@@BrunaCruz792 That's what it always gave lol piracy isn't that big of an issue because those people weren't gonna or were unable to buy the book anyway. and that goes for anything, be it games, movies, tv shows, etc
There is a sub reddit about specific Chinese books and they get so upset about people reading the books through piracy. A lot of users outright say that you don't need to read the books if you can't afford them.
I remember scrolling through twitter one day and seeing someone's post about pirating an indie game because they couldn't afford it. The dev of the game replied to the post with something along the lines of "I will not shame you for fulfilling your desire of enrichment, art, and culture," and I often think about that reply when I see someone getting shamed for pirating books, movies, etc
Also piracy saved a lot of games, movies and books from disappearing completely. They are just not published anymore or not accessible in any subscription services. So if it was not for piracy these pieces of art would’ve ceased to exist
Once I was on the stardewvalley reddit and mentioned that i was using a pirated version because i was a student and didn't have a job and wanted to play it as a form of stress relief and they downvoted me into oblivion lmao
I think that a lot of people who are vehemently anti-piracy fail to understand just how much books cost outside of the western world. I watched a video a few months ago that detailed just how much books cost in certain countries, and it's absolutely astronomical. We're talking one book = one week of food in some countries. If I could remember the video, I'd link it, but sadly I don't. Beyond that, even in America, it can be difficult to get to the library. I am very lucky to live near a great library that I can bike to now, but when I lived one county over (still a relatively well-off county), it was much harder to get there, and their book offerings often had months long waits, especially the popular ones. I had to wait 14 months for the ebook of The Hobbit. To act like piracy is this horrible crime and not something that arises out of need is an ignorant, unempathetic take. Yes, authors deserve to be compensated for their work, but the people who can afford their books WILL buy them. People pirating books are largely people who cannot buy them anyway.
Further, one might want to read a book from an author they don't want to support financially, whether for pleasure, or to understand the author, or whatever. You can try to find it used, but that's not always possible. And, one might rather steal then give their money to someone like j.k. rowling, who will use that money for terrible things.
Thanks for sharing the info about book costs! However, I will say that the vast majority of libraries have online libraries now, typically done through a platform like Libby.
i live in México, ONE (1) BOOK here is between $300-$800 pesos each, that's my entire salary 💀 the cheapest books (editions) i can buy are like $70 pesos each, we don't have a barnes and noble or a library in every freaking corner, piracy sometimes is the only way for me to read as much books as i want
This! I also think people don't realize that for some people, buying a book or having access to libraries/bookstores is not an option. I live in a rural town and there are no libraries here. The closest one is about 2 hours.
@de5072You get it. In mexico 300 pesos is actually more than the daily minimum wage (its not payed by the hour, but by day 6-12hrs). So you need to work for at least 2 days to afford 1 book and not eat or pay housing or public services. It is no wonder that reading culture is only a thing amongst well-off people or the young, this has driven public libraries to close in my city due to the lack of funding and attendance.
@@confusedpozole406 ya seeeeee, en la feria del libro del año pasado me compré La novena casa de Leigh Bardugo, y me salió en $800 el chistecito 😭😭😭 me estoy esperando para comprar el segundo libro
Yes i am in the same situation I am also from Mexico. There is only a small English section in my bookstore and all of them are just not in my price range.
the library thing also really irks me as a south asian, mainly because i live in a metropolitan city in one of the most populas countries in the world & the only books in libraries near me are classics in regional languages, classics in english (both are great but not what the general public reads iykwim) & study material for the various competitive exams in the country. when you tell someone you're going to the local library they are more likely to assume you're preparing for a university entrance exam than assume you like reading for leisure. in these times, either i can save up two weeks worth of spending money as a uni student to buy one book on amazon, or null.
frrr! i'm the same and they straight up just don't have popular contemporary fiction in the libraries. in the us going to the library is seen more as something for everyone so the libraries actually cater to everyone and buy books that people want to read (depending on funding obviously). in india libraries are for studying so they cater to the kind of stuff you would need to study for.
JMHO: just because I can afford to buy a book does not mean that I will. Financial losses to piracy is GREATLY overinflated. Same thing with any digital content. There is always 3 options that the publishing industry conveniently forgets: buy, pirate or do neither. A person could easily pirate 1000 books but would likely never buy that many.
exactly! if someone has decided to pirate something, you were never going to get their money. so where are these so-called financial losses? they might as well be complaining about monopoly money here because it holds as much value as a pirates coin. how can you lose money that was never going to be yours to begin with?
as someone living in a third world country without a good library, online shadow libraries is really the only way i can access most books i wanna read. wouldn't be using them if there's something like Libby here, but that's not the case...
use what's availible in the internationally availible online libraries, then pirate the rest. we have to use the libraries bc if the ppl funding them sees that no-one use them, they'll lose funding instead of expanding ❤
Same. The closest library in my town has to drive there for 5 mins for old, boring, uninteresting books that have been passed down for decades without a care. I swear I was the only one who borrowed the books there 5 years ago and never heard of it ever again. The books I wanted always been from the shadow library which in real life, would have cost me like a fortune to afford all of them just to enjoy due to the price of books in my country skyrocketing due to the capitalists without a care from the government (they’re the same side anyway.). I don’t care about dignity and morals if they’re not going to help my life becoming easier and more affordable at this point.
in the Philippines, one book (paper back) is approximately 600-1200 pesos each. ONE BOOK. for context, that can buy a meal everyday for a week and a half. even as an aspiring author, I encourage people to pirate. reading should be accessible to everyone and if that means pirating then so be it. side note: "go to a library" there are no libraries here. heck, even the libraries at my university have been closed for over three years.
@@matildas3177 I use Deichman and Gutenberg. idk if Sølvberget and BookBites are international, but they are not adress dependent. amazon also have free collections. there are reading apps thay have old classics that have expired copyrights, but theyre usually the sames ones u find on Gutenberg. Google Books also have ab 10 mill free books in their catalogue. for audioboks, there are also many here on yt :)
I'm staunchly pro-piracy. For me it's not an accessibility problem but a I'm poor problem. I've always pirated stuff because of that. Videogames, books, manga, anime, name it. As a minor i didn't have the means to order stuff online and also didn't have the money. Now as an adult i do have the means but still not enough money. But it has proven what i always knew: if i genuinely like the product i will buy it once i can. Most of my pirated videogames I've also bought at some point. I'm making a list with the books I've read and want to buy solely to support the author. Pirated copies are not "not sold copies". An author will not get a dime more if piracy stops. I also don't see how going to the library will help the author much. Yes, at least they get SOME money, but it's not that much more than with piracy, just that it's legal. To me piracy is just an extension of my library. I don't want to buy books without having read them before, if i don't like them it would feel terribly wasteful to dnf them. And my library simply doesn't hold all books, especially English ones. As an aspiring author (almost finished) I've thought about this a lot and just like you I'd rather have pirating readers than none. Obviously it would hurt to find out someone pirated my book, but i do fully understand why someone may do that. Anything else would be hypocritical of me. This is me, from a wealthy european country with access to a library and i wouldn't have to sell a kidney to buy a book. I still don't have enough money to get all books i want to have. Hearing about all the other reasons why a person in very different countries may have to resort to piracy has only solidified my opinion.
I don't personally pirate as I don't need to, I am privileged to live in a country with one of the best library systems in the world and it's totally free, I also have plenty of disposable income so I can afford the books I can't get from my library. If I lived elsewhere with less income, I know I'd pirate. I pirated music in my teens and early 20s after all.
Hi there! “Until” should be replaced by “since”, otherwise you’re saying you’re not broke yet (this is just to help you or others! It’s not an attack 😅, as a non native english speaker myself)
I agree with you so hard! I got shamed in school so often for "only reading on my phone" because that's where I would download my pirated books (I didn't even have a laptop). I was a Russian girl living in Germany and we were so poor I worked part-time just to give the money to my parents. These girls treated me like scum for pirating and would always tell me to at least go to the library but I always wanted to read books in English and my library didn't have any. Because I always had the confidence to read in English and I could always pirate the books, my English just kept improving, which lead to me being really good in school, starting a little tutoring business, and ultimately getting a really good job abroad. I don't know where I would be right now if I hadn't pirated. It sounds dramatic but it literally helped me escape poverty with very little social and economic capital. Just a little side note: When Penguin Books and Random House merged in 2013 and turned into Penguin Random House, it was actually an "illegal" merger. There were legitimate concerns about monopoly in the publishing industry because the two biggest publishers were combining their resources. But of course nobody stopped them because suddenly people in high positions didn't have a problem with it anymore (I wonder how much they were paid). Just recently, Penguin Random House was fortunately banned from acquiring Simon and Schuster due to concerns of shrinking the book market even further. That's how they are able to sell (e-)books at higher and higher prices. There is no more legitimate competition left. About e-books: I bought a Kindle when I was in High School (around 2018) and the English classics were all free. The copyright to these classics has expired, which means when you buy the physical copies you're basically just paying for the paper they're printed on (like you said), so Kindle gave them to you for free. Now, they cost around 3 Euros for me. They literally admitted that these things should be free and then thought "Wait a minute, I can milk this, too!" I still buy books every now and then but I tend to be way more critical in my reviews when I actually paid for the book. If you make me spend 28 Euros on a book it better not be mediocre slop! P.S. Your eyeshadow is so pretty
when i was a kid and we didn't have a lot of money, i pirated all of my books and games, but one of the first things i did once i started working is buy all of the books and games i loved the most in order to support authors and creators. i will always be pro piracy because i know how miserable it can be to not be able to afford something and now when i'm lucky to have more money, i'll be buying books and supporting authors for those who can't
Can we talk about academic papers? They cost a lot, yet people who are doing a real job to produce them are getting nothing. Actually, it’s other way round: authors need to pay to publish, and need to pay even more if they want to make their paper open access. Reviewers (aka people with several degrees and often highly qualified people leading their own research) do their job on voluntary basis. No one even buy physical journals to say that it’s production and shipping cost. They say no individual buys papers, it’s often libraries buy for public use. Because many benefit from a single purchase it costs that much. I’m from a developing country, and our libraries simply don’t buy papers. So people from my country have 2 options: buy a paper super-expensive paper that even might not be even useful, cuz you don’t know what’s inside until you read it; or simply pirate it. And I wouldn’t blame anyone who does so. I believe that scientific discoveries should belong to everyone
that´s one of the most forgotten and hard topics of this subject, the predatory system of scientific publication is the real monster to fight against. Thank a lot for you bringing this topic
Another thing on the topic of libraries not being created equal is that a library card is not always free. They typically go by regions so if, for example, you came from a place where your local library is smaller but you're nearby a larger city with a better-funded library system, you would most likely need to pay a non-resident fee. Which is something you can't expect everyone to be willing to do.
Importing books in my country is now illegal 🤷 so there is that. Privileged americans believing everybody is a privileged american always cracks me up, there was this. video about Duolingo and people were saying in the comments oh i prefer this app or that one, i searched for one of the apps and commented " take into account for this app you have to pay, it doesn't have a free version" and the girl commented, below my comment " it's free with my university " 🤦like that applies to such a small % of people.
In my country it used to cost 50% the price extra in taxes and it was STILL cheaper than buying a translation at a local bookstore. Then amazon k1lled bookdepository 😭
I'm from Argentina, and sometimes its funny for me to see people complaining about piracy when their countries do not experience about 50% monthly inflation, and books are not as expensive as in Argentina, particularly, because their prices do not change weekly
@@LynnHermione Che aviso por las dudas: si comprás libros afuera (ya sea digitales o físicos) los impuestos te los tienen que devolver porque los libros están exentos. Después de hacer la compra tenés que contactar a la tarjeta y te hacen la devolución. (igual una mierda, sí)
Im so gald that you mentioned book banning and the unavaliability of queer literature because, as a queer teen, accessing books about LGBTQ+ people has been so difficult recently. Where I live queer books often just aren't sold, or there are only limited ones being sold. Its also sometimes just frowned upon to borrow/own queer stories because i guess that just doesn't happen. Somehow, the world is getting worse for queer people, and being able to access queer literature online for free is life saving!
Idaho is setting a terrifying precedence rn. It's close enough to wear I live that people are talking about it and we have a mom's for liberty chapter now. It's wild that people still claim book banning isn't really a thing
As someone who is blind, I believe literature should be accessible to everyone. When I published my first book, I made my audiobook available for free here on TH-cam. I would only have a problem with piracy websites if they’re making a profit on my book. I don’t think they are, though. It was through a website that offered books for free to me that I was able to read as many books as I did as a teenager. While these books were not pirated, it doesn’t change the fact that they were accessible to me. Others should have the same access, even if it includes books that are pirated.
I was once called a leech for reading pirated books, even though I explained over and over again that I can't simply afford books in my 3rd world country where books are more expensive than ever. Back then when I was around 11-12, I read over 300 books and that was a huge influence on my development. I doubt I would be on a post grad. getting my masters if it wasn't for the books I've read and how they stimulated me to study hard, I probably wouldn't even be speaking English right now. When I have the money I do like to pay for entertainment, but that's not as easy as it sounds for those medium class people on a 1st world country who called me a leech
i'm always laughing at the arguments people make against piracy. "just buy the book" that book is like 5-10 meals' worth of money depending on how frugal i'm willing to be. i got bills to pay. "go to a library" i don't live in the US. our libraries don't really have fiction books, a lot of them are just uni libraries. also the gov-funded library closest to me is like 2 hrs away. "surely you can find a used copy or something! try harder!" there's no reason to even try when i know the book isn't imported to the country due to having lgbt themes. there's also the point about how piracy might be the only way to preserve the media, whether it's books, songs, movies, etc. like you said someone may suddenly decide you can't access your pdf book files anymore. movies and shows might suddenly disappear from streaming services. if we can't even have the thing permanently to begin with what are we even stealing?
