On Stripping DRM

I hate DRM. It’s like gun control–it’s stupid and short-sighted and all it does is punish people who play by the rules. Do you think pirates give a shit about copyright? No. That’s why they are called pirates. Do you think they are going to let a little thing like breakable encoding get in their way? No. That’s the digital equivalent of storming a ship and bringing her to heel.

I can’t pretend like I am any kind of programmer or capable of stripping DRM without tools someone else made to help me do it. But if I have paid for a file and need to use it for my own personal use in a format which it was not “meant” for, I’m not going to buy the thing a second time in the format I need. Sorry. You have my money, and I own this material for any personal use I see fit.

Today was the first day I’ve had to strip DRM off a file. I had purchased an Adobe epub because it was the only format available at the time I bought the book (which has since been added to Amazon for Kindle, which is what I use). Remember, piracy happens because the product is not available in the format needed by the consumer at a price they consider reasonable. Trust me, I would rather have been able to purchase the file I wanted rather than spend an hour of my Sunday downloading the tools to break DRM and then figuring out how to do it, but lacking that option, by God I was not going to let some publishing corporation with a stick up its arse get the better of me. In a way they have, time is money, etc., but my time wasted is not the same as more of my money given to them if I had just bought it a second time on Kindle and be halfway through the damn thing by now. THAT’S NOT THE POINT.

The point is, again, first-hand this time, the only thing DRM does is upset legitimate, paying customers. I am just glad to be computer savvy enough that I can get my file hacked instead of being resigned to a double-purchase and getting taken advantage of by my ignorance of formatting or unwillingness to break any rules.

That emotional and moral calibration is worth considering to anyone working for or as a publisher. As a writer, I want to get paid for my work, absolutely. But I don’t want my customers to feel exploited, cheated, bamboozled, strongarmed, or in any other way ripped off. I want them to pay me because they like my work enough to pay for it in order that I will write more for them to enjoy. I don’t want them to resent paying me, ever, and especially not because I forced them to by the same book twice because they needed to convert their copy to a new format.

So the moral of the story is: pirates > DRM proponents. At least there is a certain honesty to the pirates that seems…lacking from people who want to fuck me as a consumer every way they can simply because they can.

New World Order, New Term

Or, Taking a Play from the Philosopher’s Handbook*

*Because in philosophy, if the term you want doesn’t exist, you just make it up or redefine another word to mean what you want it to mean.

Disintermediated publishing.

That’s what I’m going to start calling the kind of self-publishing that Amazon’s KDP and Smashwords and PubIt and Kobo Writer’s Life, etc.–hell, the web in general–allow.  This is in contradistinction with “indie publishing” or “self-publishing,” which are currently in vogue to mean not traditional or “legacy” publishing.

The reason I think we need a new set of terms is twofold. First, terms that existed before digital DIY publishing exploded carry baggage that threaten the clear communication of what an author is doing when they “self-publish” nowadays.  Second, I feel like the available terms that have been appropriated are not really as apt as they should be. The terms are having to be redefined in the public mind. Rather than have to explain how self-publishing now is not, you know, what it used to mean, why not use a new term that can be easily explained if someone doesn’t find it self-evident?

“Self-publishing” is often equated with “vanity publishing”–that is, paying someone to publish and distribute your book (out of pocket rather than as a profit-sharing venture, the way traditional publishing works).  Self-publishing and vanity publishing are different, as self-publishing is you setting yourself up as your own publisher, fronting all the money and reaping all the profit, rather than paying someone to do that for you and still getting only some of the profit from sales. In the mind of the average person, though, they amount to the same thing–this writer can’t get someone to publish her novel the normal way, so she paid them to; her book must be terrible.  With digital self-publishing, there is also, I believe, a perception of recklessness about it all, the idea that  many writers seem to just toss up a story on Amazon to see if it will sell, rather than taking the time to educate themselves about the process of producing and publishing a book or ebook.

