Yarrrrr! Someone wants me to be pirated.

Hmm. Okay, so I know the ebook market in the UK for SF and Fantasy is miniscule against the physical book. Once you wade through stats and spin on the rise of digital sales (which, are often bumped up massively by mp3 audiobook downloads), you realise how small we’re talking for ebook fiction markets at the moment. Yes, there is a future and a place for them, and sure, you might be a reviewer with dozens of books to blast through on holiday, but let’s not get carried away when we’re talking about the vast majority of the SFF market.

I’ve ranted elsewhere that people love them book things – hey, it’s the perfect cheap portable device!

So what do I think now that I see someone actually wants pirated versions of my book uploaded to the interwebs? Well… meh.

What do any other writers think about having their own work pirated?

Is it any different (in theory) to people lending your physical book to someone else? Many authors make a habit of releasing their work under Creative Commons Licenses, to make sure it’s out there, if anything as a word-of-mouth tool. Other publishers have released free ebooks to promote an author’s backlist. I’m all for that jazz. Speaking solely as me as a writer here, I’m not so fussed about free copies going online. The more people that read me, great. It’s such a tiny percentage of genuine readers, and I can see through a lot of the spin “ZOMG teh end of books!” I ain’t gonna lose sales here. I can see publishers viewing this differently – it’s a tough argument to make, and if they lose a single penny in a competitive market, that shows.

And let’s not even bother comparing it to the music industry – books and music are vastly different entities. If anything, those differences (music has for decades been played on a device, is more passive, is casual, was influenced deeply by single sales so you wouldn’t get the same for chapters, you don’t skip from chapters of one book to another, yadda yadda yadda) to me suggest people are more likely to gloss over this sort of thing.

The only reason I would be pissed off if my book was pirated would be if it was torrented before the release date, but only if people went on to use it as spoilers. “OMG so and so DIES!”

Anyway. I’m off to buy myself an eye patch. Yarr etc.

So there’s another article on the perception of fantasy readers.

But even SF fans have it easy compared to followers of fantasy. These are the people Red Dwarf fans sneer at for being nerdy. They are the zit-ridden little brothers of the SF geeks, whose even-less-healthy obsessions include trolls, giving Anglo-Saxon names to phallic weapons, and maidens with magical powers.

Sigh. Firstly: the dude clearly hasn’t been to DragonCon – if nerds look like this, sign me up. But is it me, or is there too much debate about the image of fantasy these days?

I remember discussing the Gemmell Award with a friend recently, and we both couldn’t find much wide-screen discussion on the quality and content of the books, of the literature, of what it offers, the context within genre (the taxonomy even), the nuts and bolts and nuances of the text, standing the books alongside each other and digging deep. All that I’ve seen is Damien G Walter’s thoughts, but little else other than a report of the night, or a brief note on the winner, or those cool little axes (yes I do want one, but that’s not the point.)

Compare this with the Clarke Award shortlist discussion.

Rampant debates followed in various forums and blogs, and on occasion veered into a belle-lettristic circle-jerk (but that’s all part of the fun, right?). The point is, the books were being examined in ferocious detail, and that meant people are interested in SF as a literature.

So where is the wider analysis of the Gemmell Award books? Why hasn’t anyone cranked-open these bad boys (and girls – we are gender neutral here!) to open up a wider discussion on the merits of the books against each other, a real show-down to get people talking about what’s in the books, rather than talking about the people holding them?

I love reading fantasy fiction and all that it can offer, from the fast entertainment to the deep reflection, the challenging content. That sensawonder. But I think we can get caught up in the aesthetics of fantasy as a genre, rather than the content of the individual books. We’re asked to celebrate all that’s good about fantasy – and I’m totally for that – and I think the forums and blogs celebrate the genre well. The community throngs.

But how can we persuade those who look down upon us to treat fantasy literature with more respect if we’re not respectfully discussing these great books in detail ourselves?