Everytime I see someone who is staunchly against Piracy i just know how privileged this person is, in the global south you learn from a young age pirating is the only way you will have acess to some books, even textbooks to university courses
Appreciate you not mentioning names, I hate it when people blurt out pirate site names so bluntly in TikTok and TH-cam. It’s not about gatekeeping but you can’t really trust and control who is watching.
i completely agree with the "it's giving poor people shouldn't read". i'm indian but i live in the us and have a library card for my local library. where i live in india, the public library doesn't have a lot of books i want to read (this is also true for a lot of people within the us or other affluent countries that have a poorly funded local library). some of them have such a long waitlist that it would take months to get your copy. other library options require a membership fee. some of the books are hard to find in stores (this is true of the us too, but the us has more shipping options). a lot of them are more expensive than in the us when compared to the amount of money people actually make. minimum wage per day is on average 178 rupees, books average about 500 - compare to the us where working a full day at the federal minimum wage will net you $58. living spaces are generally smaller for people who have a lower income and most people can't even afford to keep all the books they read in their home even without getting into how much buying those books would cost. the buying every book you read thing in general is just insanely expensive. i average about 70-80 books every year. i'm not financially well off nor am i poor but i simply can't afford to buy 70-80 books every year and then find somewhere to put them. i do have an e-reader but i don't like supporting amazon (i use it for library books and arcs mostly) and plenty of people are not going to splurge on an ereader just so they can spend even more money buying books they can read specifically only on an ereader. in my experience, people who pirate books are avid readers who just don't have the resources to buy a lot of books. generally "get it legally" in these cases equates to simply not reading the book at all because getting it legally is too expensive. and honestly, i think a lot of it is probably similar to the gaming industry - many of the people who pirate the most are also the most likely to spend their money buying books (in my opinion) because these are the people who love reading. i don't know a single person who only pirates books and never buys. the people who don't buy books are the ones who don't read, not the ones who pirate. with piracy you just get to read more than you could if you always had to spend money. edit: also personally as an aspiring writer, i would MUCH rather have people pirate a book i wrote and read and enjoy it than not read it at all just because they can't afford to buy it legally. this ire about "not supporting writers" should imo be directed at the publishing execs who pay the actual editors of their books like 60k while pocketing all the profits. authors only get about 10-15% royalties off of sales anyway. on a $20 book, they are literally going to be getting $2.
I just finished a stint living in mainland China. I did buy official books when I could and took books out of the libraries of the schools I worked at (if they were children’s or young adult books and the library had them) when I could and I took digital copies out of my library in Canada. This is the reality though: 1. My ereader would not sync through the vpn required for it to work in China, 2. I couldn’t just order from book depository or Amazon into China, 3. Books are really heavy in your luggage (and 3 of the years I lived in China I was under the zero covid policy anyways, so no leaving China), 4. There’s no way to cheaply and reliably send books into China, 5. There were no local libraries in China with English books, 6. In my second city in China I had no idea if there were any book stores that sold any English books, even for cities that did have English books in their book stores the selection was very limited (lots of classics and a few bestsellers in most cases) 7. Many English books I wanted would not be available at all from Taobao / Jindong at all, and if they were they might be exorbitant prices you’d never see in an English speaking country, 8. Sometimes you would want an official copy but all that was available was a copy someone download that they then sent to a print shop (sometimes this was the only choice to have a printed copy of the book or a copy of the book at all) So yeah I did what I realistically could but I stopped feeling guilty if and when I couldn’t. I lived in China during the three years of the zero covid policy, people were not going to take that enjoyment away from me. I think it’s easy to sit on a pedestal and not think of different perspectives, contexts and realities- but the world is different all over. I’d like to be a children’s author one day and if I found out that kids in Russia, Burkina Faso, Spain, Brazil, China, etc had a pirated copy of my book because they couldn’t realistically obtain it any other way, I’d be fine with that. I’d be happier that a child (or person) connected with the story, feelings and ideas, than anything else, in that situation
For digital goods: Buying is Renting, Piracy is Owning As it doesn't just apply to books, but also applies to things like movies and games. The fact of the matter is, at least in the gaming sphere, companies have been pushing for the aspect of "You will own nothing and you will be happy", which as you can imagine people hated hearing that.
to me, piracy is sort of in the same vein of "all publicity is good publicity" yk? like if someone can't afford/access my book the legal routes, i'd rather them pirate it than not read it. because more readers means more reviews, word of mouth, reach, etc.
As an aspiring author, I'd rather somebody pirate what I make than not get to see it at all. Maybe it's because I can't always get books I want that I feel that way, but even if it wasn't like that I'd still prefer that. I obviously want to get paid for what I make, but one of the main reasons I want to write is to give people something to love to get them through tough times. If the only way they can do that is through pirating then by all means I understand. Plus, some people actually end up deciding to buy things only because they were originally able to access them through piracy. Or as said in the video, they may contribute to the rise in popularity. Things can't get popular or be successful if nobody knows it exists.
So, I have to say. I came to this video ready to rage and be pissed. I won't lie. But I really do appreciate your nuanced take and explanation of some of the different factors involved. Things that I choose to be ignorant of in the US. Because though I am not well off by any means and struggle with my bills like many do... I do still have the ACCESS to pretty much any book I want. Which is a privilege. Where I have the money to buy it is another thing, but to not even have access, that is a hard pill to swallow. So though I don't have a good answer. And I do think authors should be compensated for their work. I think there is much more grey than I expected. Thank you for your well thought out video and for giving me something to think about.
I live in a European country in the global north so most of the time I can get books or other media I want for free in legal ways (like libraries or such). That being said, I've honestly pirated my fair share of stuff, I don't mind pirating at all if the media is made by a large company that has more than enough resources to pay its workers/creators. The only thing that I always try to buy is media made by smaller, indie creators, like indie games. I also want to mention that in the case of videogames, piracy can also be a form of preservation since it isn't unheard of videogame companies paywalling older titles under very high fees or straight up shutting down any legal way to access them.
Great video raya. I live in Poland, so I certainly understand what you're talking about with the availability of English books in libraries and in local shops. I'm pretty much forced to use Amazon for any/all English books and this is one argument I felt could be included in your video as well. Amazon is a massive organization treating authors unfairly in various ways, killing local businesses, etc. Should someone in Eastern Europe feel bad if they choose piracy over Amazon? Look also at their pricing strategy. Small time authors, low prices. Big names, skyhigh prices. Brandon Sanderson's books are priced at 10-12 euro per ebook whilst lesser known authors go from 2-6 euro usually. Why? The man sold a billion books already and I still have to pay 10-12 euros for every single ebook? Seeing as lesser known authors with similar sized books can go for 5 euro, it's obviously not a matter of editing, or technical reasons, etc. No, it's just cashing in on a big name. I did movie/music piracy as a teen, now in my late 30's I have no need to pirate books. I focus on ebook sales, smaller authors whose books are just cheaper and have a US library card for foreigners with great ebook availability (but which also costs me 125$ a year, so I'm pretty much spending 4-5$ per book that I loan anyway, which is probably why I am going to stop doing it). Paper books are completely out of the option, 15-20$ a book including shipping when I read 70-80 books a year, haha, yeah right.
Most digital products nowadays stand on “buying doesn’t mean owning” and it really REALLY pisses me off. Hence why I no longer felt iffy about pirating 😂 On the side note, I’m from a developing country with weak currency. Books are crazy expensive especially the new releases. Libraries are outdated and has pretty shitty upkeep 😐 The country itself does not actively promotes reading (no funding) thus libraries are mostly dead for books, people just go there for a space to study most of the time. And like you said, why is the 🏴☠️ website has a more organised and more accessible domain than my local library even through online bffr 💀 Plus point, most of the books I read are either from dead authors or the authors are from the first world country with their country aiding genocide so.
i'm not from the us, and our local book industry (of local authors and such) suffers a lot with us and uk books basically being the only options. i think it's kinda a dick move to pirate local authors, especially indie local authors, who already sell much cheaper books and constantly put them on sales and are approchable to be bought from directly. on the other hand, people knowing about your book, no matter the way, can be wildly beneficial and drive more sales. book piracy is a very complicated topic
yes i’ve also seen a take about people being fine about pirating books of bigger authors like stephen king, cause the guy is definitely not gonna go hungry because of it, it’s much different when it comes to indie authors though
Thank you for talking about an issue that a lot of people seem to ignore. For context: I spent my teen years in the US, and I grew up an avid reader, frequenting our public and school libraries. But I had to move back to my country when I was 16. Here are the issues that I've faced concerning book accessibility; 1- My city is known for being VERY religious and conservative. It's known for being an education center for Muslim scholars from all around the world. It's most certainly not going to be easy finding all the books that I would like to read, especially if they contain subjects that don't agree with our religion. I can still find the books if I were to look hard enough, but when we first moved back it's was practically impossible to find any English books. 2- We have libraries, literally everywhere but three points. First, most libraries carry only religious books, about interpreting religious text, or about rulings, or about laws. I don't even know how they work or who funds them. I'm NOT going to find like Call Me By Your Name or any LGBTQ books causally chilling on a shelf here. The culture here in general isn't very focused on reading or books or anything close. Second, the whole scholars thing is mostly men, so it'd be really weird and out of place for me to even frequent these libraries alone whenever I want, I'd need my dad or brother with me for things to go smoothly (and neither are interested in books or have the time). Third, here the word library also means an office supplies store, so there are more of those than actual libraries with only books. 3- The whole language thing, most books here are in Arabic (I don't enjoy books in Arabic). Bookstores aren't as common, and they all carry the same books.The rare few English books that you would find are going to be the classics (which I've either read/maybe don't want to read). Someone already mentioned this, and I think she did too, in the video. 4- As it is apparent from my previous points, I still live with my parents (they still see me as a child altho in the US I'm old enough to drink). I don't have a job and I get all my money from them. Cause that's just how it works here. If I'm going to be buying books my parents are going to be asking questions. I bought Crime and Punishment once (which I never finished btw), when I translated the title for them they gave me the biggest side eye ever, and the whole ride home was just quiet in a bad way. 5- There have been a couple of times where I was fortunate enough to go to book festivals and other cities to buy books. They were cheap which was a good thing, but most were printed by a publishing house differenat from the original copy, some random publishing house in the middle east. You could tell it was really bad quality, and I'm very certain that the author didn't receive much if any financial support from me in that way. 6- There's always buy the ebook/ buy a copy online method, again, I live with my parents, all my money comes from them, I have no bank account. We all know the running prices of books online new or used isnt all that cheap. And to add, a lot of those websites don't even work here. I would need to tell them all about the book, explain how I'm going to to benefit why I'm reading it, and bunch of other things that I simply don't want to go through (cause they might not let me read anymore). Also, any shipping to this city is going to cost a fortune. What I'd all of this and I end not even liking the book?? 7- To this day, I have never found physical original good quality copies of books, not used nor new. There is no direct or indirect way for me to support the authors that I love. 8- I'm also a med student, on my ipad right now, I have almost 90 textbooks. I haven't paid for any of them. I'm using these, I've used most of them in my studies at one point or another. Some are from my colleagues some I've found myself, we share these with each other through out the year, looking through them daily. I will be working in a hospital next year (God willing). I will be saving lives and helping people get better. It feels like a Robinhood situation almost, is it wrong ? Would the authors of my textbook appose me using them without laying to literally cure other humans ??? (Someone else also mentioned this) Edit: I'd like to say thank you Raya for talking about this. I've been struggling the past several years with this issue, mostly alone. Thank you for shedding light on a global problem that a lot of people don't even realize.
The markup on digital books is insanity. The only logical response is piracy and as a teacher, my students have no library access during the summer, so on the DL I deff teach them how to pirate books and movies as well as career related software like adobe and fl studios. Some students have learned Spanish, Japanese, Korean etc through this as well as boxing and martial arts books its not just novels. I'm in one of the poorest states with the highest illiteracy rates and lack of transportation to underfunded libraries. I sleep fine at night providing for my students
Honestly books cost so much even in the US (like $20) that I’ll pirate the book first and if I like it enough I’ll buy a physical copy to support the author
I didn't have the means to buy books, digital or physical, and books and other things can be expensive in my country (Brazil) so I opted for pirate websites to download and read books. But when I finally had some income and money, I immediately bought books, including the ones I had already read in a pirated way on the Internet. Today I buy books, even those I have read, and those I haven't read, because thank God, I have been able to have more financial means.
I'm not done watching BUT when I was younger, I started pirating books and games and many media I was a part of I only experienced thanks to piracy. As I got older I finally got the chance to support all of these things in a financial manner. Also yep, libraries don't really work as a way to regularly read in my country. At most, if your school/university has books you want to read, that's how you get to read.
11:25 In France, the price of books is regulated by the government. The country prevents Amazon or any other online store, from selling e-Books much cheaper than printer books, but also for selling printed books cheaper than in a physical store. That's why if you want to buy a physical book in France, unless it is second hand, it will be the same price everywhere, whether it's Amazon or your local book store.
