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There’s bit an uptick recently in authors posting blog entries about the subject of “eBook Piracy”. Today, for example, Chuck Wendig did one of his ’25 Things’ posts about it. The following was written by me as a comment to Chuck’s post, but I figured it was worth re-stating here, under the Insurgent Creative banner, since it’s a subject of importance to independent creators.

A couple of things:

1) If you really want to address the culture, stop calling it “piracy.”

The GOP managed to kill the Inheritance Tax by successfully renaming it the Death Tax. Death Tax, Death Tax, Death Tax — that’s the only way they’d refer to it. The Democrats starting defending the tax using the same name, which allowed the GOP to set the terms of the debate, and now folks like Tagg Romney are insured that the benefits of their grueling hard work of being born are not subject to taxes, and all because Cooter in South Carolina doesn’t like the idea of his Momma being roughed up by Revenuers on her death bed.

By calling it “Piracy”, you romanticize it for supporters (“I’m a dashing, swashbuckling rogue!”) and demonize it for opponents (“It’s theft! A crime!”) — both of which neatly avoids the *actual thing that’s happening*, which is simply Unauthorized File Sharing. Unauthorized file sharing is a natural result of our communications technology outstripping our copyright laws. Calling it something else prevents us from reasonably approaching the issue and updating our laws to match technological reality.

2) The only way to reduce unauthorized file sharing is through cost and convenience. That’s it. …And note, I didn’t say “prevent” or “stop”, because it won’t — nothing will. That genie is out of the bottle. The best we can do is make it *really easy* for people to compensate us and get our files. If we do that, most will.

Look at Apple. Damn near everybody has downloaded unauthorized mp3 files. Chuck used Napster, so did I, so did millions of others. Music is one of the most-shared things on the planet. And yet, Apple bet literally *millions* of dollars on the idea that people would be willing to pay for that music, rather than share it — and they bet that money AFTER file-sharing was already pretty common. They went after it with cost (99 cents a song — an impulse one-click purchase) and convenience (easily searchable, instantly delivered, and guaranteed to be free of malware and viruses).

The result? A multi-billion dollar business. Selling things which are STILL available for free as unauthorized file shares elsewhere online. They bank on the fact that the cost and convenience makes them a better choice than digging for a free file that might be low-quality, or a virus trojan, or just even mis-labeled. And they’ve been proven right.

Cost and convenience, kids. Make your digital stuff available easily and cheaply. If your publisher doesn’t do it, carve out those rights and do it your damn self. It’s not hard.

In a very interesting move, political commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan has announced that his highly-viewed site, The Dish, will be going fully independent beginning in February.

Sullivan, a British expatriate living in the US, started as an independent blogger in 2000, offering aggregation and commentary on political and cultural issues. As his site grew in readership, it attracted the attention of Time magazine, who then hosted the site until 2007, increasing his exposure further. Sullivan left Time for The Atlantic, leading to a 30% spike in traffic for his new hosts. The Dish then moved from The Atlantic to The Daily Beast in 2011, who hosted (and paid Sullivan and his staff) while the site’s readership increased even more. Readers of The Dish number in the millions. 70% have the site as a bookmarked destination, and the average reader spends over 16 minutes per day on the site — stunning figures for any blog.

So it is not surprising that Sullivan has decided to leverage that audience into a base for a crowd-funded independent operation. Starting February 1st, the Dish will appear on the original URL again (www.andrewsullivan.com), as part of Dish Publishing LLC. The site will use a metered “freemium” model for funding. To quote Sullivan:

“Our particular version will be a meter that will be counted every time you hit a “Read on” button to expand or contract a lengthy post. You’ll have a limited number of free read-ons a month, before we hit you up for $19.99. Everything else on the Dish will remain free. No link from another blog to us will ever be counted for the meter – so no blogger or writer need ever worry that a link to us will push their readers into a paywall. It won’t. Ever. There is no paywall. Just a freemium-based meter.”

The site subscription will be $19.99 per year — absolutely worth it, in my opinion. To handle the meter and payment, Sullivan is using TinyPass, who offer solutions to small publishing operations for monetizing online content, by not only granting access to sites, sections, pages, and videos, but also sell downloadable files of any kind — which should make it of interest to any Insurgent Creative looking for an independent method of direct-to-consumer distribution. I certainly intend to look into it.

Sullivan is currently offering a “pre-subscription” to The Dish leading up to the launch — $19.99, but with the option of paying more for those more interested in true patronage.

The ground is shifting yet again — Creative insurgency is not just limited to writers, artists and musicians. We now see that journalists can also benefit from detaching themselves from corporate control and dealing directly with their audience.