I’m also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they’re just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they’re undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work
Canadian speculative fiction author Jo Walton, nominated for this year's Nebula Award (ironically given out by the SFWA) in response declared April 23rd International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. The 23rd of April is also St.George's Day, and William Shakespeare's birthday. Walton felt it was appropriate.
Hendrix did some small amount of backpeddling when he said he “may well be wrong” for labeling people “webscabs,” but “I don’t feel that free online posting of whole novels for promotional purposes will in the end empower authors as a class.”
This statement seems in sharp contrast to the success of such authors as Robert J. Sawyer, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. In fact, Scalzi was signed by Tor Books based on the content he supplied on his website. This story was given most of its life when Cory Doctorow linked to it on Boingboing. And on that note, here is Cory's latest free podcast from his forthcoming novel:
| Categories: SciFi & Fantasy, websites |
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