I would ask where you're from, but I have an inkling we have the same collective experience here in the middle of Central Europe 😅😅 i don't know about other places around us, but in Hungary, books are at ridiculous prices, especially if you want to read them in English. I had so many bad experiences with translated books that I would rather stick to the original where I can. And if we take away the aspect of the price, another thing that always posed a problem for my book-loving and wannabe-collector soul is the lack of space in our homes. I grew up in a 800 square feet flat in a 10-storied apartment building with four other people and two dogs, i didn't have my own room until I was 15, I didn't even have a book case. I literally had NOWHERE to put my books and my mom never wanted to buy books, not just because of the price but for the lack of space. Having more than two bookshelves is a freaking luxury in our small apartments for a family of 6. So yes, I will always be pro-piracy for so many reasons. Amazing video by the way, I'm so glad I found you! 😊😊
OMG you hit it on the nail! I came from that background where every dollar found was meant for gas or food. I would not be the reader I am now if it was not for piracy. Now, I am well off and am able to buy books. So I do, but I am not ashamed that piracy got me access to books growing up. Which allowed me to grow out of poverty. Which meant I left to another country who even loves libraries and now I read nonstop. I buy my books, I pay for my library subscription. It is indeed not the problem of the poor kids needing access to books that authors are so badly paid.
I live in the third biggest city in my country. There are libraries, but the TWO public ones only have academic material, not even the classics. The state university has a lot of libraries, but apart from only having academic material they're only for students and teachers. The only library I've been to that had any non-academic works was in a private university and the selection was extremely limited. So the "don't pirate, go to a Library" card is useless to me. When the cost of a book is more than what you make in a day, and the choice is between eating and buying a book, guess what I'll choose. And maybe if it was just me I would choose to not eat for a day, but I have a daughter. And dogs. I try to get free books legally as much as I can (ARCs, stuff your Kindle, offers, etc.), but sometimes there's no choice.
If you do have some money, but perhaps not full-price money (or, like me, just really hate Amazon), I highly recommend emailing/DMing the author. Not all but many of them are happy to send you a copy directly for a reduced price, or free in exchange for a review perhaps. Don't beg, obviously, but be honest and professional when asking.
that’s great, but unfortunately i heard that a lot of them don’t really send out copies to anyone outside of the states, uk and some major cities of europe maybe but don’t quote me on that, i haven’t tried asking for myself yet
A lot of indie/self published authors have ebooks for sale on their author websites and they’re not only cheaper but all the money goes towards the author and not a third party platform, so readers on a budget should check the personal websites of authors they’re interested in as a much cheaper option might be available. Likewise, a lot of these authors will have big discounts during Black Friday and other common retailer sales event. Honestly, I’d say the biggest hurdle to simultaneously acquiring cheaper books for readers and higher profits for authors is the unchallenged monopoly Amazon has as the primary search engine for readers to easily discover new books to buy. Currently any self publishing author has their entire career (and thusly, their capacity to earn enough money to survive) cripplingly reliant on Amazon’s search engine and its “similar book recommendations” feature funnelling readers to their novels. The solution for readers getting cheaper/affordable books is definitely going to require finding ways for authors to get their novels reliably discovered by their target audience via means outside of Amazon’s search engines, but as of right now, no such thing exists nor does it seem as if it’s likely to exist anytime soon.
This works especially well for scientific papers. I have found almost all authors hate the scientific journal system and how much they charge (to read AND publish) and will happily just send you PDFs haha
I love this video! I'm from a third-world country but read English books, and a lot of books aren't available here, and if they are, they're insanely expensive. So, I end up pirating a lot and so I love the way you explain this in your video; I don't see how it's really stealing when I wouldn't be able to afford/get my hands on the book(s) anyways.
As someone who lives in a third world country with NO English books, really bad library access with bad selections, and where every imported book is upwards of 30 dollars even if it is a paperback, yeah, I will rely on certain sites to read. I support the author by talking of their book, spreading it online, engaging with the authors, buying a small selection a year etc. When I had access to English books in school, or when I’ve traveled and gotten friends with library cards etc, I’ve used libraries. Basically: if I can help it, I will. But this conversation conveniently silences the whole point of those who rely on this system: we don’t have other options.
I love supporting authors by attending book festivals, signings and talks, reviewing their books, requesting libraries buy them and recommending them to my friends. All of this supports authors far more than simply buying their book, and the anti piracy girlies never talk about these options! I almost never buy new books (especially popular ones like acotar) because i know there will be 6 million of them in second hand shops in 2 years and i dont want to contribute to that. I wait to buy them second hand myself, or i pirate them 🤷♀️
The authors aren't getting as much money as you think. Most ofmits going to the publisher. Those who can afford it go to the authors pateron and give them money directly
I totally agree with this take and I think that the influencers complaining about piracy on social media are simply wasting their time. Piracy is not the problem, it is the _symptom _ of a larger issue.
A lot of other media gets pirated and no one bats an eye, but when it's books suddenlly you are a horrible person for pirating. Ebooks are expensive (ridiculosly expensive not just 'privileged people can afford it' expensive) and libraries and not available and not wildly stocked everywhere. 'Go to the library' is just not an option where I live, because even if I can find a library they would not have much beyond some outdate academic books and classics (which are pretty much free download anyway)
I live in Brazil, here a book costs around R$50,00, for the paperback or R$100,00 for the hardcover. Even more if it’s in another language. A meal costs something like R$10,00 if homemade, or R$30,00 if you eat in a food truck or simple restaurant. We can eat 5 to 10 meals with the price of 1 single book. And I haven’t even counted the rent prices, because the majority of the population don’t own a house or an apartment. I live in São Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil, and we don’t have libraries everywhere, and what we have is usually the 3 or 5 of a book series, or the Brazilian Classics, or religious books. A LGBTQIA+ person would have a lot of work to find books with representation. And yet, our groups of sharing books have a “international authors only” request, we support local authors, since their books are usually R$5,00 or even for free on KU, and that’s the way we have of trying to help our authors that are not worldwide known. But the majority of the reading population would never be able to access the culture, leisure, knowledge if we could not use piracy to help us.
In Bangladesh, a country of readers, an original, imported English book costs 9 usd minimum (that's 1k bdt). To most of us, that might seem very cheap for a brand new book, but it is too expensive for locals if you take their purchasing power into account. That's why you will see that most people read pirated hard copies of books that are being sold at more affordable prices. As a writer, I don't mind this. I would rather more people read my work. It's not like these people would have been customers anyway. It is a shame of course that reading is not affordable, but that requires systemic change. In the meantime, we should not discourage literacy among people who need it the most. Reading can be an escape. Reading can be empowering. Literature can be a huge driver of social change and mobility.
Yo-ho, yo-ho! A pirate's life for me... My local library used to house thousands of books, but then they moved into some new, ugly building. Now, they have just a few hundred books and lots of empty space. I know some people in various countries like to open up small libraries in front of their homes where others can leave and/or take books for free. It's a great way for people to share with each other and read a variety of subjects and genres.
the CEO of valve(a major gaming platform) , Gabe Newell said of piracy “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
I usually buy what I want even if my income isn't the greatest and book prices have risen so much, I also use book apps to listen to books but the only option for me to read books in English and keep living in the flat and not under the bridge is to pirate them lol cuz it's russia and while they sell physical copies for astronomical prices , I can't buy an e-version somewhere cuz russia is under sanctions and it's literally impossible, so piracy does exist because there's a demand for it and it will stay with us
I jsut found your channel and have been watching a few of your videos, and wow, how refreshing it is to hesr someone with an actual worldwide consideration/ take on like... any topic lol. I'm from Argentina and really into this genre of books stuff on youtube or video essays and yeah, it does feel like we're always only listening to US / UK /"main" Europe at most people, and listening to you i just realized how many takes from people with different perspectives of the world we are missing! etiher way, on this topic. I live in Buenos Aires, and we are one of the cities with the highest book shops to people ratio in the world, and it does feel like we value books a lot, but like. anyone younger than 30yo is probably pirating before buying anything; stuff is expensive, our economy is a mess snd everything is super unstable, so when you buy a book it's a present or one you've already pirated and read and now you just want to own it ♥. also, I don't know a single persin who pays for ebooks here. if you're reading in digital you're pirating, but apart from the economic reasons it does come hand in hand with what you said, it's just not as common to have a credit card available to make online expenses at all. nowadays that has hugely shifted with subscriptions based products like netflix etc, but people don't use their credit cards for "single buy" digital things like ebooks or music. that one is another one that I don't understand how it works in the first world at all, and I think it's just cause of regional reasons. people in the US?? pay for music on iTunes or whatever?? like, for a single digital song or album *you're paying*?? when you've got free Spotify or TH-cam and it's exactly the same cause it's not like you're "owning" anything in any other way?? also not sure if this is just an iTunes thing that is related to Apple products which are just not as much a thing here, or what. but yeah, it baffles me when i see artists in the US being like "buy the single!" and it's like. just a digital music thing that you want me to pay for when it is also available for free? anyways! so glad I found your channel! love your book stuff but it's been particularly interesting hearing you talk about something like this and bringing what feels like more of an experience of us, the not "first world countries" people and all. it's a very much lacking and needed perspective lol. thank you!
Excellent video! I agree that saying "don't pirate" comes from a place of privilege. Now I want to clarify something that always comes up in this discussion - not defending it fyi just offering information. The reason why digital books (and videogames too) are the same price as their physical version is because if they offer them cheaper, they're competing against themselves and may get the shops owners angry. Books and console games still depend a lot for sales on the casual buyer that is browsing Walmart.
In a gaming piracy video I heard the speaker quote someone that piracy is a service issue, and I agree with him. Why are people pirating? It's because its more accessible compared to the legal one. If you have the way and means to purchase books or whatever do so, but if not pirate away.
I listen to all of my books because of my disability and when a book isn't available a) from the subscription service i have (similar to bookbeat) b) on the free app i'm only allowed to access because of said disability and c) from the library, what IS a girl supposed to do? (she pirates. that's what she does)
Another reason to pirate a book is because you don’t want to support the publisher or author. Some years ago a saw this tweet: „It’s not stealing if your stealing from JKR.“ 😂
i find it so annoying when people try and claim a moral high ground for being against piracy and not realizing the immense privilege that that represents. especially when they're the same people who'll have a billion library cards just to avoid waiting a week or two. I live in canada so I'm very privileged in many ways but even here it's a problem. book prices have gotten absolutely ridiculous here and that's in addition to how expensive shipping gets here and how screwed we've been getting about groceries, people aren't made of money right now. my local library is tiny. it's mostly outdated french books targeted at kids and old folk neither of which I'm interested in reading. that also assumes that the library is accessible in the first place. mine doesn't even have a libby. their online thing have legit 5 books and 3 of them are instruction manuals💀 love that you brought up older books too because they can be so expensive to buy secondhand and other times the only way to get your hands on them is through those sites. seriously wtf is up with ebook prices it's not even like an audiobook where they have to produce something else publishers are being greedy in academia it's such a problem as well. I remember a professor straight up telling us (with a wink wink) to get the ebook whatever way we could because they get so insanely pricey. plus academic articles are so often behind paywalls that get zero profit to the authors when people don't have access to media this is what's inevitably going to happen, poor people deserve entertainment as well. especially with how amazon acts (not actually owning anything, killing bookstores, etc) and the uncertainty around media these days
although I completely understand the authors' frustration with piracy in many cases there genuinely isn't any other option - for example I would have never had the chance to become a huge fan of manga and various Chinese novels of it wasn't for i11egal fan translations. Most of my absolute favorite works don't have an official translation to English (let alone my native language). Plus many works have ended up getting official translations later on after becoming very popular thanks to fan translations so piracy can actually end up being quite helpful to the author in this way... Also I'm way more open to saving up and buying a physical copy of a book I've already read and I know I love than buying a book I know nothing about and might end up not liking
As an author, one of my goals is to make my books available to ANYONE. And there are a lot of different ways I accomplish that. One of which is giving the book away (where they actually OWN it, not rent it) to anyone who tells me they can't afford my books. There's also libraries and subscription services. But as far as I'm concerned, all you have to do is ask. Plus I offer every single reader who signs up for my newsletter the ability to join my reader team, and then they get everything for free.
Thank you so much for this nuanced approach to the problem! I fully support authors getting paid for their work but it seems to me that very often the choice is not between paying and not paying but between not paying and not reading at all. I live in Russia and half of the books I read growing up were pirated because they were either not available here or way too expensive. But I still remember the joy of being able to order a book from abroad for the first time. And nowadays I once again turn to piracy because more and more books are getting banned. I genuinely believe that, generally, if people could buy books, they would.
i didn't finish the video yet, but you're already right about everything you said 😊 i'm an academic outside of the usa and the european union. academic books are already more expensive than literature, stories etc. also, there are not many translations from english to our language. so you have the only option to buy from amazon and to pay for the much higher currency rate on top of the added custom tax. now you're paying triple of that book's cost. there are many good university libraries but they're slow buying all the new studies. and the only option here left is piracy. i really don't feel bad about that, because the only ones gaining from book publishing in the academia is the publishing companies 🤷🏻♀️
I live not in usa and get paid $300 every month. A bit less of a third of that goes to credit, plus I have to pay my bills, eat food etc. Digital copies of books can cost up to $7 in case of the biggest ones, especially if I want audio version for accessibility purposes (and I'm not even planning to rent books because I don't like the concept of renting digital stuff). It's a bit better with paperbacks, but it's harder for me to read them. There are no libraries in my disctrict, so I would have eather to go elsewhere (plus $ for transportation, knee arthritis is cool like that), somehow forge student pass to get access to big library or to be stuck with children library and both of those variants are after work that drains me completely. Yeah, I'll stick to piracy.
Honestly I wish I could afford ebooks and comics. Sorry 10$ for an ebook is more than paper books cost here and I don't have space anyway. The choice is either don't read it all or pirate it. (Here you can literally get life-long imprisonment for saying no to a cop in any context. I wish I were joking. And exactly 0 people were arrested for piracy.)
Thank you for this interesting video! Out of curiousity, how do you think a self published author can make their work more accessible for people who may not be able to afford it? I have self published my own book, and my main goal was to try and make it as affordable as I can (with the ebook and digital library versions in particular.) It's my first time doing this, so I want to learn how I can improve. Do you have any suggestions on how I could make my book more accessible to people who may not be able to afford it?
