Jay Lake has a well-reasoned and well-informed post on his blog about the Google Book Search settlement. It’ll take 3 minutes of your time, and whether you’re a reader or writer, it’s worth it.
In general, I think that people like Cory Doctorow are right when they say the biggest problem facing an author is obscurity. Certainly that’s the biggest problem I face as I ponder the publication launch of the Milkweed Triptych next year. After all, who has heard of me? A minuscule fraction of the people it would take to make my first novel a commercial success. (Even assuming every single person who has heard of me eventually buys the book. Ha!)
But Jay makes a good point. Jay, who has written more novels and more short stories than I will in the next N years (where N is a large number). This writing novels thing? It’s really freaking hard. And it kind of pisses me off to think that somebody else — a complete outsider — can just wait until I’m finished sweating blood over a manuscript, come along, and lay claim to a chunk of my subrights.
Most of the time, you’re okay, Google. But on this one? You can bite me.
Thanks for posting this link. I meant to go over to Jay’s blog, but never got around to it. I just went to the Google settlement site, and got signed up. Hey, $300 beats a kick in the head, and it might add up to more money.
I want to keep my books on the list because I agree that our problem is obscurity not piracy, but I’d like to be compensated for my work.