This is why I want a term that is more nuanced and considered than those loaded terms from the past.  Digital self-publishing is not the same as the old style of self-publishing paper books, and many authors are doing more than just tossing up a book for the hell of it. I like the term “disintermediated publishing” because those of us who are treating our books like a publisher, except that we are publishing ourselves and taking on both all the risk and all the profit, are going directly to readers–or as directly to readers as is possible while still retaining a wide distribution. Basically we are setting up vendor accounts on sites like Amazon, which take a slice of the sales in exchange for giving us a space in its retail bazaar.

This point is an important one: the money made from sites like Amazon and Smashwords is not a “royalty.”  It is the purchase price of the goods the author, acting as the vendor, is selling less the marketplace’s transaction fee. We need to start looking at it that way and stop using terms that have no applicabiulity to the new market and the new world order. I don’t like the comparison of Amazon’s 35% or 70% “royalty” to a traditional deal of 12% of cover (or whatever), because Amazon, et al, are not controlling my rights and paying me a fee every time those rights are exercised. They are skimming a flat fee off the sale transaction.

My terminology here may seem like a semantic game (*as, indeed, much of philosophy is accused of being), but in my opinion using precise terms is important to clearly communicate one’s position and circumstances.

While “self-published author” certainly works as a term for what I’m doing, it’s not a clear picture. I am not publishing myself because no one else will have me; I am publishing myself as a first resort, because I believe I have an audience and I do not believe the benefits a traditional publisher offer me will offset what they will cost me. Because I am unwilling to pay that price, and because in the digital age I have this option, I am choosing to bypass the middle-man.  I am disintermediating my writing, taking it out of the hands of publishing and putting it directly into the hands of readers.

I am a disintermediated artist…and so is every person on the web who publishes a blog or a Youtube channel or any other type of original content without ceding its control to a media company.

“Can you drudge twelve hours a day, six days out of every seven?”

A question for all the publishers who want to court successful self-published authors with the lure of “not doing anything but writing”:  do you…actually think that self-employed writers spend 8-12 hours a day writing?  Or is what you’re really offering them the opportunity to work 4-6 hour days and stop working when they stop writing?

I will make the caveat that I’m not other writers.  I don’t know how they write, and I don’t know when their mental muscles begin to shake and fold with exhaustion.  So maybe there are writers out there who could and would write 12 hours a day every day, and the publishing details really are a waste of their writing time.

But for me, I can’t see where the publishing side of things eats up my WRITING time.  Other free time, yeah, but not the blocks of my time that are earmarked for writing.

Let’s try and remember our math lessons from long ago.

First, I read a statistic somewhere that people who own their own business work an average of 60 hours a week versus the 40 that those of us on a time clock work.  This holds true in my workplace experience. I work for a family-owned business, and the people with their name on the building put in longer hours than any of the rest of us—even when the rest of us are giving 50 hours a week.  So we’ll suggest a maximum of 60 hours and a minimum of 40 hours for writers who are making a living off writing and have no other job.

This means they have 8-12 hours a day, M-F, to work, or 9 hours daily M-S.

Do self-employed writers really spend that many hours every day actually writing?

I have, on most days, between four and six hours of really productive writing time in the morning and maybe a couple more brainstorming hours in the evening.  If I didn’t have a day job, if all I had to do were write and take care of the publishing side of my business, I would have every afternoon of the week for those “difficult” tasks like formatting ebooks and designing covers.  That’s 20 hours a week, assuming I go back to work at one and “clock out” at five.  If I start writing at eight a.m., I have a four-hour block until noon, six hours if I start at six.  Even at the pace of completing one book per month, I can’t see where the publishing side of the equation takes a full 80 hours, much less more, to get that one book ready to publish.  MAYBE it does if you include all revision as publishing work rather than writing work, but not more.

So let’s all just be honest about what’s being offered.  If you’re a writer who is living off your writing, what a publisher is offering you with that “let me do the rest” line is the chance to have a 24-30 hour work week. 

Maybe for some people that’s a good deal.  For me, I’d rather work the extra 20 hours and get more of the proceeds.  But that’s just me.

2012 Year in Review

Goals failed: 4

Goals accomplished: 0

Words written: approximately 100,000.

