I think that if you have spare income such that this is realistic, and you like fiction, you should give money to people who create the fiction, because then you’ll get more fiction you like.
The intellectual property version of the anti-piracy argument is, I think, misleading. The intellectual property system worked well when books and movies were physical objects you could own, but it has transitioned poorly to media being infinitely copyable. And I don’t think following intellectual property law matches up very well with using money to incentivize the creation of more fiction you like. If you have a set amount of money which you can spend on either Marvel movies or the Patreons of webfiction authors, you’ll probably get more fiction you like by pirating the Marvel movies and donating to the Patreons.
There are basically two ways fiction comes to be. Some fiction—such as novels, short stories, podcasts, tabletop RPG rulebooks, and YouTube videos—is produced by a single person or a small team of creators. Some fiction—such as movies and TV shows—is produced by a large number of people coordinated by a corporation. I’ll talk about each case in turn.
First, single-creator fiction. The vast majority of creators don’t make very much money. The average New York Times bestselling novel sells 10,000 to 100,000 copies in its first year. Let’s say a book sells 50,000 copies at $15/copy. Authors get 10% royalties, so the author of a New York Times bestseller gets $75,000/year. A nice chunk of change, but not exactly programmer money. And if your favorite writer isn’t on the New York Times bestseller list, they’re making far less money than this. In many cases, a year’s sales for a small-press novel only amounts to a few hundred dollars.1
Kickstarter and Patreon allow you to see how much money a creator makes. Some very silly people are like “this creator is making so much money! They’re getting $2000/month on Patreon for no reason!” But $2000/month isn’t actually very much money to be paid for a skilled part-time (much less full-time) job.
But even Patreons and Kickstarters that raise very large sums of money can wind up being less money than you think. Ask yourself:
Are there physical rewards, like merchandise or T-shirts or hardcopy books? How much do those cost to make? Don’t forget to account for shipping.
Does the creator have to pay for equipment to make the product (cameras, mikes, props, costumes, animation software, research material)?
How many people are involved in creating this product? Voice actors? Regular actors? Artists? Editors? Copyeditors? Transcribers? Playtesters? Sensitivity readers?
Often, even a seemingly very successful Patreon or Kickstarter makes just enough money to cover equipment and freelancers, without any money going to the creator herself.
It should be obvious at this point that no one does single-creator fiction for the money, but rather because of a compulsive and self-destructive writing behavioral condition because they have something to say. Nevertheless, giving creators money incentivizes the creation of more fiction.
People tend to be more reliable about producing material they’re being paid for. If they’re doing it for the fun of it, they’ll probably abandon it as soon as it stops being fun. If someone is paying them, they’ll likely be more professional—even if it’s only a minimum-wage amount of money.
Time results in more stories and better stories (because the author has more time for research and revision). If a creator is very lucky, they’ll make enough money to quit their job, giving them more time to create. But money can be exchanged for time more-or-less linearly, even if a creator doesn’t make enough to write full-time. They can order in takeout instead of cooking or use a grocery service instead of going grocery shopping. They can hire a babysitter or a cleaning service or a laundry service or a Taskrabbit to do home repair. They can spend less time comparison shopping, buy new objects instead of trying to repair the old ones, or take Ubers sometimes. All of these make time for creators to work on their art.
Second, let’s talk about the more corporate kinds of fiction.
Every so often I read a Tumblr post where someone complains about how their favorite TV show was cancelled, the show was in the middle of an amazing plotline that will never be resolved, the show was a great source of representation, the executives are queerphobic and racist, this just goes to show that there’s no room for creativity anymore in Hollywood, everyone just wants to do boring remakes.
Inevitably I scroll down a couple of posts and they’re like “there’s no reason to pay for a streaming service! Here are a bunch of places to pirate TV shows! [link] [link] [link] As a socialist I think it’s lame and uncool to give corporations money.”2
And… well… yeah.
Profit-maximizing corporations are gonna profit-maximize. If the people who watch the genre-defying TV show with great representation pirate it, and the people who watch the boring remakes full of straight white people pay for streaming, you’re going to get more boring remakes. In a capitalist society, no company is going to keep making queer movies out of, like, altruism.
I’m really not trying to guilt-trip anyone here. But if you see a trailer for a movie and you’re like “holy shit, this is fantastic, why don’t we have more stories like this”, and you can afford to… maybe go see it in the theater to give the companies the signal that they should make more stories like this? If you read a webnovel and it ate two weeks of your life and sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about schedule slip… maybe back them on Patreon as much as you can? A friend suggested a guideline of $1-5 per hour of entertainment, depending on income, which seems reasonable to me—a reasonable sum for most authors and still much cheaper than eating out.3
But I’m not too married to specific guidelines. In general paying for fiction you like is in your enlightened self-interest, and I think more people should consider doing so.
If you can’t afford to buy fiction, it’s generally better for authors to use the library instead of Libgen, because someone still bought a copy. Many library systems allow you to check out ebooks, so it’s just as convenient as getting them on Libgen.
I think this is a weird position for a socialist to adopt because many of the workers who make movies and TV shows earn most of their money from residuals. You’re not fucking over Netflix, you’re fucking over the stunt guy. Workers of the world unite (unless their unions negotiate a contract that involves me paying for labor).
With the caveat that, like, if you watch forty hours a month of Netflix you don’t have to somehow figure out how to donate to the megacorporation.
Broadly endorsed. Although it seems worth noting relatively explicitly that following this pattern can often still involve pirating things.
More specifically: the principle here isn't "pay for fiction"; it's "pay for *good* fiction". Often, going into a work of fiction, one won't know yet whether it's good; that's a thing one learns as one reads / watches / etc. And thus, in many cases, it can be sensible to take an approach of "pirate a work; see what sort of impact it leaves; if the impact it leaves is positive, *then* go back and buy it". Because otherwise your money is going to end up being allocated, not based on which works contain good storytelling, but based on which works are advertised particularly well, and this is likely to produce less incentive towards creation of works containing good storytelling.
Good post! (Of course, I am biased in favor of writers being paid.)
I would also like to note that, particularly if you are a subscriber to a short fiction magazine, it is incredibly beneficial to write to the editor and tell them when they publish a story that you liked! Editors are of course mostly publishing based on their own taste, but they do take reader and particularly subscriber feedback into account in terms of future purchasing and publication decisions.
Very few people send letters to editors, and most of those letters are angry. There is an opportunity here.
(It's also good to write to the author and tell them although it's not always as directly impactful on publishing for structural reasons. But it's nice to read, which makes a difference in terms of "author I like continuing to write.")