Universe Vol1Num2

by Jim Baen's Universe

  What an individual author does, however valuable, is one thing. What the head of a major publishing house does, is something else entirely. Today, measured in terms of titles produced every month, Baen Books is the second most important paper publisher in science fiction, after Tor Books. (A reality that is recently being reflected in Locus polls, I notice, whose readers are now listing Baen as their second most popular publisher.) And it is, easily, the pre-eminent F&SF publisher in the electronic market.

  Having that publisher on your side of a debate as important to the public and far-ranging in its implications as the fight over DRM makes a huge difference. In fact, it makes a qualitative difference. Individual authors can be dismissed; lawyers can be dismissed; political pundits and theorists can be dismissed; anyone can be dismissed—except another publisher. Jim Baen was in a position to prove what others like myself could only argue; or, at best, demonstrate by such things as making many of my titles available for free in electronic format.

  I've done that for years now, as have a number of Baen authors like David Drake, David Weber, John Ringo and others. Some other authors, who don't publish through Baen, have done much the same. Two examples are Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross; there are others.

  About two-thirds of all my titles are available for free to the public in the Baen Free Library, which we opened in December 2000, not much more than a year after the start of Webscriptions. True enough, I can use that fact to demonstrate that a consistent anti-DRM policy followed by an individual author does not cause the sky to fall. To give perhaps the clearest example, my most popular title is 1632. It has been available for free in electronic format to the public for five years now—and the book has never suffered any decline in sales during that time period. Year after year, despite being available for free as an e-book, the paper edition sells about fifteen thousand copies. That figure fluctuates a bit from one year to the next, of course, but there is no overall downward trend at all. The standard rule of thumb in the industry is that 80% of a book's sales happen in the first three months after publication. But in the case of 1632, sixty percent of the book's sales have come since the first year it came out—during which period the book was always available to the public for free in electronic format.

  Impressive, yes. But, in the end, it's really just a stunt. That's about all an individual author can do. Putting my most popular title up for free to the public was my literary equivalent of Evel Knevel jumping over twenty cars on a motorcycle. I did it to demonstrate, as graphically and daringly as possible, that people who worry about the so-called "threat of online piracy" are being spooked by shadows.

  Stunts have the great value of drawing a lot of public attention, but the problem is that most people figure they're just that—stunts.

  Who knows? The fact that it worked for one author doesn't mean it would work for others, much less all authors. Just as the fact that people will marvel at Evel Knevel's ability to jump over twenty cars on a motorcycle doesn't make them in the least bit inclined to follow his lead. Many of them also know, after all, that in the course of his dare-devil career Evel Knevel broke just about every bone in his body.

  But what Jim did wasn't a stunt. All the arguments that people can and do marshal against me, such as:

  — you're just lucky;

  —you would have been popular anyway, regardless of the free e-books; in fact, they may have cut into your sales and you prospered despite them;

  —yadda yadda yadda . . .

  Simply can't be made against Jim Baen, because what Jim did wasn't a series of stunts, it was a major publishing house's policy.

  In the end, the Free Library is an excellent demonstration of some truths, but it doesn't prove anything. What does prove something is the much more mundane, even—by now—humdrum, regular sales of all its e-books through Webscriptions done by Baen Books.

  Year after year, month after month, Baen Books keeps proving that DRM is, in addition to everything else, a liability for a commercial publisher. All the arguments that can be advanced against me—or David Drake, or Cory Doctorow, or Charlie Stross—simply can't be advanced against Baen. That's because it all evens out in the wash, when you're dealing with a major publisher's policy.

  If someone insists that I probably would have done well anyway, I can point out that all of Baen's authors do better in electronic sales through Baen's Webscriptions than anyone else.

  What? Are we all "lucky"?

  If someone insists that Cory Doctorow's policies with regard to DRM prove nothing because Cory doesn't make most of his income as an author, I can simply point out that all of Baen's authors do better in the electronic market than other authors do. And not one of them has an equivalent to Cory's very popular Boing Boing web site, and many of them—including me—do in fact depend on writing for their entire income.

  For years, I've danced about and done my best to draw public attention to the issue, like a virtual Gene Kelly. Nor was that work unimportant, because it did in fact get a lot of publicity. Business Week's online magazine ran an article on me, and I was once invited to attend—all expenses paid—an international conference in London on the subject of electronic publishing.

  But I could only do it—and it only made a big difference—because I had Jim Baen at my side. I could dance, but he could hammer. And hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and hammer, like a blacksmith at his trade.

