This came to mind in Toronto, where a very tall man with a shaved head brought me a downloaded copy of Choke printed on standard-size typing paper and bound with Chicago screws. In a thick accent he said that my books and the books of Stephen King were the most popular novels in Russia, but that no one ever had to buy them. He then stood in line and refused to step aside until I autographed his “book.”
To me it looked like a false economy.
Unless printer ink, paper, and binding are also free in Russia, it’s likely this man had actually paid more to create his version than he would’ve paid for a commercially printed one. An irony he shrugged off. More recently a young couple from Ukraine told me the same. They described seeing subway cars filled with people who’d printed their own copies of Fight Club. When I mention this to my artist friends, they shake their heads.
As bad as writers have it with piracy, comic creators have their own special circle of hell.
Comic conventions are rife with hack artists who sell fans counterfeit prints of Hellboy or the Black Panther. These are versions drawn by amateurs, drawn badly and printed cheaply. They cost five dollars. Of course they’re unsigned. So…the buyers carry them to Artists Alley where they ask the actual creator/owner of the character to sign the work, thus giving it real value. When the artist dares to point out that Kabuki does not have one hand larger than the other, or that Cassie Hack would never copulate in such a position with a donkey—yes, it’s a sizable industry, depicting superheroes in sexualized ways and then bullying the creator to sign his or her approval—when the creator balks, the shit hits the Comic-Con fan. Hits the metaphoric fan, not the reader.
When the creator refuses to sign the five-dollar knockoff, the collector erupts, accusing the creator of being a selfish prick. A rich, miserly jerk who demands big money for his actual work, prices no working-class fan can afford. Perhaps fueled by shame—yes, they’ve been fooled into buying a lousy fake, and they’re embarrassed to have this pointed out by someone they admire—the would-be collector pitches a fit. The creator who’s trying to protect her livelihood as well as the value of the actual work she’s sold to others, she’s accused and shamed and pilloried in person and online. So not only are you confronted by your Batman having oral sex with your Robin, but you’re made out to be the bad guy for not laughing along with the joke and autographing it.
No, none of this is a satisfying answer, but it is a comfort.
For a long time if anyone wanted to buy my books or the books of Salman Rushdie at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square in New York City, they had to ask for the books at the checkout counter. Yes, like cigarettes in a bodega. If left unguarded, my books would be stolen. Salman’s would be taken to the public bathrooms and stuffed in the toilets. Barnes & Noble was tired of shoplifters and sick of unblocking clogged toilets so behind the registers the books went.
It helps to know that Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was among the most read works of the nineteenth century. It was the Fifty Shades of Grey or the Harry Potter of its era, but Poe made an estimated $120 from it. That was his initial fee, the only money he got. Unscrupulous printers reproduced the poem endlessly without paying a royalty. Shakespeare also had to contend with stenographers who’d attend his plays, writing down the lines at a feverish pace, and selling the pirated plays filled with stenographic errors.
It’s this flood of unauthorized Shakespearean works that drove the price down to a penny, according to the book The Stealth of Nations. And it’s probable that the penny price kept the plays so popular and preserved their author in the public’s taste for so many centuries.
Without piracy, William Shakespeare might’ve been long forgotten.
It seems the late George Romero would agree. A few years back, at ZombieCon in Seattle, I sat down with him. We talked about how American International had distributed his classic Night of the Living Dead without putting a copyright statement on prints of the film. It fell immediately into public domain. Anyone with a print could show it without paying a fee. Anyone could copy and sell it. In the early years of VHS tapes it was the top-selling film because no royalties were due. Romero never saw another nickel from his black-and-white masterpiece.
In retrospect, he wasn’t unhappy. The copyright loss had kept the film in constant circulation. Between its initial theatrical release and its jump to videotapes, it was always being shown somewhere as a midnight movie. It had made enough money to cover production costs, he told me. And the film’s continuous popularity made Romero a lasting celebrity. It gave him a reputation that attracted financing for his subsequent projects. He shrugged off the loss of the copyright. If the film hadn’t exploded in the public domain, he might’ve been a one-shot director. What looked like a disaster at the time might actually have saved his career.
Mapmakers, cartographers, create fake towns on the maps they make. Then if they find a map published by a different source, but featuring the same fake town, they know it’s a copy and can take legal action. With this in mind, you can plant a unique name or phrase that when searched will turn up every site on the web where your work is available. One click, and you’ve found all the illegal copies. The legendary writer Parker Hellbaby advised me of this trick.
That might not be the answer you want, but if you were my student I’d tell you that’s as good as it gets for now.
A Postcard from the Tour
The last man is always a wild card. He loiters all evening as
