stealing books, making opinions
Before I quit Twitter (again), one of the last arguments I witnessed spreading around the enclaves devoted to books and writing was about “stealing books.” One tweet, written by a traditionally published author, stood out to me. The tweet went something like this:
"Don't steal books. Do buy the book or go to the library. See how simple it is?"
Simple indeed! These brief, didactic instructions encapsulate the problem of trying to talk about anything on our current forms of social media. The simple tweet, disguised as “obvious” rules, invites cursory reading and cursory thinking. This is how the reading of a Twitter argument seems to go, even for me:
Scan the replies on the thread for the simplest explanation of "both sides" in order to pick which of the two you agree with.
Once a side has been chosen, locate the proffered moral foundation of that side (someone inevitably will have tweeted one).
Feel satisfied that you are a good person for choosing the side you've chosen, and return to the rest of your feed.
Step two, the location of the moral foundation, is essential to Twitter-thread reading. This is the only kind of position possible on Twitter, because the form doesn't allow for the complexity of thought necessary to understand anything important. (I always think about this line from Rilke, written in one of his letters to Kappus: “Almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious.”) All you can do, as a reader confronted with the argument, is try to feel like a decent human for whatever you decide to believe.
I think that this cursory, anxious intake of perfunctory arguments leads to a general anxiety about our opinions. Such a glance, with the threat of vicious attacks if you choose wrong, can't spark curiosity or help you understand why you believe what you believe. The only way to feel quickly affirmed of your position is to make the “other” position into an immoral one.
Within minutes, the discussion devolves into name-calling, “you're uneducated,” or “you will never understand my experience because you are not me.” The last one is the perfect trump card: arguing this point will only make you look like an asshole. (It is arguable, actually, just not on Twitter. That someone’s subjective experience is forever incomprehensible to others is one of Twitter’s favorite truisms, even though it is an existential question much older than Twitter.)
We should also wonder whether the arguments that rise to the top on Twitter are really worth thinking about or responding to. Social media is, after all, just stuff shoved at us that algorithms think we will engage with, not things that most people care about or believe. This essay is, in some ways, proof of how well that algorithm worked on me. But I still think it’s worthwhile to consider how an opinion is made, in the hopes that it will provide a path toward being less reactionary.
Because an opinion about stealing books is not simple at all. It will be built from what you imagine the purpose of a book is, what you understand about publishing as an industry, and how you interact with books when reading. If you're a writer, you can also add to the list: how your books exist in the world and if your books exist in the world.
It’s actually a fascinating topic with no easy good guy/bad guy answers. It could even be a thrilling topic—because such a debate is evidence that the “book” is still a very contemporary form.
So here, unsolicitedly, are my thoughts about stealing books. I will break down my opinions and try to offer why I think these opinions came to be.
My first priority is resistance to the current corporate-global-capitalist way of the world. I think the production of books has as much radical potential as book-making has ever had, even if those options seem further away and harder to grasp. I dream of creating PDFs of my books that have DIY binding instructions in the back. Make my book yourself. Then typeset your own texts and make books too.
Because I want to resist the efforts of corporate capitalism to bleed into every move I make, I love downloading public domain books to read for free. I often read essays that have been shared online as PDFs; included in books that I'd have to buy otherwise. Creative Commons is another way for ideas to circulate without the crushing rigidity of copyright law. I am very much in favor of less rigid, more accessible forms of distribution.
A little break to reflect on what I’ve said so far. Clearly, my idealism is a factor in the building of my opinion. I fantasize blithely about making books into free PDFs that, probably, no one will ever download. But I'm fine with being idealistic.
I also write under the belief that the concept of someone “stealing your idea” is absurd, and that fretting about “intellectual property” amounts to capitalism-induced paranoia, not to mention a misunderstanding of how and why art is made. I think that the only things that matter in art-making are not steal-able.
Okay, back to the essay.
But what about books that aren’t in the public domain? That’s what people are angry about: downloading books for free that are not legally designated as “free.” It amounts to stealing, they say; swiping a book off the virtual shelf and sneaking out of the virtual store. My opinion about this has to do with the industry, and the fact that the big 5 (almost big 4) publishing companies aren’t always helpful to writers, workers, or readers.
Lots of writers have covered this ground in better ways than I could. This awesome breakdown by Cory Doctorow is a must-read. These two articles (here and here) about the unconscionable way publishers treat libraries and access to digital books are also illuminating—and remind us that “going to the library” is not always a simple thing to do; not when private interests are actively trying to undermine the power and scope of the library system.
The big 4 publishers are not really devoted to the proliferation of ideas and the success of writers. It has always been a business model of “risk,” but tolerance for risk gets smaller as more consolidation occurs. Their priorities are the same as most behemoth companies these days: maximizing profits and collecting consumer data. They don't really need any more writers. I think assuming that these publishers need writing miscalculates the level of influence writers have over the industry as it currently is. The big 4 would love for writers to believe that they need us, so that we continue to believe we need them. Though technically it seems true (no books to sell without writers…?), it just isn’t. There are plenty of ways to make a book without dealing with writers, especially new writers. The decision-makers in traditional publishing have proven that they are going to jump on the bandwagon—not try to disrupt—when it comes to corporate interests. For this, perhaps they deserve to be stolen from.
This has very little to do with employed editors, book-makers, and book-distributors. An irreconcilable divide exists between the intentions of the parent companies and the actual workers. Talk to a person who works in publishing and you'll find that many are disgusted by it (and many have been through a massive lay off at least once in their career). But, this work is their rent and their food. And they believe in books, theoretically. So they keep going. I don't blame them.
