Bit off topic but Chuck's piracy meltdown introduced me to Lauren Hough, who is currently three days into a meltdown over the internet archive with no signs of slowing down. (archive.fo is down at the moment, I'll come back when it's up)
The latest Tweets from Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough). Writer @vintageanchor Exiled Berliner. Tall. Extremely gay. I hate your cat. @grantamag @harpers @huffpost @wrathbt @guardian rep: Folio/CAA (say huff. she/her). Austin, TX
twitter.com
Frankly, if you are an artist that doesn't inspire enough passion in your fans to make them wish to support you by buying your stuff, you might not be creating anything of value yourself.
Piracy has been around for decades now, only now do authors realize that it exists?
I mean, how many authors, artists and so on are out there that earn a livelihood without actually selling anything? Patreon and Kickstarter, for instance.
Then there's authors who offer their stuff for free, but you can buy that stuff to get a nice paper version. Order of the Stick, Girl Genius and several other webcomics do just that. Girl Genius, in particular, got along for a decade before Patreoon was even a thing, solely based on selling volumes of comics that had been published online.
The point, of course, is, that these artists offer something that people want to support. Lauren Hough and Cuck Windbag offer drivel that doesn't sell.
They are still in that ridiculous mindset, that any copy downloaded was a copy less sold. Most often, people download something to check it out, and if it's decent, they buy it. That has been the case for video games, movies and comics. Why should it be any different for books?
But you know what would make my day? If the people behind the archive released download numbers and it turned out that the ones crying the hardest have books that don't get downloaded, even when they are free. Imagine their faces.
