The pirates of Port Perry

My friend Pat over at Nine Day Wonder (who, by the way, did a great interview with me that you should check out right here) is a big crime fiction fan.  So big, in fact, that she’s dragging me into the genre.

Not that I’ve avoided it.  I’ve been reading and loving Elmore Leonard’s stuff for years, as well as Dennis Lehane and a few others.  But in the last few years, Pat’s encouraged me enough to judge unpublished manuscripts of the CWC’s Arthur Ellis awards, got me out to a book launch for a local crime writer, Howard Shrier and even to try my hand at a mystery novel myself…which is a story in its own right.

Anyway, long story short, I remember walking around a bookstore with her a few months back and, in my hazy memory, I seem to remember her telling me that Ian Rankin was a great author.  Fair enough, but I didn’t pick up any of his books at the time, as I’d already grabbed a few books on her recommendation and mentally noted to check him out at some unspecified future date.

Now, flash forward to last Thursday evening when I had occasion to be in the Port Perry hospital visiting both my mother and my aunt–again, another story all on its own.  Here’s the thing…on the way out from the visit, I walked by the gift shop, which was closed.  But they had a wheeled cart stacked high with books.  Taped to the side of the cart was a price list (Hardcovers 50 cents, paperbacks 25 cents, magazines free) and an envelope that you can drop your money in.  Totally on the honour system.

You gotta love small towns, don’t you?

Anyway, not ever able to resist a stack of books, I took a quick scan through and noticed an Ian Rankin book.  Hmm, I thought.  Good way to discover if he is any good.  For 25 cents, how can I go wrong?  Then I found a second book, then a third.

Then I noticed the whole row.  It should be noted that only one of these books even had the spine broken.  They looked brand new.

When I pulled them out and stacked them up and counted them, there was a total of 24 books.  $6.00 for 24 books. Even if I hate the guy, I’ve still spent less than I would on one of his books in Chapters.

I pulled out three toonies and put them in the envelope and trotted my new library out the door.

Then, on the drive back home, I started thinking.  Obviously someone at some time presumably went to a store and purchased these books at full price and Mr. Rankin dutifully received his cut.

The owner then either read the books, or cast them aside, eventually donating them somewhere that they would end up in a cart under my questing fingers.  And the hospital got the rough equivalent of four Tim Horton’s coffees out of my pocket.

So, here’s where my thoughts went: How is this different from internet piracy?

Let me put it another way.  If I went online today and managed to find a copy of the latest John Grisham or Danielle Steele or Patricia Cornwell or Stephen King or the aforementioned Elmore Leonard or Dennis Lehane.  Pick your famous author.  Let’s say I found an ebook version of one of their books that could be copied.  Let’s say I purchased that ebook for the full price.

Then, after reading the book, it’s just sitting there.  Now, let’s say I’m a disciplined guy and I offer that ebook up on the internet for 25 cents to the first person that reaches out to me.  And they pay me and I send them the book.

That’s piracy.  Arrrrrr, ya scurvy dog!

I can be fined or sentenced to jail time or whatever.  It’s Not Good.  Right?

Now, I’m not naive.  I know that whenever music files or movies or ebooks are shared, they aren’t just shared with one person.  That’s the thing with an electronic copy of anything, it can be copied as much as possible without any loss of quality.  So when they’re shared, they’re shared with the world.

And here’s another thing to think about.  If the Port Perry hospital had had only the one Ian Rankin book, I would have tossed my quarter into the envelope, and from there, read the book and possibly enjoyed it enough to go pick up another book or two from Rankin, thereby adding to his income.

Instead, from what I can tell, I got the full collection of his Inspector Rebus novels, as well as a bunch of others.  24 books spans a lot of years of writing.  Unless Rankin releases something new, I’ve got a ton of his books, enough to last me a couple of years at the very least.  I won’t be buying anything new from him for a long while.

So, did this help Rankin?  Or hurt him?

I’ve gone out into the Twitterverse and talked about how I think piracy can help as much as it hinders.  I’ll admit to downloading an illegal copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club which I then enjoyed immensely.  To prove my point, I then posted the picture of the 11 Palahniuk books I purchased at full price, including Fight Club.  The first Harry Potter adventure was the first audiobook I ever listened to and, not sure that I would even like audiobooks, I got a copy from the internet.