These opinions about publishing as an industry come from reading writers' perspectives, especially writers who inhabit the overlap between tech and literature. These are often science fiction writers. I think their perspectives are invaluable: they tend to be more tuned in and pragmatic about the reality of how tech impacts—and will continue to impact—our lives. Their view is far-reaching; they can see what's coming around the corner. They are less attached to an old view of “literary culture” and more willing to imagine gigantic changes.
I also work in the industry, but not for the big 4. I work in production editorial for a niche nonfiction imprint of an independent publisher. (Previously, I worked at a large and notorious textbook publisher. I was laid off.) My job has taught me the steps and skills needed to create a book. It has also shown me that people who make books care deeply about their work. There’s ire and distrust projected onto workers in the industry that they flat-out don’t deserve. Here’s an example: recently, an angry customer reviewed one of our books on Amazon complaining about the eBook formatting. They claimed that it must have been formatted badly on purpose to encourage people to buy the hardcover. Really, it was just a formatting quirk from the eBook conversion that we didn’t anticipate. We went about fixing it right away. I felt a flash of personal indignation at the claim that the team I work with would produce something badly on purpose. Certainly, there’s *something* untrustworthy going on with eBooks. But the distrust is often directed at the wrong people.
I recognize that some writers are already dependent on the system I am trying to resist. There are writers who attempt to make a living from their work. This seems to be an especially difficult time in history to earn a living writing. (Have you read the Cory Doctorow piece yet?) I understand how a writer who needs to earn money would be appalled by free digital access to their work, or by book pirating. I see how the digital distribution I think is revolutionary could be threatening to a writer with a stake in the whole scheme. But I'm still against the idea that I am morally obligated to pay for a book (even if I have the money) in order to prop up a few companies whose designs are blatantly monopolistic.
It's a maddening situation, but it's still possible to go another way: self-publishing, obscure small presses, the mid-tier publishers Cory Doctorow talks about (though he is sure to remind us that they are in danger). These paths take a lot of work. You aren't likely to make much money from your writing by taking them, but you probably won’t make much money regardless. The worst kind of mindset (for this idealist!) is one where we concede to unacceptable things just because there is “no alternative.” Where do we suppose an alternative is going to come from? Alternatives will never be offered. Any alternative that exists will be a direct result of our own actions.
These opinions come from my disgust with statements made globally and glibly about what one must accept if they want to be a writer. Things like: having to submit to hundreds and hundreds of agents; create perfect query letters; allow bad contract terms, dumb covers, or dumb editorial changes; abide by “the needs of the market”; etc. Anything that comes with a shrug and a resigned “that's just the way things are.”
I’m not trying to make industry insiders seem like evil gatekeepers—they are right! In our current system, most editors are overworked and underpaid, and they can’t possibly manage the volume of material they receive. There are more people who want to be professional writers than anyone can accommodate (why this is happening could be another essay), and a shrinking category of books that can achieve the kind of profits demanded by shareholders and parent companies. Writers embarking into the industry should be utterly pragmatic about this state of affairs. But it sounds like hell to me.
That initial disgust I feel—the emotion—probably comes from the wild drive I have for autonomy, to be able to act according to what I *actually* want (built up from childhood).
Not only am I fine with book piracy, I'm wondering something else, too. I wonder what would happen if writers dropped the profit imperative entirely. (Let me specify that I'm talking about a writer's own work here, not suggesting that a writer do contract work for free.) If book piracy is an issue, then why not make more things legally “free,” rather than impose more restrictive rules?
Making your own books or giving books away will not turn you into a Writer-with-a-capital-W. Money will have to be made one way or another; there’s a never-ending conflict between writing and however the money is made. But I'm not sure that the dream of the productive Writer, selling lots of books, quitting their day job, feeling very content after achieving every goal by following all the rules in all the proper channels, ever really comes true. I could cite the ambivalence of many writers about the publishing process, not to mention ambivalence about notoriety in general. I think we’ll be much freer if we give up these dreams. We will lose something as the old structures break down, of course. But what we lose will be mostly imaginary—illusions of what we thought we wanted.
My fantasy returns: free PDFs with binding instructions in the back.
But who will read these free things? someone might ask. I might answer: who cares? What if, after dropping the profit imperative, we dropped the attention imperative too? There's already too much to read and watch and look at in the world. What matters in art is not steal-able, and it's also not sell-able. Make the work and let it go. Whoever will see it, sees it. Whoever doesn’t won’t.
This final set of opinions was informed by my own experiences pining after publication. Striving for publication used to be the ultimate goal post, the reason for all the actions I took. But at some point a few years ago, thinking about publishing started making me sad and confused. I noticed that I was unhappy when I thought about publishing. At first I considered this a character flaw, an immature reaction that I would eventually grow out of. Recently I started to change my lens: what if this feeling was not evidence of some childish rejection of reality, but something I could trust? What if my feelings were not there to be overcome, but to push me toward something more true?
What I really wanted was to make my work exist. So I decided that my priority would be tangibility over perfection; to make the “making” of books part of my creative process. I want to be happy and feel good when I write (not that my subject matter need always be pleasant). I want to pursue the feeling of satisfaction, not the feeling of anxious striving.
So you see, my opinion (for now) about stealing books is expressible in 2500 words, not 140 characters. It’s a combination of feelings and biases, resentments and ideals, hopes and fears. It’s built on what I’ve seen since I arrived here on Earth, which includes a lot of destruction and institutional failure; and the promise of more destruction and institutional failure.
My opinion forces me to answer a kind of call-to-action. It forces me to change my ways, to be idealistic, to imagine something better. I think this mirrors how I wish for us all to change our ways, to be more idealistic, and imagine something better. Maybe the question to ask is twofold: what is your opinion made from, and what does it help you do?