#and for smaller studios piracy can genuinely affect whether they can keep making games and employing people

[feralkwe]

this is a really good example! also these tags from @zalia:

#when a big studio movie or TV series is made everyons has generally been paid by the time it comes out#pirating them does not actually take money away from the people making them usually#and on productions of that scale piracy is unlikely to really make a difference in whether it gets renewed/a sequel made etc.#the same goes for big studio games#for academic papers usually the authors aren't making money from them so it's just the journal itself charging stupid prices to access them#so pirate away!#but fiction books that are still in copyright?#99.9% of authors are not Stephen King or JK Rowling who are extremely wealthy#the average earnings for a mid-list author in the UK is £11K a year#while they do get advances (and those are getting smaller) once that is paid they only get money from royalties from each book sold#and usually that comes only after the books have made enough to pay the publisher back the advance#and if a publisher sees that a book is being pirated a lot they may just decide to not buy any more books from that author#or not buy the sequel to a book if its part of a series#Maggie Stiefvater had the print run of the Raven King massively cut because a previous book of hers was pirated so much#and the same goes for indie authors publishing in various places#the people saying that 'well they're publishing on Kindle so its their fault' need to stfu#they live in the actual real world where Amazon is legitimately nearly the only game in town for that#it sucks! It does! But blaming those authors and saying they're propping up Amazon is misguided and shitty#it's like saying that people who shop at Tesco or Walmart are responsible for their massive reach#the same for indie games#indie studios rely on their actual game sales to continue making games#and for smaller studios piracy can genuinely affect whether they can keep making games and employing people#I am so sick of people talking about 'support artists' and 'art is so valuable' but being utterly unwilling to pay money for it

Idk if this is common knowledge, but since I’ve been seeing a lot of celebration at the return of zlibrary, I want to make sure that everyone knows that pirated books can destroy an author’s career. If you are pirating works by indie authors who are in Kindle Unlimited, Amazon considers that a breech of exclusivity agreement and can shut down your account. Forever. You can’t get a second account. And they won’t pay out the three months of earnings they owe you.

Traditionally published authors have also been struggling to get contracts, advances, and publisher support, and this shit can ruin it for them too. For the love of god use a real library. Get a KU subscription. Ask an author if they’ll send you an arc! Wait for a sale! Keep pirating your D*sney movies or whatever but there are so many ethical, cheap/free options for books. You are not hurting The Man, you’re hurting someone who is just trying to pay their bills.