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Comment by josh_fyi | Hacker News Reader

I was delighted when my book showed up on Z-library! I of course was never paid for authoring that book; indeed I paid a subvention to publish it with Harvard University Press. At some point, the rights were sold to the giant publisher Brill, which was charging $30 per chapter for a book that has no value by chapter.

Luckily, some kind soul at University of Marburg uploaded it and Library Genesis still has it.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/

https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...

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Reminds me of how Orwell preferred to write introductions to 1984 only for illegal reprints behind the iron curtain. I can't find the exact quote but he said that he'd write it for that audience alone as he knew without a doubt that they would read his introduction. If I ever actually write a book, I hope I have enough courage to do the same and only write introductions for cracked copies. You know the audience actually cares if they are willing to risk the fuzz just to read.

The dynamics are completely different to printed books, which need to be purchased by the reader. Cracked e-books are downloaded in bulk and often never read or replaced by another 'free' book when the first few pages don't engage sufficiently. It isn't unusual for someone to get an ebook reader, have a mate fill its storage with best sellers or a genre dump, and never ever download a new title or even know how.

I have what I have to imagine is going to be terrible news for you about how a lot of people engage with their printed books...

Don't remember where I saw this but: "The act of purchasing physical books and the act of reading them are two entirely different hobbies and practices".

Additionally, if someone downloads your book for free, and barely reads it, as you suggest, have they _really_ done much more than picking up the book in person, scanning the table of contents, reading some pages in particular, then setting the book back down? What you're describing sounds like the digital version of what I used to do at physical bookstores; it seems a less compelling argument against what the z-lib founders were doing, not more.

https://www.raptitude.com/2022/01/everything-must-be-paid-fo...

Tsundoku notwithstanding, I guess.

Is there much risk just in reading a cracked book!

I know two instances of authors uploading their own books to libgen. Both esoteric academic books that they were not paid to write.

three

I've been getting paid for my book generously, but I'm still happy to know that my book can be read at online libraries for free, so the people who can't afford it can benefit from it. My publisher, Manning, also has these HumbleBundle campaigns around Christmas time to sell many books at once that makes a single book cost $1 or so.

If online libraries can be made even more streamlined, the demand for piracy would diminish eventually. The same applies to academic papers.

I see you are taking the ticketmaster approach. You knowingly put your works into a contractual system that you can then condemn later so you can feel good and let the 'system' 'other' 'society' you were a part of be the bad one. I have news for you, that 'system' 'other' 'society' includes you, as the person who voluntarily agreed to let your work be locked away. But it's 'ticketmaster' that is bad, no you, who voluntarily contributed.

If you didn't get paid for writing the book, how did the copyright transfer to someone else (so that they could sell it)? Or the transferable rights to print/distribute it, if that's what we're talking about here.

I signed away rights to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the legal name in this context for Harvard). That was not a problem as it was clear to me that this would not be a money-maker for anyone. The business-side was handled by Eisenbrauns, a small publisher. When the owner retired, the business sold to Penn State. Later, the Harvard Semitic Museum (the part of Harvard in charge of the series) sold the rights to Brill. I am guessing that Harvard Semitic Museum saw this as a chance to get a little bit of money out of their asset, and Brill saw this as a cow to milk to death, the way the price for legacy software is raised to sky-high levels as the product dies. And indeed, I am guessing that Brill is not making much -- no one did. https://www.sspnet.org/community/news/brill-announces-collab...

Is that contract valid? What did you receive of value in exchange for signing away your copyright?

I assume getting it into print was the "item of value" Joshua received.

It was 25 years ago, so I don't remember. However, even if today I could get all my rights back -- indeed, if I could get compensated for a reasonable author's royalty going back to the start -- the amount of money would not be worth noticing.

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