Un blog menos que leo

Leía el blog Time to write porque de vez en cuando el autor hacía una reflexión interesante o daba un consejo con potencial. Sí, leía.

Bueno, creo que piqué en su momento. Y no está de más rectificar: ahora ya no lo voy a leer más. Simplemente, no estoy de acuerdo en la forma de pensar del autor. Malas ideas no tiene, pero no encajo en su modelo de negocio. La razón de mi discrepancia se encuentra en su entrada "Book piracy-crisis?" (y perdón por no traducir, pero no estoy para esos trotes):

The article says, "The internet is awash with unlicensed free digital copies of individual chapters or in some cases entire books. Prominent victims of book piracy include Jamie Oliver and J. K. Rowling but the most vulnerable writers are less well-known poets, authors of short stories and writers of cookery books."

I can attest to the fact that you don't need to be famous to be a victim: I found a complete copy of my "Your Writing Coach" book online as an unauthorized PDF. I asked the hosting site to take it down and they did, but it reappeared within a few days with a slightly different file name. Once again I demanded that it be removed, and it was, but this feels like a futile chase.

I also traced it to another site based in Russia, and they also removed it, although with the snide comment that they were doing me a favor as reading the book online probably would make people want to buy the hard copy (oh, sure).

Me quedo con lo que dijo Neil Gaiman en esta entrada (a raíz de poner en su web "American Gods" para descargar, y que ya cité en algún momento):

I'm one of those authors who is fortunate enough to make my living from the things I've written. If I thought that giving books away would make it so that I could no longer make my living from writing and be forced to go out and get a real job -- or that other authors would be less likely to be able to make a living -- I wouldn't do it.

Y luego, Neil dio estos datos:

It's worth drawing people's attention to the fact that the free online reading copy of American Gods is now in its last six days online (it ends 31 March 08). I learned this from an email from Harper Collins, which also told me the latest batch of statistics.

For American Gods:

68,000 unique visitors to the book pages of American Gods

3,000,000 book pages viewed in aggregate

And that the weekly book sales of American Gods have apparently gone up by 300%, rather than tumbling into the abyss. (Which is -- the rise, not the tumble -- what I thought would happen. Or at least, what I devoutly hoped would happen.)

Que copias de tus libros en la red van a incrementar tus ventas físicas... Oh, sure.

Los consejos de Jurgen Wolff no estaban mal, pero fíjate, se acaba de quedar sin un lector de su blog por falta de miras. Lo siento, su feed ocupa sitio, y dado como está mi FeedDemon de abarrotado, mejor borrarlo.

Sí, cada uno hace con su obra lo que quiere. De la misma manera que cada uno hace con su lista de feeds lo que le de la gana. Por cierto, ¿no podría acompañar esa irónica afirmación de "oh, sure" con algo de datos que demuestren que las copias electrónicas le han hecho vender menos?