Works finished: 0

Works started: 6+

Previously started works touched: 3

Books published: 0

Books sold: 150-200

Blog hits: approximately 5,000

Moments of existential despair regarding writing: at least 2

Moments of renewed hope: at least 3

Resolutions made: 1

KEEP WRITING TILL IT’S DONE.

That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. How marvelous.

Or, How to lose fans and alienate people;

Or, Friendship and editors don’t mix;

Or, How to know you’ve made it, publishing edition;

Or, Playing chicken with the Big 6

I just read what is quite possibly the worst romance I have yet encountered, and considering my old low was the line “Oh, Logan. You’re completely inside me at last. How wonderful,” this new kind of low is impressive.

I am actually not being completely facetious when I say I am impressed. The piece was a work of art in terms of dross. The author had to try pretty damn hard to write a story this poor – there is simply no way this was written with the intention of being good or written this badly by accident. No, no, no, it was clearly meant to a defining moment in bad literature…a sort of Bulwar-Lytton approach, except to an entire novella and not just an opening sentence, a Tarantino/Rodriguez challenge to make the best worst film ever, except in romance writing. (I have not yet identified the Tarantino in this parallel, whose book turned out so secretly awesome her partner accused her of cheating because it was against the rules to write something objectively good…this one is clearly the Robert Rodriguez.)

So what was so terrible about this particular novella?

First, probably that it was by an author whom I trusted based on past work. She’s been slipping for a few years now, but I thought this one might be more inspired. Her name was the reason I bought the collection. She just convinced me to drop her from my list of authors I will purchase without vetting the book first. Or possibly even considering buying again ever.

Then we have the nonexistent characterizations and ham-fisted cultural stereotypes. There’s the southern European princess from the culture of “hot-blooded, sensual” types, and on the other side is the “northern barbarian” with no feelings, blond hair, and a giant penis. The characters do not exist outside of romance cliches–that she is secretly a scholar and he is a misunderstood warrior who wants to be a peacemonger–and the cultures they represent. Also, their two completely different cultures? Exist in some magical realm wherein it takes less than one day to travel from Greece to Germany. On horseback. I guess the reason she made up two countries was because she didn’t have the spare 10 words in her length limit to preface their arrival in the north with something like, “After weeks of travel…” Excuse me, a spare FOUR WORDS.

The plot is almost nonexistent. It’s basically a series of things that happen, where everything magically goes the heroine’s way. For example, she has to find the princess who ran off with the gypsies? The royal guards have been searching for days, but she finds her in one afternoon, no problem! There just…aren’t any real conflicts or problems, only vaguely inconvenient circumstances that, yes, make her make a decision she otherwise wouldn’t but seem to have no heft, no actual sense of threat or consequences.

I am not sure the couple has a single conversation in the course of the story. We are told they do (I think) but never see one. Then we are told that they are in love, but, again, never see any evidence of that. At the end there is a magical plot moppet who appears in her womb after a week of sex, ready to force the hero’s hand if he doesn’t come around on his own! It’s so magic!

The whole thing was also written in a stilted voice, as if even the narrator is bored by this story. As, to my opening point, I am sure the author was.

So.

How does such a lazy, trite, unengaging story get published? Here are my theories:

1. She is friends with her editor, and her editor has no spine to tell her this one blew.

2. She is an author who has always been heavily edited/coached, but she is either with a new publisher or a new editor who didn’t realize until too late in the production process to fix things what kind of writer she is.

3. She has reached the kind of sales status that means people buy her on name recognition, thus her publisher has no vested interest in quality control with her writing because “fans will buy it anyway.” Thus this type of story slips through uncorrected and unchecked because fixing her work is now unnecessary to their bottom line, thus a waste of resources that could be spent correcting the next author they think could attain this sales bracket.

4. She didn’t want to write this piece but was either contractually obligated to or strongarmed by her publisher into doing so with a threat of not getting her contract renewed if she didn’t send them a novella on this theme.

5. She actively tried to write the worst story she could, either as an experiment to see how much editioral attention she still gets or because she wants out of a contract and is hoping her publisher would drop her if she delivered a sub-par product.

Anyone care to toss out any other theories? Any guesses as to what the writer and the story is?  No internet research, please–guess from your own bad reading experiences, whether they fit this plot or not!