[The context for this is that the London Perlmongers were discussing Safari, the e-book project from O'Reilly. I'm an O'Reilly author, having written the Perl Cookbook. Then someone posted a link to an "ever-fabulous" Russian site with pirate copies of the CD bookshelf versions of many O'Reilly books.]
You know, I've checked my royalty statement for the Cookbook, and nary
a penny came from this Russian pirate website. The point of Safari is
that you pay a very small amount of money for very convenient access,
and the author gets some of it (I believe authors get a greater
royalty via Safari than they do via printed books, because we don't
have printing costs).
When you don't pay money, whether you justify it because you already
own the book, or because you're a poor student, you're screwing the
authors. "But they won't miss my $1". Your dollar is no different
from everyone else's, and if everyone else thought the same thing,
there'd be no dollars at all for the author.
Who here has written a book? Simon and Dave at least. It's not easy,
is it? It's an exercise in MISERY. Huge numbers of lost evenings,
missed family moments, and late nights. When I was writing the Perl
Cookbook, I had to miss a family trip to Disneyworld and a rare
talk.bizarre party in Montreal because of book deadlines. If there's
nothing waiting at the end but your name on a book nobody buys because
some assface in Russia offers it up for free on the web, I sure as
hell wouldn't have done it. I'd have had fun with my family and
friends, enjoyed those evenings, and spent a hell of a lot less time
worrying about the placement of commas and the difference between
"which" and "that".
So thanks for the pointer to your ever-fabulous Russian thief, but I would really prefer that you tried Safari.
Thanks,
Nat