I've seen authors directly sell their ebooks/audiobooks from their website for a reduced price than Amazon. Also some have Patreon accounts where the subscribers get early access to their books before Amazon/wide release
As an indie author myself, I care more about people getting to read Prince of Tanimara than making money off it. I have given out over 100 physical copies in the hopes that the readers pass them on. I discovered my favorite author by borrowing a book from someone. The author did NOT receive a royalty for that but they received a fan for life. I have since purchased, reviewed and read ALL of his books. There is a website that took an ebook version of my book, Prince of Tanimara and is giving it away without my permission. I did not pursue a DMCA takedown because this person believes in the democratization of all literature and encourages people to leave reviews and purchase it if they can. This is wonderful IMO. The reader and the author both win. I would really like to make back what I put in to publishing so that I can keep publishing but the more who read it, the more reviews I get and the more popular my series becomes. Ultimately, that is what is important. Its not a job, its a passion.
This is certainly something I think of as an author. The thing is, there are a bunch of legitimate places to read for free (Inkitt, Royal Road, Yoru, Campfire, Ritoria (shout out to their engaged readers), etc. With these, I might not earn money, but I do get to see reading stats, which gives me dopamine, at least. Then, if people enjoy my books & *can* support me, I have a Ko-Fi, or Yoru & some others offer tips jars. I'm not financially struggling, but I probably can't afford to keep getting cover illustrations, or paying for editing, etc if people never pay. My hope is I'll find enough readers over the years that a tiny percent who can & choose to support me will help me keep writing in the long run. I love doing it, but I have to prioritise it around paying work & being a mum. Earning would let me tell others it's worth my time. Otherwise, I will just keep chipping away at my stories & hope to reach those who will enjoy them.
As an American reader. I can understand your point about some US readers fail to consider different cultures and countries. I have read pirated books and watched pirated movies. During a period of my life where I couldn’t afford food.
i have a friend who has extremely strict catholic parents, pirating books is the only way she could read things not “approved” of by them. obviously we should try our best to support artists/writers for their hard work, but there are people who just can’t do that and they shouldn’t be judged for it
I don’t care if it’s "illegal" in 20 years no one will remember the copyright, but I will remember fondly all the shows and media I consumed and how much fun I had. Fvck the capitalists lol
Hon the author work is the author job why not make own book? Why steal from someone else? Are you less capable then the author that you steal? Stealing is wrong
1. as a Hungarian myself I feel such second-hand embarassment that the world has to hear about us through news like this T.T 2. my view on the topic: the first fact we have to take into consideration: buying books is a novelty and it's getting more and more into the luxury hobby cathegory as the book prices (and living expenses in general) go up with the only thing not following being our salaries. I read tons of books and buying each and every one of them would make me go bankrupt in a blink of an eye. Also as you said, most books are only available in translation - here I want to note that translation quality can make a great book miserable if not done right! very important thing to take into consideration - and original language books can cost 2x 3x the normal price here. I also found that no matter how much "research" I do, I can still run into books I don't resonate with and regret buying.... but because I do want to support the writers close to my heart, the best I can do is buy a real copy of books I read and loved. I guess book piracy is - just like many other things in life - a forever grey area....
In the past, when I lived abroad and couldn't access books as easily, I kept track of all of them. Then started buying them physically once I was in the US. I try my best to offset as much of the impact as I can, when I can. And if I ever get my book written, I'll probably distribute it myself lol
in the specific sphere of people for whom books are *not* prohibitively expensive and inaccessible, i think also that transposing the hardline "i pirate all my movies because fuck 'em" stance onto books is not entirely workable. Like, i also dont think the hardline "fuck 'em" stance is entirely workable for other mediums (indie projects exist in all mediums), but when the vast majority of popular movies and TV and so on are produced by major corporations for reasons of financing, youre less likely to materially make someone's life better by buying their movie. The cast and crew already got paid, and their royalties are extremely minimal. Whereas a book, like... oftentimes thats the work of One Person, no investors and minimal publisher advances if any at all, and theyre directly relying on sales to earn back payment for the labor they put into it. So i think that a take on ethical piracy needs to account for what specific book you're pirating - is the author crowdfunding for their medical bills on tumblr, or do they live in a literal castle? The second one can definitely be included in "pirate their works because fuck 'em," or at least they would if they weren't also subject to "for the love of god don't monetarily or publicly engage in their works because theyre leveraging every iota of their money and clout to hurt trans people as much as possible." The first author will directly benefit from a book sale in a way that, like, a staff writer with a similar financial situation writing for a TV show won't benefit from the purchase of the show. So I do understand why book authors might take a hardline no-piracy stance. Anyways that's all, again, if one has the money and ability to to so, which is of course not the norm worldwide, so this comment is not meant to contradict any of the video. I just think, if someone with the means is debating which media to buy versus pirate, it's worthwhile to take into account which specific people are going to benefit from which purchases.
One other thing is that it can be hard to find good printing quality these days. I do buy a lot of physical books, but if I'm gonna spend my money I want something that lasts me years even if I read it more than once.
I haven't finished watching the video yet, but my stance has always been that it's only immoral to pirate if either the book/movie/tv show is available at the library (within reasonable distance to you) or you can afford to buy it (caveat being there is a means to access it legally in your country). If neither of those two conditions are met, then I believe a person has a right to pirate whatever they're trying to read or watch.
I pirated a bunch of books I already read & loved enough to buy but I'd rather have the security of having a copy on my Holy USB (aka the USB with my thesis that I attached a bell to it so I couldn't lose it). I experienced my fav fanfics being deleted way too many times to just trust trust online sources to stay where I last saw them...
I'm pro piracy. A lot of content is over priced and then I can't im good conscience support some content creators even if I'm curious about points in their works. Then the paywalled academic and research works. Are we now supposed to be rich to build and engage with any body of knowledge? And I've not even started in on geoblocked works
THANK YOU. It's insane how some rich influencers loooove to go off on people who pirate books. Sorry, I don't live in the US! I finally was able to buy a Kindle last year and if I were to buy every e-book I read on it last year alone, it would be in the thousands in my currency! I read 20 books last year and only three were physical, legally bought copies. Was I supposed to abstain and just read those three books? I want to read most of them in english, and English copies are an arm and a leg in my country! I'm poor! I'm sure me pirating Sarah J Maas won't make a dent in her pocket, be so serious rn
I discovered piracy (tv, movies and books) while growing up in Italy. I did not grow up in a reader heavy housold and as a result I was chastized when I'd splurge on books (before you come for me my library simply was not well stocked, and the italian library system was not as advanced as today, also I lived in a small coutry town). Also most of the tv shows I wanted to see or enjoyed were behind paywall streaminig services that my mom could not afford or were not accessible in italy, not to mention the extensive delays due to dubbing. Piracy allowed me to master a foreign language to the point it helped me immensly securing a good job. It's important to note that when I really liked a book I'd purchase it to back that author and today I do not engage in piracy anymore, I am an adult now and I am very happy to pay for my media. But I still remember the teenager that 13 years ago (I was 15 :') ) was very slowly reading shatter me, the selection etc etc.
I live in a country that doesn't have that much access to fiction bookstores. Most only sell religious or self help texts, and when you can find good books, they come pretty pricy. I try to buy as much as i can, especially when i travel abroad, but most people in my country don't have that option. Things like this are the only source of literature.
If i like a book that i pirated, I'll buy a physical copy once i have the money to do so. I don't have the money to buy books i may not enjoy, and i love rereading books. I'll also recommend books i prated to others, and they usually buy a copy that they wouldn't have otherwise. My local library is severely underfunded and doesnt have a lot of the books i want to read available. I use Libby sonetimes, but the waitlists for books i want are so long that i usually wont end up reading them by the time its available. Also, Libby doesn't have every book either.
My local library has been redesigned to make it more of a communal space. Whilst this is a great idea in one sense, in reality what has happened is the building has more space for people, seating, computers for public use and a gallery space, around 60-70% of the books that originally took up that space are now in storage with no public access. It used to be such a good library but I’ve stopped going there now because there’s no point.
where I live, books cost the equivalent of 4-8 hours of work, not that expensive comparing with other countries, but still is expensive on the long term, especially if you like to read a lot of books per year. I always choose to first download it on z-library and then if i really like the book and want to re-read it later, i buy the physical copy. even my kindle I bought it thinking of reading the downloaded epub files, I only buy the free classical ones available, cause usually the ebook price is close to the same as the physical book, not really worth it either
@@chisomo8088i recommend you do a search on ebooks in the piracy subreddit and find your answers there. after z-lib was almost kneecapped, you’ll understand why people aren’t quick to give up their sources nowadays, but you should find what you need if you know your way around a search engine or two.
For most of us It's not piracy or buying, it's pirating or not buying. I WILL buy things from artists I want to support, many copies even. I uave a wishlist of books to buy going back YEARS. When I was lucky enough to travel abroad I got half a dozen books in the airport alone. But buying a new book that I haven't read is too much of a risk. And even if I can afford ONE book i can not afford the 30+ books I read a year.
If they want to discourage piracy, they should stop overpricing digital books. Why is a digital book nearly as much as a physical copy? They don’t have to pay for printing or shipping. It’s a rip off. IMHO. Personally, I buy physical copies of books. I like to have a hard copy, but at least half the time, I buy them used. How is that helping the author? Make digital books affordable to the masses. Mass market paperbacks made books more accessible and it led to a boom in book sales.
I'll give my insight on some of the topics as a person who lives in Brazil 1- Library I live in a really big city, however, I personally don't know many libraries around my house. The ones I do know are 1. too far away, so I have to spend a lot on public transportation (and yes, we have to pay for that), or 2. they don't have a good catalog. Not a lot of modern books, very few new releases 2- Prices Books are ridiculously expensive here, and It's not even an exaggeration. It really has been a luxury to buy books these past years, especially books in other languages. I'm fortunately able to buy some, but not as much as I would want to read 3- National books There's an unspoken rule here that most who utilize piracy follow, that is to not pirate our national books, because authors from here receive so little from publishing that pirating will actually damage the sales and the author profits, so most here don't do that I'm not blindly defending this practice or anything, btw. I'm speaking from what I see around me every day
I mainly buy books at barns and noble or goodwill, however, I will pirate books on occasion as it’s convenient sometimes. If I have to wait a week to receive a book because I can’t pick it up that day and I want to read it and it’s my day off, I’m gonna pirate it. I mainly read books about witchcraft, and I don’t feel comfortable with my books in the open. I have my existing physical books I’ve bought hidden, so I’ve started getting ebooks to read. Sure, I could purchase those, but I refuse to pay for something that’s not a physical book. I pirated in middle school because I loved to read, but my family was middle class and we could not afford to buy books for me. I did utilize the library a lot, but the specific books I wanted most of the time were not at my location and had to be shipped from another library, and had a wait list. I started just pirating them so I could have access. I was unschooled and had little education, but I was always a strong reader and spent a lot of time reading. I don’t think a young adult who wants to learn and read, but doesn’t have money should be denied access.
In Turkey we were able to buy books more but now they are more expensive because of inflation, everything related to paper is expensive. i remember buying 7-8 online but now that money only can buy me 1 book maybe. So yeah we can buy it but its too expensive to spend it every time
When you pointed out "It's giving poor people shouldn't read." I was gagged. So true😂
😂🙈
This.
@@BrunaCruz792 That's what it always gave lol piracy isn't that big of an issue because those people weren't gonna or were unable to buy the book anyway. and that goes for anything, be it games, movies, tv shows, etc
There is a sub reddit about specific Chinese books and they get so upset about people reading the books through piracy. A lot of users outright say that you don't need to read the books if you can't afford them.
I remember scrolling through twitter one day and seeing someone's post about pirating an indie game because they couldn't afford it. The dev of the game replied to the post with something along the lines of "I will not shame you for fulfilling your desire of enrichment, art, and culture," and I often think about that reply when I see someone getting shamed for pirating books, movies, etc
Also piracy saved a lot of games, movies and books from disappearing completely. They are just not published anymore or not accessible in any subscription services. So if it was not for piracy these pieces of art would’ve ceased to exist
"Culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it"
Goated.
That was Hakita, the developer of Ultrakill, and he's based
That was Hakita, the developer of Ultrakill, and he's based
Once I was on the stardewvalley reddit and mentioned that i was using a pirated version because i was a student and didn't have a job and wanted to play it as a form of stress relief and they downvoted me into oblivion lmao
I think that a lot of people who are vehemently anti-piracy fail to understand just how much books cost outside of the western world. I watched a video a few months ago that detailed just how much books cost in certain countries, and it's absolutely astronomical. We're talking one book = one week of food in some countries. If I could remember the video, I'd link it, but sadly I don't. Beyond that, even in America, it can be difficult to get to the library. I am very lucky to live near a great library that I can bike to now, but when I lived one county over (still a relatively well-off county), it was much harder to get there, and their book offerings often had months long waits, especially the popular ones. I had to wait 14 months for the ebook of The Hobbit. To act like piracy is this horrible crime and not something that arises out of need is an ignorant, unempathetic take. Yes, authors deserve to be compensated for their work, but the people who can afford their books WILL buy them. People pirating books are largely people who cannot buy them anyway.
Further, one might want to read a book from an author they don't want to support financially, whether for pleasure, or to understand the author, or whatever. You can try to find it used, but that's not always possible. And, one might rather steal then give their money to someone like j.k. rowling, who will use that money for terrible things.
exactly 💁🏻♀️ i for example stopped supporting zionist authors with my coin
Thanks for sharing the info about book costs! However, I will say that the vast majority of libraries have online libraries now, typically done through a platform like Libby.
