Do not buy a book by it’s cover

I follow a lot of blogs and lately I've come across a few blog posts on Piracy. Plutonica nicely sums up the bloggers discussion on the matter with further links to different posters and their opinions. I'm still waiting on Jack's history of piracy and its relation to a capitalist society but has already put out some sources for further reading.



I really don't have much to contribute to the knowledgeable discussion. I have only a pirate honest story.

  
Yesterday it was my 26th birthday. This means that there's more than 10 years on my back as a pirate, even more if I consider the times when I was too young to have a say on what to purchase and instead followed mean cousins around to listen to the music everyone complained about (and that was copied already).

 

It all started with underground music and the bands that had maybe 25 to 100 copies of their demo tapes. In these days for you to listen to their music you had to know so and so who in turn knew so and so that had a pen pal from Norway or Sweden or England who also happened to be the original copier of the material. Then you had the catalogues. You ordered tapes from these catalogues and the people who compiled them were often the pen pal dudes. No more than a week would pass before the original tape would miraculously multiply and a previously unknown band would grow a fan base out of pirated material, zines and pamphlets would appear and so on. This fan base eventually grew up and with technology and information moved on to CD's and DVD's, credit cards and low budget travelling. Many of us became anonymous but loyal fans - the ones who buy the merchandise directly from the bands website, who travel many kilometers through a fair deal of countries to see those bands play live, who buy their CD's and other media. I say buy instead of respect, love or inspiration because, when piracy is concerned, it's money that worries people and not the awe that an unsuspecting passerby felt when he decided to check out what was that sound all about and pressed a REC button or, nowadays, a Download one. In music, I went from pirate to law abiding consumer, for the most part… and only if the band proves worthy. It's the same thing with books, but inversed. I never pirated before,

  
I started reading on the occult and witchcraft when I was pretty young and started buying all the books I could. This meant about 2 books a month, with prices ranging from 10 to 25 euros and from the most random subjects available. At this rate of book purchasing what do think that I, at 26, have to show as a personal library? Perhaps 40 titles where there should be, at the very least, 100. You see, sometime ago I went to clear space for new stuff and holy Jesus. I threw into the recycling bin so much stuff I hurt inside. There was really no other option because I'm not a bibliophile and I underline and write on the margins of every book I own so I couldn't sell them and the vast majority of my collection was…crap. So there I was, with bags and bags of useless printed garbage and a load of money wasted. Do you think I, or any other consumer, want to repeat the mistake of buying blindly? We do not.


 
Let's fast forward to now. I'm no longer 12 or 15, I have a stable job. Although I'm not rich I'm almost where I want to be financially. Still, I have a digital library of hundreds of books. Is it because I think I'm entitled? Is it because I have no respect for the authors work? Perhaps. It's a combination of several factors. Buying crap I didn't knew was crap because I didn't knew any better and later buying crap because I had no other choice than to take that risk taught me that reviews are priceless (and for a long long time I didn't had access to occult related reviews) and also that much too often reviews are also crap. So what do you do? You check things out before.


 
Nowadays i buy mostly online so i cant really take the book to the bookstore's cofee parlour and give it a good diagonal reading, so, if can get my hands on a free digital copy I will, in fact that's the very first thing I look for when considering a new purchase. I take my money very seriously and I will not give it to bad authors. Do I feel I am stealing from them? No. My intention is never to have the book and use it without showing proper respect to the author. My intention is to know and to try the product before making the decision, only I have been deceived too many times by raving reviews, enticing indexes, and well made advertisements. When I did that major reorganization of my book collection, the vast majority of "in the crap bin" materials were from occult/pagan authors. It was funny, even, to see the small pile of keepers consisting almost entirely of academic/recently purchased books and the sum of my years ready to be off to recycle. Lesson learned? Yes.


 
There's also the "getting to know new stuff" factor. Just like what happened with tape trading, unless pirated I wouldn't even know it existed, I would never read those books much less buy them. When I was younger, the important factor was quantity. We wanted a lot of music and we wanted to know. We did. Most of those bands we pirated fell apart or were simply too crappy to endure but there's quite a few others that thrived and have a solid musical career or that achieved a "cult" status. These bands were/are innovative, they were talented, and they consistently and systematically put up excellent sound. Nowadays the same standard of quality applies, even more so because now we can see what authors do beforehand. Is the author good? Is the research solid? Is the work properly cited? Is the writing style clear and to the point? Is the bibliography comprehensive? What does the author include there? Can the book withstand multiple readings? In essence, is the book a keeper? If the answer is yes I'll buy, if not, I won't, but I won't keep it in my hard drive either. It will be deleted and forgot. As with bands, if as an author/publishing house you have my respect as a consumer I'll buy from you without a moment's thought. It's new, it's shiny and I want it. I want it because I trust you and what you can put out, even if that particular work isn't precisely to my tastes I won't consider it a waste or an act of deceit. If not, if I can I will screen you beforehand.