Project Avalon: When Stealing is Stealing

Well, talk about getting involved in all sorts of things that divert my attention and waste gobs of time. The first and easiest was another copyright infringement case. Nick Redfern alerted me, and others, to a website that held a large number of books about paranormal topics available for free download. The list of writers who

Nick Redfern who is responsible for the removal
of the free ebooks

were ripped off by this site is long. In this day and age, I understand why people do it, but they just don’t seem to think about the affects this has on the writers, publishers and even the bookstores.

Here’s the deal. Most writers, me included, do not receive huge advances for our books (unless, of course you happen to be Stephen King or J. K. Rowling). When you look at the cover price of a book, the person who receives the smallest percentage of the money is the writer. The bookstores, booksellers, take fifty to sixty percent of the cover price.

Second, most don’t realize the time and effort that goes into writing a non-fiction book, and by that, I meant those books that pay attention to the truth rather than making it all up and claiming it is the truth. There were telephone calls (which, in days past, were not free). There were travel expense such as airfare, gas, car rental, hotels, food, and a dozen other expenses. The upshot is that we weren’t sitting around with our computer on our lap and googling those things that interested us. Before we had any money in hand, we’d already spent thousands of dollars in the research because the Internet did not exist.

And third, what most people don’t know, is that the standard advance for a book today is basically the same as it was in the 1970s. You try spending a year writing a book, wait as the advance money dribbles in, and maintain a normal existence on 1970 wages.

Oh, I’m not complaining, just providing the facts of life. The point is I picked this job. I knew what it was going to be like, but there were just some stories that I wanted to tell, and if the money wasn’t all that great, well, I’d made that choice. The real pay off was getting the story.

Today, we have to compete with all those self-published books that pop up on Amazon, on bad reviews from people who don’t like our opinions and Internet sites that put the work on line for free. How many people who would have paid for a book didn’t bother to buy it because they could download it for free.

I mention all this because the writers rarely have any sort of a triumph. This week, we had one. The site that had put up all those books, dozens and dozens on line, is gone. In a note published to Facebook:

A message from the staff at Project Avalon:

" The Avalon Staff unanimously decided to remove all the ebooks from the site, whatever their age or provenance. There are no ebooks there now at all. Everything's gone. "

-- Project Avalon Staff

A small victory for the writers who toil at the far end of the publishing industry, who struggle to make a living (who are not guaranteed a fifteen dollar an hour wage), and who enjoy trying to solve this UFO mystery. At least they won’t be ripped off by this site.