  Which, in the end, is what he was. And when the day finally comes, as I believe it will, that the American public decisively repudiates DRM and demands that giant corporations cease and desist from their efforts to lock up society's intellectual heritage for their own private gain, the world will look back and recognize Jim Baen as the man who, more than any other, forged that outcome. Not by words, but by deeds.

  ****

  One last thing. In a jocular manner, in the course of an email exchange we were having on the subject of DRM, Jim once called me "Baen's bulldog." The reference, to those familiar with the history of evolution, is to Darwin's most forceful and popular advocate, Thomas Henry Huxley.

  Jim was joking . . . mostly. And I responded in kind, at the time. But there was an underlying seriousness to the statement, and we both knew it. Leave aside the humor, and it was true.

  And still is. Jim Baen is gone. The bulldog remains—and I intend to continue using this magazine the way Jim wanted me to. Among other things, as a bully pulpit for explaining to the public that DRM is a serious and deep threat to the liberties of the American population and that of the world as a whole. And that a clear and practical alternative exists, created and maintained by Jim Baen, that guts all the claims made by DRM advocates that their anti-democratic policies are essential for the preservation of copyright and the livelihood of authors, artists, and other intellectual creators.

  The reason I will be able to do that illustrates another part of Jim's legacy. The difference between what an author like myself can advocate and demonstrate, and what a publisher can do, is that the latter leaves behind an institutional framework where the former does not.

  There will be no change in Baen Books' policy, now that Jim is dead.

  First, because there is no reason to change the policy. It works, and it works well.

  Secondly, because—like all successful policies—Jim's has left behind a coherent and organized vested interest, in the form of a staff that is accustomed and comfortable with his policies, and, just as important, a large fan base that is also comfortable and accustomed to it.

  People usually use the term "vested interest" as a pejorative, but that's just silly. It all depend on whether the interest being vested is a good one or not. Democracy, after all, is also a "vested interest"—and it becomes more difficult to undermine or destroy, the more thoroughly rooted it becomes.

  So it is with Jim's anti-DRM policies. By now, even if the incoming management wanted to change those policies—which it has no intention of doing, I can assure you—they would find it so damaging to Baen's fi
nancial interests that they would shy away from even thinking about it. The uproar from the very large fan base that Baen Books has created for Jim's policies with regard to electronic publication—which, I will point out, is so far the one and only clearly defined "vested interest" that can be matched against the vested interests of music recording and movie industry executives and their powerful lobbies—would be enormous.

  That, too, is Jim's legacy. Thousands of regular readers—and buyers—of electronic books whom he created as a vested interest in the right way to handle the challenges of the electronic era for the publishing industry.

  ****

  I asked Jim to read and approve all of the editorials I wrote in my Salvoes Against Big Brother column. I did that because, although I am listed as the author of those essays, I considered Jim to be the co-author of them in all but name.

  He was able to read and approve the first three of those essays. With regard to the first, he sent me the following email:

  Hi. I've read both. The DRM one has my enthusiastic approval, and you certainly did not say anything I don't agree with.

  He gave me his verbal agreement to the second and third essays, one of which appears in this issue and the other will appear in the next. That was in the course of a telephone conversation that may have been the last one I ever had with him. If not, certainly one of the last.

  He won't be able to read the ones that will come after. I don't believe in an afterlife, and neither did Jim. But if we're both proven wrong, whatever other problems I may face in that life-after-death, I'm not at all worried that Jim's shade won't be pleased by the rest of what I have to say.

  Salvos Against Big Brother

  Author: Eric Flint

  Copyright: What Are the Proper Terms for the Debate?

  I want to continue my discussion of copyright, which I began in last issue's column, before turning my attention to the issue of so-called "Digital Rights Management" itself. The reason I want to do so is because what lies at the heart of DRM is one set of answers to a few simple questions:

  1) What sort of protection do authors require, to make sure that they can and will keep engaging in their labor?

  2) Why do they need a particular sort of protection, as opposed to another?

  3) For how long do they need it?

  I'll address the first two of these questions in this column, and the third one in the next.

  Let's start with the first one, whose answer is obvious. If you don't figure out a way to pay people to do labor such as writing fiction, one of two things will happen:

  a) Some potential writers won't do it at all.

  b) Most will, simply because they feel a personal urge to do so. But, because they can't make a living as authors, they will—certainly on average—never get all that good at it.

  The second point, by the way, is much more important than the first. The number of people who set out to become writers for the purpose of making money is miniscule, and always has been. To be blunt, only a moron would take up being an author as a way to make a living, much less a good living. As careers go, for all but a tiny percentage, it is either impossible altogether except as a part-time occupation, or pays dismally and erratically even if you can manage to do it full-time.