In my country a book usually costs the same as a day of labor.
@@melindaszarics8642 not everyone has access to plataforms like libby 😕
I saw a comement once that i think is apt it says: "when buying isnt owning, pirating isnt stealing"
thissssss
10009% this. I’m so over the subscription model where we pay just repeatedly lose access to the things we enjoy reading/watching/hearing.
i live in México, ONE (1) BOOK here is between $300-$800 pesos each, that's my entire salary 💀 the cheapest books (editions) i can buy are like $70 pesos each, we don't have a barnes and noble or a library in every freaking corner, piracy sometimes is the only way for me to read as much books as i want
This! I also think people don't realize that for some people, buying a book or having access to libraries/bookstores is not an option. I live in a rural town and there are no libraries here. The closest one is about 2 hours.
@de5072You get it. In mexico 300 pesos is actually more than the daily minimum wage (its not payed by the hour, but by day 6-12hrs). So you need to work for at least 2 days to afford 1 book and not eat or pay housing or public services.
It is no wonder that reading culture is only a thing amongst well-off people or the young, this has driven public libraries to close in my city due to the lack of funding and attendance.
Bro los libros estan bien caros 🥲 quiero leer la saga de Red Rising pero solo el primer libro esta en 700 pesos.
@@confusedpozole406 ya seeeeee, en la feria del libro del año pasado me compré La novena casa de Leigh Bardugo, y me salió en $800 el chistecito 😭😭😭 me estoy esperando para comprar el segundo libro
Yes i am in the same situation I am also from Mexico. There is only a small English section in my bookstore and all of them are just not in my price range.
the library thing also really irks me as a south asian, mainly because i live in a metropolitan city in one of the most populas countries in the world & the only books in libraries near me are classics in regional languages, classics in english (both are great but not what the general public reads iykwim) & study material for the various competitive exams in the country. when you tell someone you're going to the local library they are more likely to assume you're preparing for a university entrance exam than assume you like reading for leisure. in these times, either i can save up two weeks worth of spending money as a uni student to buy one book on amazon, or null.
thank you for sharing ❤️
frrr! i'm the same and they straight up just don't have popular contemporary fiction in the libraries. in the us going to the library is seen more as something for everyone so the libraries actually cater to everyone and buy books that people want to read (depending on funding obviously). in india libraries are for studying so they cater to the kind of stuff you would need to study for.
as a south indian i agree
girl r u talking ab bd
@@Atarxzhii_hoshias another fellow Indian viewer from East, I agree, it sucks man
JMHO: just because I can afford to buy a book does not mean that I will. Financial losses to piracy is GREATLY overinflated. Same thing with any digital content. There is always 3 options that the publishing industry conveniently forgets: buy, pirate or do neither. A person could easily pirate 1000 books but would likely never buy that many.
exactly! if someone has decided to pirate something, you were never going to get their money. so where are these so-called financial losses? they might as well be complaining about monopoly money here because it holds as much value as a pirates coin. how can you lose money that was never going to be yours to begin with?
as someone living in a third world country without a good library, online shadow libraries is really the only way i can access most books i wanna read. wouldn't be using them if there's something like Libby here, but that's not the case...
use what's availible in the internationally availible online libraries, then pirate the rest. we have to use the libraries bc if the ppl funding them sees that no-one use them, they'll lose funding instead of expanding ❤
Same. The closest library in my town has to drive there for 5 mins for old, boring, uninteresting books that have been passed down for decades without a care. I swear I was the only one who borrowed the books there 5 years ago and never heard of it ever again. The books I wanted always been from the shadow library which in real life, would have cost me like a fortune to afford all of them just to enjoy due to the price of books in my country skyrocketing due to the capitalists without a care from the government (they’re the same side anyway.). I don’t care about dignity and morals if they’re not going to help my life becoming easier and more affordable at this point.
in the Philippines, one book (paper back) is approximately 600-1200 pesos each. ONE BOOK. for context, that can buy a meal everyday for a week and a half. even as an aspiring author, I encourage people to pirate. reading should be accessible to everyone and if that means pirating then so be it.
side note: "go to a library" there are no libraries here. heck, even the libraries at my university have been closed for over three years.
thank you for sharing!!
there are many online free libraries internationally acessible
@@blah914 what are their names? I'd love to be able to expand my options for borrowing books
@@matildas3177 I use Deichman and Gutenberg. idk if Sølvberget and BookBites are international, but they are not adress dependent. amazon also have free collections. there are reading apps thay have old classics that have expired copyrights, but theyre usually the sames ones u find on Gutenberg. Google Books also have ab 10 mill free books in their catalogue. for audioboks, there are also many here on yt :)
I use the online internet archive
I'm staunchly pro-piracy.
For me it's not an accessibility problem but a I'm poor problem.
I've always pirated stuff because of that. Videogames, books, manga, anime, name it. As a minor i didn't have the means to order stuff online and also didn't have the money. Now as an adult i do have the means but still not enough money.
But it has proven what i always knew: if i genuinely like the product i will buy it once i can. Most of my pirated videogames I've also bought at some point. I'm making a list with the books I've read and want to buy solely to support the author.
Pirated copies are not "not sold copies". An author will not get a dime more if piracy stops.
I also don't see how going to the library will help the author much. Yes, at least they get SOME money, but it's not that much more than with piracy, just that it's legal.
To me piracy is just an extension of my library. I don't want to buy books without having read them before, if i don't like them it would feel terribly wasteful to dnf them. And my library simply doesn't hold all books, especially English ones.
As an aspiring author (almost finished) I've thought about this a lot and just like you I'd rather have pirating readers than none. Obviously it would hurt to find out someone pirated my book, but i do fully understand why someone may do that. Anything else would be hypocritical of me.
This is me, from a wealthy european country with access to a library and i wouldn't have to sell a kidney to buy a book. I still don't have enough money to get all books i want to have.
Hearing about all the other reasons why a person in very different countries may have to resort to piracy has only solidified my opinion.
Same!
100% Agree!
💯
I don't personally pirate as I don't need to, I am privileged to live in a country with one of the best library systems in the world and it's totally free, I also have plenty of disposable income so I can afford the books I can't get from my library. If I lived elsewhere with less income, I know I'd pirate. I pirated music in my teens and early 20s after all.
Piracy is good till I'm broke, I'll change my morals once I'm rich 🗿
This is soooo true
Books in my country are so expensive, I would be completely illiterate if I didn't have access to books online
I pirate the digital copies and then buy the paperbacks
Hi there! “Until” should be replaced by “since”, otherwise you’re saying you’re not broke yet (this is just to help you or others! It’s not an attack 😅, as a non native english speaker myself)
It's the rich who need morals in the first place 😭
I agree with you so hard! I got shamed in school so often for "only reading on my phone" because that's where I would download my pirated books (I didn't even have a laptop). I was a Russian girl living in Germany and we were so poor I worked part-time just to give the money to my parents. These girls treated me like scum for pirating and would always tell me to at least go to the library but I always wanted to read books in English and my library didn't have any. Because I always had the confidence to read in English and I could always pirate the books, my English just kept improving, which lead to me being really good in school, starting a little tutoring business, and ultimately getting a really good job abroad. I don't know where I would be right now if I hadn't pirated. It sounds dramatic but it literally helped me escape poverty with very little social and economic capital.
Just a little side note: When Penguin Books and Random House merged in 2013 and turned into Penguin Random House, it was actually an "illegal" merger. There were legitimate concerns about monopoly in the publishing industry because the two biggest publishers were combining their resources. But of course nobody stopped them because suddenly people in high positions didn't have a problem with it anymore (I wonder how much they were paid). Just recently, Penguin Random House was fortunately banned from acquiring Simon and Schuster due to concerns of shrinking the book market even further. That's how they are able to sell (e-)books at higher and higher prices. There is no more legitimate competition left.
About e-books: I bought a Kindle when I was in High School (around 2018) and the English classics were all free. The copyright to these classics has expired, which means when you buy the physical copies you're basically just paying for the paper they're printed on (like you said), so Kindle gave them to you for free. Now, they cost around 3 Euros for me. They literally admitted that these things should be free and then thought "Wait a minute, I can milk this, too!"
I still buy books every now and then but I tend to be way more critical in my reviews when I actually paid for the book. If you make me spend 28 Euros on a book it better not be mediocre slop!
P.S. Your eyeshadow is so pretty
when i was a kid and we didn't have a lot of money, i pirated all of my books and games, but one of the first things i did once i started working is buy all of the books and games i loved the most in order to support authors and creators. i will always be pro piracy because i know how miserable it can be to not be able to afford something and now when i'm lucky to have more money, i'll be buying books and supporting authors for those who can't
that’s my approach too ❤️
Can we talk about academic papers? They cost a lot, yet people who are doing a real job to produce them are getting nothing. Actually, it’s other way round: authors need to pay to publish, and need to pay even more if they want to make their paper open access. Reviewers (aka people with several degrees and often highly qualified people leading their own research) do their job on voluntary basis. No one even buy physical journals to say that it’s production and shipping cost.
They say no individual buys papers, it’s often libraries buy for public use. Because many benefit from a single purchase it costs that much.
I’m from a developing country, and our libraries simply don’t buy papers. So people from my country have 2 options: buy a paper super-expensive paper that even might not be even useful, cuz you don’t know what’s inside until you read it; or simply pirate it. And I wouldn’t blame anyone who does so.
I believe that scientific discoveries should belong to everyone
that´s one of the most forgotten and hard topics of this subject, the predatory system of scientific publication is the real monster to fight against. Thank a lot for you bringing this topic
Another thing on the topic of libraries not being created equal is that a library card is not always free. They typically go by regions so if, for example, you came from a place where your local library is smaller but you're nearby a larger city with a better-funded library system, you would most likely need to pay a non-resident fee. Which is something you can't expect everyone to be willing to do.
there are many free international libraries. look them up and use them.
I'll pirate anything I can't get a physical copy of, I deny the existence of streaming/digital renting services with a passion of a flatearther
vene when those services are free?
@blah914 it will still vanish someday, some of the free prime books from amazon just stop being free
Importing books in my country is now illegal 🤷 so there is that.
Privileged americans believing everybody is a privileged american always cracks me up, there was this. video about Duolingo and people were saying in the comments oh i prefer this app or that one, i searched for one of the apps and commented " take into account for this app you have to pay, it doesn't have a free version" and the girl commented, below my comment " it's free with my university " 🤦like that applies to such a small % of people.
In my country it used to cost 50% the price extra in taxes and it was STILL cheaper than buying a translation at a local bookstore. Then amazon k1lled bookdepository 😭
As if american laws apply to you in another country. Perhaps, you are violating laws in your own country?
“free with my university” im crying 😭 all the internet has taught me is how many people live in their own little bubble
I'm from Argentina, and sometimes its funny for me to see people complaining about piracy when their countries do not experience about 50% monthly inflation, and books are not as expensive as in Argentina, particularly, because their prices do not change weekly
And they dont get charged 50% of the book price in taxes if you want to read it in its original language 🙃
@@LynnHermione Che aviso por las dudas: si comprás libros afuera (ya sea digitales o físicos) los impuestos te los tienen que devolver porque los libros están exentos. Después de hacer la compra tenés que contactar a la tarjeta y te hacen la devolución. (igual una mierda, sí)
Im so gald that you mentioned book banning and the unavaliability of queer literature because, as a queer teen, accessing books about LGBTQ+ people has been so difficult recently. Where I live queer books often just aren't sold, or there are only limited ones being sold. Its also sometimes just frowned upon to borrow/own queer stories because i guess that just doesn't happen. Somehow, the world is getting worse for queer people, and being able to access queer literature online for free is life saving!
queer people are underrepresented in literature as it is, and then on top of that banning those books that do exist is honestly appalling to me
Idaho is setting a terrifying precedence rn. It's close enough to wear I live that people are talking about it and we have a mom's for liberty chapter now. It's wild that people still claim book banning isn't really a thing
As someone who is blind, I believe literature should be accessible to everyone. When I published my first book, I made my audiobook available for free here on TH-cam. I would only have a problem with piracy websites if they’re making a profit on my book. I don’t think they are, though. It was through a website that offered books for free to me that I was able to read as many books as I did as a teenager. While these books were not pirated, it doesn’t change the fact that they were accessible to me. Others should have the same access, even if it includes books that are pirated.
thank you for sharing ❤️❤️❤️
You're the real MVP
10:52 I just learned this . This is literally so unfair, it’s not like Amazon needs the money . What’s wrong in letting users keep the books
I was once called a leech for reading pirated books, even though I explained over and over again that I can't simply afford books in my 3rd world country where books are more expensive than ever. Back then when I was around 11-12, I read over 300 books and that was a huge influence on my development. I doubt I would be on a post grad. getting my masters if it wasn't for the books I've read and how they stimulated me to study hard, I probably wouldn't even be speaking English right now. When I have the money I do like to pay for entertainment, but that's not as easy as it sounds for those medium class people on a 1st world country who called me a leech
christ, people seriously need to calm down
i think i wouldn’t be where i am without pirated media either
i'm always laughing at the arguments people make against piracy.
"just buy the book" that book is like 5-10 meals' worth of money depending on how frugal i'm willing to be. i got bills to pay.
"go to a library" i don't live in the US. our libraries don't really have fiction books, a lot of them are just uni libraries. also the gov-funded library closest to me is like 2 hrs away.
"surely you can find a used copy or something! try harder!" there's no reason to even try when i know the book isn't imported to the country due to having lgbt themes.
there's also the point about how piracy might be the only way to preserve the media, whether it's books, songs, movies, etc. like you said someone may suddenly decide you can't access your pdf book files anymore. movies and shows might suddenly disappear from streaming services. if we can't even have the thing permanently to begin with what are we even stealing?
