I'm with you 100% on your position, with one addition:
The fact is, though, that 99% of the people doing this WOULD NOT PAY even if you could stop them from downloading.
I suspect that 90% of the downloaders DON'T EVEN READ WHAT THEY TORRENT.
Seriously: you can listen to a downloaded album in the background in 30-60 minutes, and lots of folks have TV or movies running as a background noise/light source, but a book demands your primary attention for 3-9 hours.
I reckon most of the book downloading public are seeing collections with titles like 500 CLASSIC SF NOVELS or COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS and grabbing them because, hey, bandwidth is cheap and the above are a fraction the size of a single movie. But they're downloading 500 CLASSIC SF NOVELS because they're vaguely thinking of re-reading DUNE, and they're grabbing the COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS because they've heard the name and wonder what he's like.
And maybe they get round to opening the rar file they've gotten hold of, and it's even possible they'll look at the first page of one of the books by the author who's new to them -- but reading demands a serious investment of time. (That COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS? You're looking at 16-18 books currently in print, around 2 million words of text. At a reasonably fast reading speed of 350 words/min, that's 133 hours of continuous reading. And I'll bet the vast majority of downloaders can't be bothered applying 133 hours of effort to digesting something they grabbed on impulse in 30 seconds.)
The folks selling my books are another matter. If you sell my work, I expect to be paid a royalty. Making money and not giving me my share? Now that's theft.
no subject
The fact is, though, that 99% of the people doing this WOULD NOT PAY even if you could stop them from downloading.
I suspect that 90% of the downloaders DON'T EVEN READ WHAT THEY TORRENT.
Seriously: you can listen to a downloaded album in the background in 30-60 minutes, and lots of folks have TV or movies running as a background noise/light source, but a book demands your primary attention for 3-9 hours.
I reckon most of the book downloading public are seeing collections with titles like 500 CLASSIC SF NOVELS or COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS and grabbing them because, hey, bandwidth is cheap and the above are a fraction the size of a single movie. But they're downloading 500 CLASSIC SF NOVELS because they're vaguely thinking of re-reading DUNE, and they're grabbing the COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS because they've heard the name and wonder what he's like.
And maybe they get round to opening the rar file they've gotten hold of, and it's even possible they'll look at the first page of one of the books by the author who's new to them -- but reading demands a serious investment of time. (That COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES STROSS? You're looking at 16-18 books currently in print, around 2 million words of text. At a reasonably fast reading speed of 350 words/min, that's 133 hours of continuous reading. And I'll bet the vast majority of downloaders can't be bothered applying 133 hours of effort to digesting something they grabbed on impulse in 30 seconds.)
The folks selling my books are another matter. If you sell my work, I expect to be paid a royalty. Making money and not giving me my share? Now that's theft.