  I know a lot of authors, and I'm an author myself. I do not know a single one who set out to be an author because they thought it was a smart way to make money. Even some money, not to mention enough to live on. As far as that goes, setting out to be a professional author is one of worst careers you could choose.

  Instead, they set out to write because they wanted to write, period. Getting paid was more important to them as a mark of success in terms of reaching an audience, than for the money itself—at least initially.

  This fact has led some people to the conclusion that paying authors is unnecessary at all. This silly notion is particularly cherished by the "information wanna be fwee" crowd of pseudo-libertarians. "Good writing," they argue, "is driven from the heart." Grubby stuff like paying authors money simply prostitutes the noble art itself. (This is invariably their justification for engaging in willful and flagrant violations of copyright.)

  Leaving aside issues of simple fairness, the notion is silly for what ought to be the most obvious reason of all. Whatever else it may be—call it "sublime literature" or anything downwind of that—writing is first of all a craft. A particularly difficult craft to learn, at that, as anyone who sets out to write learns very quickly.

  Writing is like acting. Every literate person can write, just as any person—literate or not—can act. It does not thereby follow that they can do it well. That's a different kettle of fish entirely. Almost everybody has a cousin or whatever who can provide fairly good family entertainment at barbeques with their jokes or voice impersonations or antics. That doesn't mean they could make a living as a stand-up comic.

  Doing something well requires two things. First, it requires an aptitude—or talent, if you prefer—for a particular sort of work or activity. Secondly, it requires practice.

  This fact, so obvious to everyone with regard to almost anything else, often gets ignored when it comes to writing. It's amazing to me how many people have the screwiest ideas about writing. They seem to think that a person just sits down one day and, effortlessly, starts churning out good prose.

  Well . . . yes, there have been a few individuals here and there who seem to have managed that feat. But "few" is the right word. The most common pattern, by far, is that it takes a person long hours—years, more often than not—before they learn how to write well enough that many other people want to read what they've written.

  There's an old saw in science fiction—I've forgotten who first came up with it—that says you have to write a million words of crap before you write anything worth reading. That's a bit of an exaggeration, in my opinion. At least for me. I've gone back through my personal history and added it all up, and I can now strut around and say very proudly that I managed to start writing pretty good stuff after writing only (by my best count) about 400,000 words of crap.

  But whether it's a quarter million or half a million or a million words of crap, there are almost no writers who've managed to start writing well without a lot of practice, false starts, and a learning experience. Nor does that end once they start getting published. Almost all writers continue to improve with practice, for a period of many years after they start getting published.

  In short, in writing as in every other field of human endeavor, professionals are—on average, understanding that there are always some exceptions—better than amateurs.

  Period.

  Yes, yes, yes, there are always some exceptions. In any field of work, there are a few amateurs who are better than most professionals. To give one example, every year there are a few graduating amateur college athletes whom everyone knows are already better in their sport than most professionals—which is precisely why they get offered big contracts to "turn pro." But even then, every such extremely gifted amateur has to go through a sharp and steep learning curve before they really perform as a top professional athlete. And many never manage to make the transition at all.

  And they're only individual exceptions to the rule, anyway, they're not the rule itself.

  The rule is simple:

  Put the best college football team on the field against any professional football team, and the pros will win at least nine times out of ten.

  The same goes for writers.

  If you don't believe me, when it comes to writing, take a look—your choice—at either the list of Nobel Prize winners for literature or any bestseller list. You will quickly discover that well over 90% of the authors on any such list are professional writers, not amateurs. And, if they do have a "principal" occupation other than being an author, it's usually one that is either closely connected to writing or, one way or another, allows them a great deal of time to work as a writer.

  In his speeches on copyright—from which I will be quoting thr
oughout these essays—Macaulay put it this way:

  You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of benefiting the community. But it is generally within these walls that they seek to signalise themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for their literary labour. And there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One of those ways is patronage; the other is copyright.

  From there, Macaulay goes on to discuss the advantages of copyright over patronage. I will deal with that issue in a moment. But, for now, let me stick to the point at hand.

  Which is simple: The fundamental purpose of copyright is not to pay authors. It is to make sure that society gets as many good books written as possible. Or, to put it another way, paying authors is a means to an end, not the end itself.

  Immediately, some authors will raise an objection. "I work like anyone else, dammit. So I should get paid!"

  Well, of course. But why should you get paid by copyright? Any form of labor should be renumerated, to be sure, or you have slavery. But work-for-hire (as the practice is called in publishing) takes care of that obligation just fine.