Everytime I see someone who is staunchly against Piracy i just know how privileged this person is, in the global south you learn from a young age pirating is the only way you will have acess to some books, even textbooks to university courses
Appreciate you not mentioning names, I hate it when people blurt out pirate site names so bluntly in TikTok and TH-cam. It’s not about gatekeeping but you can’t really trust and control who is watching.
yeah though my content is far from being that widespread still don’t wanna cause any shutdown or anything 😂🙏🏻
i completely agree with the "it's giving poor people shouldn't read". i'm indian but i live in the us and have a library card for my local library. where i live in india, the public library doesn't have a lot of books i want to read (this is also true for a lot of people within the us or other affluent countries that have a poorly funded local library). some of them have such a long waitlist that it would take months to get your copy. other library options require a membership fee. some of the books are hard to find in stores (this is true of the us too, but the us has more shipping options). a lot of them are more expensive than in the us when compared to the amount of money people actually make. minimum wage per day is on average 178 rupees, books average about 500 - compare to the us where working a full day at the federal minimum wage will net you $58. living spaces are generally smaller for people who have a lower income and most people can't even afford to keep all the books they read in their home even without getting into how much buying those books would cost. the buying every book you read thing in general is just insanely expensive. i average about 70-80 books every year. i'm not financially well off nor am i poor but i simply can't afford to buy 70-80 books every year and then find somewhere to put them. i do have an e-reader but i don't like supporting amazon (i use it for library books and arcs mostly) and plenty of people are not going to splurge on an ereader just so they can spend even more money buying books they can read specifically only on an ereader.
in my experience, people who pirate books are avid readers who just don't have the resources to buy a lot of books. generally "get it legally" in these cases equates to simply not reading the book at all because getting it legally is too expensive. and honestly, i think a lot of it is probably similar to the gaming industry - many of the people who pirate the most are also the most likely to spend their money buying books (in my opinion) because these are the people who love reading. i don't know a single person who only pirates books and never buys. the people who don't buy books are the ones who don't read, not the ones who pirate. with piracy you just get to read more than you could if you always had to spend money.
edit: also personally as an aspiring writer, i would MUCH rather have people pirate a book i wrote and read and enjoy it than not read it at all just because they can't afford to buy it legally. this ire about "not supporting writers" should imo be directed at the publishing execs who pay the actual editors of their books like 60k while pocketing all the profits. authors only get about 10-15% royalties off of sales anyway. on a $20 book, they are literally going to be getting $2.
500 rupees for a book is bloody diabolical
I just finished a stint living in mainland China. I did buy official books when I could and took books out of the libraries of the schools I worked at (if they were children’s or young adult books and the library had them) when I could and I took digital copies out of my library in Canada. This is the reality though: 1. My ereader would not sync through the vpn required for it to work in China, 2. I couldn’t just order from book depository or Amazon into China, 3. Books are really heavy in your luggage (and 3 of the years I lived in China I was under the zero covid policy anyways, so no leaving China), 4. There’s no way to cheaply and reliably send books into China, 5. There were no local libraries in China with English books, 6. In my second city in China I had no idea if there were any book stores that sold any English books, even for cities that did have English books in their book stores the selection was very limited (lots of classics and a few bestsellers in most cases) 7. Many English books I wanted would not be available at all from Taobao / Jindong at all, and if they were they might be exorbitant prices you’d never see in an English speaking country, 8. Sometimes you would want an official copy but all that was available was a copy someone download that they then sent to a print shop (sometimes this was the only choice to have a printed copy of the book or a copy of the book at all)
So yeah I did what I realistically could but I stopped feeling guilty if and when I couldn’t. I lived in China during the three years of the zero covid policy, people were not going to take that enjoyment away from me.
I think it’s easy to sit on a pedestal and not think of different perspectives, contexts and realities- but the world is different all over. I’d like to be a children’s author one day and if I found out that kids in Russia, Burkina Faso, Spain, Brazil, China, etc had a pirated copy of my book because they couldn’t realistically obtain it any other way, I’d be fine with that. I’d be happier that a child (or person) connected with the story, feelings and ideas, than anything else, in that situation
For digital goods: Buying is Renting, Piracy is Owning
As it doesn't just apply to books, but also applies to things like movies and games. The fact of the matter is, at least in the gaming sphere, companies have been pushing for the aspect of "You will own nothing and you will be happy", which as you can imagine people hated hearing that.
to me, piracy is sort of in the same vein of "all publicity is good publicity" yk? like if someone can't afford/access my book the legal routes, i'd rather them pirate it than not read it. because more readers means more reviews, word of mouth, reach, etc.
As an aspiring author, I'd rather somebody pirate what I make than not get to see it at all. Maybe it's because I can't always get books I want that I feel that way, but even if it wasn't like that I'd still prefer that. I obviously want to get paid for what I make, but one of the main reasons I want to write is to give people something to love to get them through tough times. If the only way they can do that is through pirating then by all means I understand. Plus, some people actually end up deciding to buy things only because they were originally able to access them through piracy. Or as said in the video, they may contribute to the rise in popularity. Things can't get popular or be successful if nobody knows it exists.
So, I have to say. I came to this video ready to rage and be pissed. I won't lie. But I really do appreciate your nuanced take and explanation of some of the different factors involved. Things that I choose to be ignorant of in the US. Because though I am not well off by any means and struggle with my bills like many do... I do still have the ACCESS to pretty much any book I want. Which is a privilege. Where I have the money to buy it is another thing, but to not even have access, that is a hard pill to swallow.
So though I don't have a good answer. And I do think authors should be compensated for their work. I think there is much more grey than I expected.
Thank you for your well thought out video and for giving me something to think about.
oh this comment made me so happy, thank you so much for your open mindedness and for watching!! ❤️
My dream booktubers are both here! Omg hello Jenn!
I live in a European country in the global north so most of the time I can get books or other media I want for free in legal ways (like libraries or such). That being said, I've honestly pirated my fair share of stuff, I don't mind pirating at all if the media is made by a large company that has more than enough resources to pay its workers/creators. The only thing that I always try to buy is media made by smaller, indie creators, like indie games.
I also want to mention that in the case of videogames, piracy can also be a form of preservation since it isn't unheard of videogame companies paywalling older titles under very high fees or straight up shutting down any legal way to access them.
Great video raya. I live in Poland, so I certainly understand what you're talking about with the availability of English books in libraries and in local shops. I'm pretty much forced to use Amazon for any/all English books and this is one argument I felt could be included in your video as well. Amazon is a massive organization treating authors unfairly in various ways, killing local businesses, etc. Should someone in Eastern Europe feel bad if they choose piracy over Amazon? Look also at their pricing strategy. Small time authors, low prices. Big names, skyhigh prices. Brandon Sanderson's books are priced at 10-12 euro per ebook whilst lesser known authors go from 2-6 euro usually. Why? The man sold a billion books already and I still have to pay 10-12 euros for every single ebook? Seeing as lesser known authors with similar sized books can go for 5 euro, it's obviously not a matter of editing, or technical reasons, etc. No, it's just cashing in on a big name.
I did movie/music piracy as a teen, now in my late 30's I have no need to pirate books. I focus on ebook sales, smaller authors whose books are just cheaper and have a US library card for foreigners with great ebook availability (but which also costs me 125$ a year, so I'm pretty much spending 4-5$ per book that I loan anyway, which is probably why I am going to stop doing it). Paper books are completely out of the option, 15-20$ a book including shipping when I read 70-80 books a year, haha, yeah right.
ahhh this is an excellent point that i completely forgot to talk about - Amazon vs piracy
thank you for you comment and sharing your perspective
Most digital products nowadays stand on “buying doesn’t mean owning” and it really REALLY pisses me off. Hence why I no longer felt iffy about pirating 😂
On the side note, I’m from a developing country with weak currency. Books are crazy expensive especially the new releases. Libraries are outdated and has pretty shitty upkeep 😐 The country itself does not actively promotes reading (no funding) thus libraries are mostly dead for books, people just go there for a space to study most of the time. And like you said, why is the 🏴☠️ website has a more organised and more accessible domain than my local library even through online bffr 💀 Plus point, most of the books I read are either from dead authors or the authors are from the first world country with their country aiding genocide so.
i'm not from the us, and our local book industry (of local authors and such) suffers a lot with us and uk books basically being the only options. i think it's kinda a dick move to pirate local authors, especially indie local authors, who already sell much cheaper books and constantly put them on sales and are approchable to be bought from directly. on the other hand, people knowing about your book, no matter the way, can be wildly beneficial and drive more sales. book piracy is a very complicated topic
yes i’ve also seen a take about people being fine about pirating books of bigger authors like stephen king, cause the guy is definitely not gonna go hungry because of it, it’s much different when it comes to indie authors though
Thank you for talking about an issue that a lot of people seem to ignore.
For context: I spent my teen years in the US, and I grew up an avid reader, frequenting our public and school libraries. But I had to move back to my country when I was 16.
Here are the issues that I've faced concerning book accessibility;
1- My city is known for being VERY religious and conservative. It's known for being an education center for Muslim scholars from all around the world. It's most certainly not going to be easy finding all the books that I would like to read, especially if they contain subjects that don't agree with our religion. I can still find the books if I were to look hard enough, but when we first moved back it's was practically impossible to find any English books.
2- We have libraries, literally everywhere but three points. First, most libraries carry only religious books, about interpreting religious text, or about rulings, or about laws. I don't even know how they work or who funds them. I'm NOT going to find like Call Me By Your Name or any LGBTQ books causally chilling on a shelf here. The culture here in general isn't very focused on reading or books or anything close. Second, the whole scholars thing is mostly men, so it'd be really weird and out of place for me to even frequent these libraries alone whenever I want, I'd need my dad or brother with me for things to go smoothly (and neither are interested in books or have the time). Third, here the word library also means an office supplies store, so there are more of those than actual libraries with only books.
3- The whole language thing, most books here are in Arabic (I don't enjoy books in Arabic). Bookstores aren't as common, and they all carry the same books.The rare few English books that you would find are going to be the classics (which I've either read/maybe don't want to read). Someone already mentioned this, and I think she did too, in the video.
4- As it is apparent from my previous points, I still live with my parents (they still see me as a child altho in the US I'm old enough to drink). I don't have a job and I get all my money from them. Cause that's just how it works here. If I'm going to be buying books my parents are going to be asking questions. I bought Crime and Punishment once (which I never finished btw), when I translated the title for them they gave me the biggest side eye ever, and the whole ride home was just quiet in a bad way.
5- There have been a couple of times where I was fortunate enough to go to book festivals and other cities to buy books. They were cheap which was a good thing, but most were printed by a publishing house differenat from the original copy, some random publishing house in the middle east. You could tell it was really bad quality, and I'm very certain that the author didn't receive much if any financial support from me in that way.
6- There's always buy the ebook/ buy a copy online method, again, I live with my parents, all my money comes from them, I have no bank account. We all know the running prices of books online new or used isnt all that cheap. And to add, a lot of those websites don't even work here. I would need to tell them all about the book, explain how I'm going to to benefit why I'm reading it, and bunch of other things that I simply don't want to go through (cause they might not let me read anymore). Also, any shipping to this city is going to cost a fortune. What I'd all of this and I end not even liking the book??
7- To this day, I have never found physical original good quality copies of books, not used nor new. There is no direct or indirect way for me to support the authors that I love.
8- I'm also a med student, on my ipad right now, I have almost 90 textbooks. I haven't paid for any of them. I'm using these, I've used most of them in my studies at one point or another. Some are from my colleagues some I've found myself, we share these with each other through out the year, looking through them daily. I will be working in a hospital next year (God willing). I will be saving lives and helping people get better. It feels like a Robinhood situation almost, is it wrong ? Would the authors of my textbook appose me using them without laying to literally cure other humans ??? (Someone else also mentioned this)
Edit: I'd like to say thank you Raya for talking about this. I've been struggling the past several years with this issue, mostly alone. Thank you for shedding light on a global problem that a lot of people don't even realize.
i loved reading this, thank you for taking your time to comment! ❤️
@@rayareadzzzz Thank you for taking the time to read it and reply. Also, I love your videos. 😅
The markup on digital books is insanity. The only logical response is piracy and as a teacher, my students have no library access during the summer, so on the DL I deff teach them how to pirate books and movies as well as career related software like adobe and fl studios. Some students have learned Spanish, Japanese, Korean etc through this as well as boxing and martial arts books its not just novels. I'm in one of the poorest states with the highest illiteracy rates and lack of transportation to underfunded libraries. I sleep fine at night providing for my students
Omg I wish someone would show me how to do that. I have several books I really want digitized and digital movies I bought that I’d like without drm 😢
Honestly books cost so much even in the US (like $20) that I’ll pirate the book first and if I like it enough I’ll buy a physical copy to support the author
I didn't have the means to buy books, digital or physical, and books and other things can be expensive in my country (Brazil) so I opted for pirate websites to download and read books. But when I finally had some income and money, I immediately bought books, including the ones I had already read in a pirated way on the Internet. Today I buy books, even those I have read, and those I haven't read, because thank God, I have been able to have more financial means.
I'm not done watching BUT when I was younger, I started pirating books and games and many media I was a part of I only experienced thanks to piracy.
As I got older I finally got the chance to support all of these things in a financial manner.
Also yep, libraries don't really work as a way to regularly read in my country. At most, if your school/university has books you want to read, that's how you get to read.
