criminal at the bottom. Decide if this is the hill you really want to die on with the “allies” you have on your side.

Okay, on to your other point-

The comic industry is going through upheaval, absolutely. If we have to be honest though, so is all of media. Piracy is slamming into instant access entertainment and that’s splintering our attention more than ever before. New comics (dozens every week) aren’t just competing with each other, they’re competing with streaming movies/TV, video games, craft beers, and newly accessible deep archives of the best (and worst) comics from the start of publishing through to now. That doesn’t even count foreign content like manga, also available for deep dives and also fighting for your dollar. I don’t think it’s fair to just say sales are low because the work is bad and not acknowledge that almost every media is going through similar rocky times. People are reassessing where their entertainment dollars go across the board and things are shaking up - period.

The single issue format does seem to be taking a beating as of late, it’s true. Corporate decisions made in the past in terms of format, distribution, sales outlets, and pricing seem to be coming to a head and I have no idea how that will shake out, especially in a world that’s understandably distracted with natural disasters and a political divide as bad as it’s ever been.

Marvel of the 70′s wasn’t Marvel of the 60′s.

Marvel of the 80′s wasn’t Marvel of the 70′s.

Marvel of the 90′s wasn’t Marvel of the 80′s.

You get the idea. We can’t trap this stuff in amber. The Marvel Universe is a dynamic creative sandbox that reflects the time we live in while also carrying decades of continuity on its back. It’s wonderful and ridiculous, and can’t be fully encompassed in one character, one series, or one time. The stories that inspired me color my work in the same way the stories that inspired you color your perception of what’s happening now. 

There are people reading Marvel Comics right now who are being inspired by these current stories. Whatever you may think of it, this is their Marvel. If that goes down a road where sales can’t sustain it and things need to change, then I expect that’s what you’ll see. It’s happened before. Implosions and new initiatives. Experiments. The best parts get carried forward, the bad bits become footnotes and the creative journey continues.

I don’t run Marvel. If I did it would reflect my creative ideas more intensely, but it would also need to incorporate other people, other ideas, and the twists and turns the world throws at it. Compromise and collaboration is how this stuff gets done. It’s how the world actually functions. Acknowledge that not every title needs to fit your personal sensibilities in order to be “worthy.” Variety is an important part of the search for quality. 

As one writer working with a team of skilled and passionate people, all I can promise is that I’ll write stories that I as a reader would enjoy. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel fan who loves incorporating continuity while also moving stories forward with new ideas. That’s my jam.

I don’t know of a single creator who sets out to tell a bad story or wreck a character they’re tasked with working on. There are comics I read that I do not enjoy and would absolutely have done differently, but my first instinct isn’t to assume the people involved are on a mission to destroy it. I move on and look to other titles for my fix. I check back in every so often to see if things have improved.

Back in the day, I collected Amazing Spider-Man from issue #231 through to #363. I loved reading Spidey stories. He was (and generally is) my favorite Marvel character. I have so many memories of those stories and key moments are indelibly burned into my brain. Even still, by the time the book hit #350+, I wasn’t feeling it any more. The book had changed. I’d changed. I eked out collecting for another year and then realized I’d missed a couple months and wasn’t worried about it at all. It was time to walk away.

Many years later, I was reading about Dan Slott’s Big Time story arc starting with Amazing Spider-Man #648 and thought “What the heck. I’ll give it a try.” Just like that, I was back into reading Spidey. I’ve been enjoying it ever since. This stuff is cyclical. I could spin my life away obsessing over why the books weren’t “good” in that long gap, but I’d rather read comics I enjoy. I don’t want you to leave or stop collecting, but I do think it’s important to allow that to happen if necessary. Find other books that tick your tock.

I don’t know Marvel’s deepest/darkest future plans, but I do know that Marvel Legacy is an attempt to ratify the past and present. To keep what works from the past while moving things into the future. Will it work? I don’t know. Keep reading and we’ll find out together. 

I hope you stick around and boost up titles you feel hit the mark while letting other titles succeed or fail with the readerships they cultivate, even if they’re not the same as you.

[imrontucker]

Wow, haven't been on Tumblr in foooooorrrrreeeevvvvveeeerrrrr

[imrontucker]

[imrontucker]

"The Moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn."

The Great Gatsby

[imrontucker]

Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.

[imrontucker]

Yesterday I finally hit a goal I've been working on for a while, which is to make sure I write every day for a month. I almost completed a second goal, which was to write at least a 1000 words every day. While I'm pretty happy with this, I know it's just one piece of the puzzle and I have to keep writing in order to get where I want to be. And, as much as I want to celebrate this achievement, I'm reminded of a quote by Nora Roberts: "Every time I hear writers talk about "the muse", I just want to bitch-slap them. It's a job. Do your job." . . #amwriting #dowork #WriteRonWrite #YAauthor

[imrontucker]

When you're "sorry not sorry" for coming up with a wicked story line to put your protagonist through #amwriting #YAauthor

[imrontucker]

It's our differences that make us beautiful.

[imrontucker]

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.

[imrontucker]

Albert Einstein’s office - just as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist left it - taken hours after Einstein died. Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

via reddit

[imrontucker]

Red cup? Green cup? It's all about the #PurpleStraw. #cbtl #iceblended #amwriting #awriterslife #writing

[imrontucker]

#amwriting #awriterslife #writing #authorproblems

[imrontucker]

[imrontucker]

Go get it. Period.

[imrontucker]