11:25 In France, the price of books is regulated by the government. The country prevents Amazon or any other online store, from selling e-Books much cheaper than printer books, but also for selling printed books cheaper than in a physical store. That's why if you want to buy a physical book in France, unless it is second hand, it will be the same price everywhere, whether it's Amazon or your local book store.
thanks for sharing!!
I would ask where you're from, but I have an inkling we have the same collective experience here in the middle of Central Europe 😅😅 i don't know about other places around us, but in Hungary, books are at ridiculous prices, especially if you want to read them in English. I had so many bad experiences with translated books that I would rather stick to the original where I can. And if we take away the aspect of the price, another thing that always posed a problem for my book-loving and wannabe-collector soul is the lack of space in our homes. I grew up in a 800 square feet flat in a 10-storied apartment building with four other people and two dogs, i didn't have my own room until I was 15, I didn't even have a book case. I literally had NOWHERE to put my books and my mom never wanted to buy books, not just because of the price but for the lack of space. Having more than two bookshelves is a freaking luxury in our small apartments for a family of 6. So yes, I will always be pro-piracy for so many reasons. Amazing video by the way, I'm so glad I found you! 😊😊
access to pirated books online played a big role in saving my life when I was poor and depressed in my teenage years
OMG you hit it on the nail! I came from that background where every dollar found was meant for gas or food. I would not be the reader I am now if it was not for piracy. Now, I am well off and am able to buy books. So I do, but I am not ashamed that piracy got me access to books growing up. Which allowed me to grow out of poverty. Which meant I left to another country who even loves libraries and now I read nonstop. I buy my books, I pay for my library subscription. It is indeed not the problem of the poor kids needing access to books that authors are so badly paid.
I live in the third biggest city in my country. There are libraries, but the TWO public ones only have academic material, not even the classics. The state university has a lot of libraries, but apart from only having academic material they're only for students and teachers. The only library I've been to that had any non-academic works was in a private university and the selection was extremely limited. So the "don't pirate, go to a Library" card is useless to me. When the cost of a book is more than what you make in a day, and the choice is between eating and buying a book, guess what I'll choose. And maybe if it was just me I would choose to not eat for a day, but I have a daughter. And dogs. I try to get free books legally as much as I can (ARCs, stuff your Kindle, offers, etc.), but sometimes there's no choice.
If you do have some money, but perhaps not full-price money (or, like me, just really hate Amazon), I highly recommend emailing/DMing the author. Not all but many of them are happy to send you a copy directly for a reduced price, or free in exchange for a review perhaps. Don't beg, obviously, but be honest and professional when asking.
that’s great, but unfortunately i heard that a lot of them don’t really send out copies to anyone outside of the states, uk and some major cities of europe maybe
but don’t quote me on that, i haven’t tried asking for myself yet
@@rayareadzzzz Oh, I was thinking ebooks. Physical copies are probably limited by shipping burdens, true...
A lot of indie/self published authors have ebooks for sale on their author websites and they’re not only cheaper but all the money goes towards the author and not a third party platform, so readers on a budget should check the personal websites of authors they’re interested in as a much cheaper option might be available. Likewise, a lot of these authors will have big discounts during Black Friday and other common retailer sales event.
Honestly, I’d say the biggest hurdle to simultaneously acquiring cheaper books for readers and higher profits for authors is the unchallenged monopoly Amazon has as the primary search engine for readers to easily discover new books to buy. Currently any self publishing author has their entire career (and thusly, their capacity to earn enough money to survive) cripplingly reliant on Amazon’s search engine and its “similar book recommendations” feature funnelling readers to their novels.
The solution for readers getting cheaper/affordable books is definitely going to require finding ways for authors to get their novels reliably discovered by their target audience via means outside of Amazon’s search engines, but as of right now, no such thing exists nor does it seem as if it’s likely to exist anytime soon.
Do I have to have been engaging with the writer's social media before asking?
This works especially well for scientific papers. I have found almost all authors hate the scientific journal system and how much they charge (to read AND publish) and will happily just send you PDFs haha
I love this video! I'm from a third-world country but read English books, and a lot of books aren't available here, and if they are, they're insanely expensive. So, I end up pirating a lot and so I love the way you explain this in your video; I don't see how it's really stealing when I wouldn't be able to afford/get my hands on the book(s) anyways.
thank you for watching 🫶🏻
As someone who lives in a third world country with NO English books, really bad library access with bad selections, and where every imported book is upwards of 30 dollars even if it is a paperback, yeah, I will rely on certain sites to read. I support the author by talking of their book, spreading it online, engaging with the authors, buying a small selection a year etc. When I had access to English books in school, or when I’ve traveled and gotten friends with library cards etc, I’ve used libraries. Basically: if I can help it, I will. But this conversation conveniently silences the whole point of those who rely on this system: we don’t have other options.
I love supporting authors by attending book festivals, signings and talks, reviewing their books, requesting libraries buy them and recommending them to my friends. All of this supports authors far more than simply buying their book, and the anti piracy girlies never talk about these options! I almost never buy new books (especially popular ones like acotar) because i know there will be 6 million of them in second hand shops in 2 years and i dont want to contribute to that. I wait to buy them second hand myself, or i pirate them 🤷♀️
The authors aren't getting as much money as you think. Most ofmits going to the publisher. Those who can afford it go to the authors pateron and give them money directly
I totally agree with this take and I think that the influencers complaining about piracy on social media are simply wasting their time. Piracy is not the problem, it is the _symptom _ of a larger issue.
A lot of other media gets pirated and no one bats an eye, but when it's books suddenlly you are a horrible person for pirating. Ebooks are expensive (ridiculosly expensive not just 'privileged people can afford it' expensive) and libraries and not available and not wildly stocked everywhere. 'Go to the library' is just not an option where I live, because even if I can find a library they would not have much beyond some outdate academic books and classics (which are pretty much free download anyway)
So true! As a writer if someone pirated my book, my first question would be if they enjoyed it❤
I live in Brazil, here a book costs around R$50,00, for the paperback or R$100,00 for the hardcover. Even more if it’s in another language. A meal costs something like R$10,00 if homemade, or R$30,00 if you eat in a food truck or simple restaurant. We can eat 5 to 10 meals with the price of 1 single book.
And I haven’t even counted the rent prices, because the majority of the population don’t own a house or an apartment.
I live in São Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil, and we don’t have libraries everywhere, and what we have is usually the 3 or 5 of a book series, or the Brazilian Classics, or religious books. A LGBTQIA+ person would have a lot of work to find books with representation.
And yet, our groups of sharing books have a “international authors only” request, we support local authors, since their books are usually R$5,00 or even for free on KU, and that’s the way we have of trying to help our authors that are not worldwide known.
But the majority of the reading population would never be able to access the culture, leisure, knowledge if we could not use piracy to help us.
thanks for sharing!!
In Bangladesh, a country of readers, an original, imported English book costs 9 usd minimum (that's 1k bdt). To most of us, that might seem very cheap for a brand new book, but it is too expensive for locals if you take their purchasing power into account. That's why you will see that most people read pirated hard copies of books that are being sold at more affordable prices.
As a writer, I don't mind this. I would rather more people read my work. It's not like these people would have been customers anyway. It is a shame of course that reading is not affordable, but that requires systemic change. In the meantime, we should not discourage literacy among people who need it the most. Reading can be an escape. Reading can be empowering. Literature can be a huge driver of social change and mobility.
beautifully said and i couldn’t agree more with your last points
Yo-ho, yo-ho! A pirate's life for me...
My local library used to house thousands of books, but then they moved into some new, ugly building. Now, they have just a few hundred books and lots of empty space.
I know some people in various countries like to open up small libraries in front of their homes where others can leave and/or take books for free. It's a great way for people to share with each other and read a variety of subjects and genres.
the CEO of valve(a major gaming platform) , Gabe Newell said of piracy “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
I usually buy what I want even if my income isn't the greatest and book prices have risen so much, I also use book apps to listen to books but the only option for me to read books in English and keep living in the flat and not under the bridge is to pirate them lol cuz it's russia and while they sell physical copies for astronomical prices , I can't buy an e-version somewhere cuz russia is under sanctions and it's literally impossible, so piracy does exist because there's a demand for it and it will stay with us
In Romania, where the minimum sallary is 400, a book costs around 20 dollars or more. It is a HUGE price for a mere book
I jsut found your channel and have been watching a few of your videos, and wow, how refreshing it is to hesr someone with an actual worldwide consideration/ take on like... any topic lol. I'm from Argentina and really into this genre of books stuff on youtube or video essays and yeah, it does feel like we're always only listening to US / UK /"main" Europe at most people, and listening to you i just realized how many takes from people with different perspectives of the world we are missing!
etiher way, on this topic. I live in Buenos Aires, and we are one of the cities with the highest book shops to people ratio in the world, and it does feel like we value books a lot, but like. anyone younger than 30yo is probably pirating before buying anything; stuff is expensive, our economy is a mess snd everything is super unstable, so when you buy a book it's a present or one you've already pirated and read and now you just want to own it ♥. also, I don't know a single persin who pays for ebooks here. if you're reading in digital you're pirating, but apart from the economic reasons it does come hand in hand with what you said, it's just not as common to have a credit card available to make online expenses at all. nowadays that has hugely shifted with subscriptions based products like netflix etc, but people don't use their credit cards for "single buy" digital things like ebooks or music.
that one is another one that I don't understand how it works in the first world at all, and I think it's just cause of regional reasons. people in the US?? pay for music on iTunes or whatever?? like, for a single digital song or album *you're paying*?? when you've got free Spotify or TH-cam and it's exactly the same cause it's not like you're "owning" anything in any other way?? also not sure if this is just an iTunes thing that is related to Apple products which are just not as much a thing here, or what. but yeah, it baffles me when i see artists in the US being like "buy the single!" and it's like. just a digital music thing that you want me to pay for when it is also available for free?
anyways! so glad I found your channel! love your book stuff but it's been particularly interesting hearing you talk about something like this and bringing what feels like more of an experience of us, the not "first world countries" people and all. it's a very much lacking and needed perspective lol. thank you!
thank you for watching and sharing your perspective!! ❤️❤️
Excellent video! I agree that saying "don't pirate" comes from a place of privilege.
Now I want to clarify something that always comes up in this discussion - not defending it fyi just offering information. The reason why digital books (and videogames too) are the same price as their physical version is because if they offer them cheaper, they're competing against themselves and may get the shops owners angry. Books and console games still depend a lot for sales on the casual buyer that is browsing Walmart.
ah that makes sense, thank you for commenting!
In a gaming piracy video I heard the speaker quote someone that piracy is a service issue, and I agree with him. Why are people pirating? It's because its more accessible compared to the legal one. If you have the way and means to purchase books or whatever do so, but if not pirate away.
I listen to all of my books because of my disability and when a book isn't available a) from the subscription service i have (similar to bookbeat) b) on the free app i'm only allowed to access because of said disability and c) from the library, what IS a girl supposed to do? (she pirates. that's what she does)
(how are you getting audiobooks? i havent been able to find any!)
Another reason to pirate a book is because you don’t want to support the publisher or author.
Some years ago a saw this tweet: „It’s not stealing if your stealing from JKR.“ 😂
or Sarah J Maas
Its stealing. Read something else. You don't have to read their books.
i find it so annoying when people try and claim a moral high ground for being against piracy and not realizing the immense privilege that that represents. especially when they're the same people who'll have a billion library cards just to avoid waiting a week or two. I live in canada so I'm very privileged in many ways but even here it's a problem. book prices have gotten absolutely ridiculous here and that's in addition to how expensive shipping gets here and how screwed we've been getting about groceries, people aren't made of money right now.
my local library is tiny. it's mostly outdated french books targeted at kids and old folk neither of which I'm interested in reading. that also assumes that the library is accessible in the first place. mine doesn't even have a libby. their online thing have legit 5 books and 3 of them are instruction manuals💀 love that you brought up older books too because they can be so expensive to buy secondhand and other times the only way to get your hands on them is through those sites.
seriously wtf is up with ebook prices it's not even like an audiobook where they have to produce something else publishers are being greedy
in academia it's such a problem as well. I remember a professor straight up telling us (with a wink wink) to get the ebook whatever way we could because they get so insanely pricey. plus academic articles are so often behind paywalls that get zero profit to the authors
when people don't have access to media this is what's inevitably going to happen, poor people deserve entertainment as well. especially with how amazon acts (not actually owning anything, killing bookstores, etc) and the uncertainty around media these days
although I completely understand the authors' frustration with piracy in many cases there genuinely isn't any other option - for example I would have never had the chance to become a huge fan of manga and various Chinese novels of it wasn't for i11egal fan translations. Most of my absolute favorite works don't have an official translation to English (let alone my native language). Plus many works have ended up getting official translations later on after becoming very popular thanks to fan translations so piracy can actually end up being quite helpful to the author in this way... Also I'm way more open to saving up and buying a physical copy of a book I've already read and I know I love than buying a book I know nothing about and might end up not liking
As an author, one of my goals is to make my books available to ANYONE. And there are a lot of different ways I accomplish that. One of which is giving the book away (where they actually OWN it, not rent it) to anyone who tells me they can't afford my books. There's also libraries and subscription services. But as far as I'm concerned, all you have to do is ask. Plus I offer every single reader who signs up for my newsletter the ability to join my reader team, and then they get everything for free.
❤️❤️❤️ we need more people like this
Thank you so much for this nuanced approach to the problem! I fully support authors getting paid for their work but it seems to me that very often the choice is not between paying and not paying but between not paying and not reading at all. I live in Russia and half of the books I read growing up were pirated because they were either not available here or way too expensive. But I still remember the joy of being able to order a book from abroad for the first time. And nowadays I once again turn to piracy because more and more books are getting banned. I genuinely believe that, generally, if people could buy books, they would.
i didn't finish the video yet, but you're already right about everything you said 😊 i'm an academic outside of the usa and the european union. academic books are already more expensive than literature, stories etc. also, there are not many translations from english to our language. so you have the only option to buy from amazon and to pay for the much higher currency rate on top of the added custom tax. now you're paying triple of that book's cost. there are many good university libraries but they're slow buying all the new studies. and the only option here left is piracy. i really don't feel bad about that, because the only ones gaining from book publishing in the academia is the publishing companies 🤷🏻♀️
I live not in usa and get paid $300 every month. A bit less of a third of that goes to credit, plus I have to pay my bills, eat food etc. Digital copies of books can cost up to $7 in case of the biggest ones, especially if I want audio version for accessibility purposes (and I'm not even planning to rent books because I don't like the concept of renting digital stuff). It's a bit better with paperbacks, but it's harder for me to read them.
There are no libraries in my disctrict, so I would have eather to go elsewhere (plus $ for transportation, knee arthritis is cool like that), somehow forge student pass to get access to big library or to be stuck with children library and both of those variants are after work that drains me completely.
Yeah, I'll stick to piracy.
Honestly I wish I could afford ebooks and comics. Sorry 10$ for an ebook is more than paper books cost here and I don't have space anyway. The choice is either don't read it all or pirate it.
(Here you can literally get life-long imprisonment for saying no to a cop in any context. I wish I were joking. And exactly 0 people were arrested for piracy.)
Thank you for this interesting video! Out of curiousity, how do you think a self published author can make their work more accessible for people who may not be able to afford it? I have self published my own book, and my main goal was to try and make it as affordable as I can (with the ebook and digital library versions in particular.) It's my first time doing this, so I want to learn how I can improve. Do you have any suggestions on how I could make my book more accessible to people who may not be able to afford it?
I've seen authors directly sell their ebooks/audiobooks from their website for a reduced price than Amazon. Also some have Patreon accounts where the subscribers get early access to their books before Amazon/wide release
As an indie author myself, I care more about people getting to read Prince of Tanimara than making money off it. I have given out over 100 physical copies in the hopes that the readers pass them on. I discovered my favorite author by borrowing a book from someone. The author did NOT receive a royalty for that but they received a fan for life. I have since purchased, reviewed and read ALL of his books. There is a website that took an ebook version of my book, Prince of Tanimara and is giving it away without my permission. I did not pursue a DMCA takedown because this person believes in the democratization of all literature and encourages people to leave reviews and purchase it if they can. This is wonderful IMO. The reader and the author both win. I would really like to make back what I put in to publishing so that I can keep publishing but the more who read it, the more reviews I get and the more popular my series becomes. Ultimately, that is what is important. Its not a job, its a passion.
thank you for sharing your perspective!!
This is certainly something I think of as an author. The thing is, there are a bunch of legitimate places to read for free (Inkitt, Royal Road, Yoru, Campfire, Ritoria (shout out to their engaged readers), etc. With these, I might not earn money, but I do get to see reading stats, which gives me dopamine, at least. Then, if people enjoy my books & *can* support me, I have a Ko-Fi, or Yoru & some others offer tips jars. I'm not financially struggling, but I probably can't afford to keep getting cover illustrations, or paying for editing, etc if people never pay. My hope is I'll find enough readers over the years that a tiny percent who can & choose to support me will help me keep writing in the long run. I love doing it, but I have to prioritise it around paying work & being a mum. Earning would let me tell others it's worth my time. Otherwise, I will just keep chipping away at my stories & hope to reach those who will enjoy them.
i love this, thanks for sharing 🫶🏻
Thanks
thank you ❤️
As an American reader. I can understand your point about some US readers fail to consider different cultures and countries. I have read pirated books and watched pirated movies. During a period of my life where I couldn’t afford food.
i have a friend who has extremely strict catholic parents, pirating books is the only way she could read things not “approved” of by them. obviously we should try our best to support artists/writers for their hard work, but there are people who just can’t do that and they shouldn’t be judged for it
I don’t care if it’s "illegal" in 20 years no one will remember the copyright, but I will remember fondly all the shows and media I consumed and how much fun I had. Fvck the capitalists lol
Hon the author work is the author job why not make own book? Why steal from someone else? Are you less capable then the author that you steal? Stealing is wrong
1. as a Hungarian myself I feel such second-hand embarassment that the world has to hear about us through news like this T.T
2. my view on the topic: the first fact we have to take into consideration: buying books is a novelty and it's getting more and more into the luxury hobby cathegory as the book prices (and living expenses in general) go up with the only thing not following being our salaries.
I read tons of books and buying each and every one of them would make me go bankrupt in a blink of an eye. Also as you said, most books are only available in translation - here I want to note that translation quality can make a great book miserable if not done right! very important thing to take into consideration - and original language books can cost 2x 3x the normal price here.
I also found that no matter how much "research" I do, I can still run into books I don't resonate with and regret buying.... but because I do want to support the writers close to my heart, the best I can do is buy a real copy of books I read and loved.
I guess book piracy is - just like many other things in life - a forever grey area....
In the past, when I lived abroad and couldn't access books as easily, I kept track of all of them. Then started buying them physically once I was in the US. I try my best to offset as much of the impact as I can, when I can. And if I ever get my book written, I'll probably distribute it myself lol
oh i love that!
in the specific sphere of people for whom books are *not* prohibitively expensive and inaccessible, i think also that transposing the hardline "i pirate all my movies because fuck 'em" stance onto books is not entirely workable. Like, i also dont think the hardline "fuck 'em" stance is entirely workable for other mediums (indie projects exist in all mediums), but when the vast majority of popular movies and TV and so on are produced by major corporations for reasons of financing, youre less likely to materially make someone's life better by buying their movie. The cast and crew already got paid, and their royalties are extremely minimal. Whereas a book, like... oftentimes thats the work of One Person, no investors and minimal publisher advances if any at all, and theyre directly relying on sales to earn back payment for the labor they put into it. So i think that a take on ethical piracy needs to account for what specific book you're pirating - is the author crowdfunding for their medical bills on tumblr, or do they live in a literal castle? The second one can definitely be included in "pirate their works because fuck 'em," or at least they would if they weren't also subject to "for the love of god don't monetarily or publicly engage in their works because theyre leveraging every iota of their money and clout to hurt trans people as much as possible." The first author will directly benefit from a book sale in a way that, like, a staff writer with a similar financial situation writing for a TV show won't benefit from the purchase of the show. So I do understand why book authors might take a hardline no-piracy stance.
Anyways that's all, again, if one has the money and ability to to so, which is of course not the norm worldwide, so this comment is not meant to contradict any of the video. I just think, if someone with the means is debating which media to buy versus pirate, it's worthwhile to take into account which specific people are going to benefit from which purchases.
0:16 that's why I read fanfic
One other thing is that it can be hard to find good printing quality these days. I do buy a lot of physical books, but if I'm gonna spend my money I want something that lasts me years even if I read it more than once.
yesss oh my god and the amount of typos too lol and i am not even a native english speaker so the fact that it bothers me says a lot
I haven't finished watching the video yet, but my stance has always been that it's only immoral to pirate if either the book/movie/tv show is available at the library (within reasonable distance to you) or you can afford to buy it (caveat being there is a means to access it legally in your country). If neither of those two conditions are met, then I believe a person has a right to pirate whatever they're trying to read or watch.
I pirated a bunch of books I already read & loved enough to buy but I'd rather have the security of having a copy on my Holy USB (aka the USB with my thesis that I attached a bell to it so I couldn't lose it). I experienced my fav fanfics being deleted way too many times to just trust trust online sources to stay where I last saw them...
I'm pro piracy. A lot of content is over priced and then I can't im good conscience support some content creators even if I'm curious about points in their works. Then the paywalled academic and research works. Are we now supposed to be rich to build and engage with any body of knowledge? And I've not even started in on geoblocked works
THANK YOU. It's insane how some rich influencers loooove to go off on people who pirate books. Sorry, I don't live in the US! I finally was able to buy a Kindle last year and if I were to buy every e-book I read on it last year alone, it would be in the thousands in my currency! I read 20 books last year and only three were physical, legally bought copies. Was I supposed to abstain and just read those three books? I want to read most of them in english, and English copies are an arm and a leg in my country! I'm poor! I'm sure me pirating Sarah J Maas won't make a dent in her pocket, be so serious rn
Hon yes read something else
I discovered piracy (tv, movies and books) while growing up in Italy. I did not grow up in a reader heavy housold and as a result I was chastized when I'd splurge on books (before you come for me my library simply was not well stocked, and the italian library system was not as advanced as today, also I lived in a small coutry town). Also most of the tv shows I wanted to see or enjoyed were behind paywall streaminig services that my mom could not afford or were not accessible in italy, not to mention the extensive delays due to dubbing. Piracy allowed me to master a foreign language to the point it helped me immensly securing a good job. It's important to note that when I really liked a book I'd purchase it to back that author and today I do not engage in piracy anymore, I am an adult now and I am very happy to pay for my media. But I still remember the teenager that 13 years ago (I was 15 :') ) was very slowly reading shatter me, the selection etc etc.
i read philosophy books, mostly written by dead people. piracy won't hurt them. i could name some who might even encourage it
hahhahahha love it
I live in a country that doesn't have that much access to fiction bookstores. Most only sell religious or self help texts, and when you can find good books, they come pretty pricy. I try to buy as much as i can, especially when i travel abroad, but most people in my country don't have that option. Things like this are the only source of literature.
thank you for sharing 🩷
If i like a book that i pirated, I'll buy a physical copy once i have the money to do so. I don't have the money to buy books i may not enjoy, and i love rereading books. I'll also recommend books i prated to others, and they usually buy a copy that they wouldn't have otherwise. My local library is severely underfunded and doesnt have a lot of the books i want to read available. I use Libby sonetimes, but the waitlists for books i want are so long that i usually wont end up reading them by the time its available. Also, Libby doesn't have every book either.
One caveat. Digital piracy isn’t illegal. What’s specifically illegal is copying and distributing the copyrighted material
My local library has been redesigned to make it more of a communal space. Whilst this is a great idea in one sense, in reality what has happened is the building has more space for people, seating, computers for public use and a gallery space, around 60-70% of the books that originally took up that space are now in storage with no public access. It used to be such a good library but I’ve stopped going there now because there’s no point.
where I live, books cost the equivalent of 4-8 hours of work, not that expensive comparing with other countries, but still is expensive on the long term, especially if you like to read a lot of books per year. I always choose to first download it on z-library and then if i really like the book and want to re-read it later, i buy the physical copy. even my kindle I bought it thinking of reading the downloaded epub files, I only buy the free classical ones available, cause usually the ebook price is close to the same as the physical book, not really worth it either
Z-lib was taken down in 2022 wasn't it? So where do you download your books?
@@chisomo8088i recommend you do a search on ebooks in the piracy subreddit and find your answers there. after z-lib was almost kneecapped, you’ll understand why people aren’t quick to give up their sources nowadays, but you should find what you need if you know your way around a search engine or two.
For most of us It's not piracy or buying, it's pirating or not buying. I WILL buy things from artists I want to support, many copies even. I uave a wishlist of books to buy going back YEARS. When I was lucky enough to travel abroad I got half a dozen books in the airport alone.
But buying a new book that I haven't read is too much of a risk. And even if I can afford ONE book i can not afford the 30+ books I read a year.
If they want to discourage piracy, they should stop overpricing digital books. Why is a digital book nearly as much as a physical copy? They don’t have to pay for printing or shipping. It’s a rip off. IMHO. Personally, I buy physical copies of books. I like to have a hard copy, but at least half the time, I buy them used. How is that helping the author? Make digital books affordable to the masses. Mass market paperbacks made books more accessible and it led to a boom in book sales.
agree!!
I'll give my insight on some of the topics as a person who lives in Brazil
1- Library
I live in a really big city, however, I personally don't know many libraries around my house. The ones I do know are 1. too far away, so I have to spend a lot on public transportation (and yes, we have to pay for that), or 2. they don't have a good catalog. Not a lot of modern books, very few new releases
2- Prices
Books are ridiculously expensive here, and It's not even an exaggeration. It really has been a luxury to buy books these past years, especially books in other languages. I'm fortunately able to buy some, but not as much as I would want to read
3- National books
There's an unspoken rule here that most who utilize piracy follow, that is to not pirate our national books, because authors from here receive so little from publishing that pirating will actually damage the sales and the author profits, so most here don't do that
I'm not blindly defending this practice or anything, btw. I'm speaking from what I see around me every day
I mainly buy books at barns and noble or goodwill, however, I will pirate books on occasion as it’s convenient sometimes. If I have to wait a week to receive a book because I can’t pick it up that day and I want to read it and it’s my day off, I’m gonna pirate it. I mainly read books about witchcraft, and I don’t feel comfortable with my books in the open. I have my existing physical books I’ve bought hidden, so I’ve started getting ebooks to read. Sure, I could purchase those, but I refuse to pay for something that’s not a physical book. I pirated in middle school because I loved to read, but my family was middle class and we could not afford to buy books for me. I did utilize the library a lot, but the specific books I wanted most of the time were not at my location and had to be shipped from another library, and had a wait list. I started just pirating them so I could have access. I was unschooled and had little education, but I was always a strong reader and spent a lot of time reading. I don’t think a young adult who wants to learn and read, but doesn’t have money should be denied access.
In Turkey we were able to buy books more but now they are more expensive because of inflation, everything related to paper is expensive. i remember buying 7-8 online but now that money only can buy me 1 book maybe. So yeah we can buy it but its too expensive to spend it every time
yeah i was in Istanbul this spring & was shocked at how much books in English cost, especially considering what people actually earn there