Not only did that cause me to purchase audiobooks going forward, but it also spurred me to buy every book J. K. Rowling released.

So, in these cases, did piracy hurt Rowling?  Or Palahniuk?  Or the audiobook market?  Hell no.

And personally, if my book Vanishing Hope ever gets released in ebook format, personally, I almost hope it’ll be pirated.  Yes, it won’t earn me any money, but I guarantee a lot more people will know my name, get exposed to my writing and perhaps, going forward, decide to purchase something else I wrote.

But back to the 25 cent books.  My question is, why is it legal for all the used book sellers to do so?  The authors aren’t making money off it.  The publishers aren’t.  And yet, within a half-hour’s drive, I know of at least stores of the top of my head that engage in this process.

Why aren’t the publishers going nuts over this?  How many stores sell used books nationally?  Internationally?

But which is sexier?  Online pirates are definitely sexier.  They’re the Captain Jack Sparrows to the retail stores…Cap’n Crunch (sorry, I couldn’t come up with an unsexy pirate).

And yes, the online pirates definitely have more reach.

But seriously.  In my opinion, online pirates have led me to actually spending money for stuff.  The Pirates of Port Perry got six bucks out of me and stopped me from paying retail for Ian Rankin.

Think about it.

The past harmonizes

I just finished reading Stephen King’s latest, 11/22/63.  Okay, slight clarification, I just finished listening to all 30ish hours of it on audiobook.  This is not going to be a review of the book, beyond saying it’s likely the best book he’s written in years and the one I’ve most enjoyed since Duma Key a few years back.

As King ages, his work gets a little more uneven, but I don’t think that’s much of a criticism for a guy that’s written well over fifty novels, short story collections and two non-fic books.  Hell, Chuck Palahniuk hit uneven about seven books in from his spectacular debut with Fight Club.  The cracks began with Haunted, widened incredibly by Snuff and then it all fell to shit with the mess known as Pygmy where Chuck Palahniuk fell into the habit of parodying Chuck Palahniuk.  He was in the lead for favourite author…but he kept writing.  I haven’t read his last two.  I’m scared they’ll lower my opinion of him even more and take more time out of my life.

My point is, I’ve never felt that about King, even at his worst…and when he’s bad, he is bad.  Tommyknockers still stands as, to me, his all-time shittiest book.  Lisey’s Story (the one that the literary community heaped all kinds of praise for) runs a damn close second.

But with 11/22/63, the storyteller is back.  Yes, the book likely could have been two to three-hundred pages leaner, but overall, it’s an enjoyable story.  And for those of you who’s eyes have already glazed over because you “don’t read horror”, well, that’s lovely.  Go read this.  It ain’t horror.  No more than Shawshank Redemption (from the story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption) or Stand By Me (from the story The Body) or the Green Mile were horror.

Just damn good storytelling from a damn good author that still knows how to entertain.  What made it even more fun for a long-time reader such as myself is the huge references to both his horror magnum opus, It and also Christine and smaller nods to the aforementioned Shawshank Redemption.

Anyway, all of that was me getting sidetracked as I usually do on this blog.  The main thing I wanted to talk about was a big element of the storyline of 11/22/63, which is about the main character, Jake Epping, going back in time with the intent of saving JFK from the assassin’s bullet.  There’s a couple of phrases that come up repeatedly as plot points.  One is, “the past is obdurate”, meaning the past will fight against anyone who attempts to change it.

The other, and the one I want to talk about, is “the past harmonizes”.  What King does is create several echoes throughout the book.  A couple of young students learning to dance to Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” gets echoed later on with Jake and Sadie dancing to the same tune.  A scene witnessed outside a bar where a man takes a knife to his own throat after stating a couple of lines of dialogue are echoed in a frightful scene later on in the book that I won’t spoil, but made me aware of just how much of a genius King can be when he puts his mind to it.  It’s also echoed in guns, cars, names…many things.

The interesting, and more than a little creepy, thing about all this is what’s happened to me in the three days since I’ve finished the novel.

The first I noticed was when I started on the very next audiobook, The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks.  There’s a character that I came across very quickly named Deke.  The same as a fairly important secondary character from 11/22/63.  At that point of discovery, I thought, huh, interesting.

Then, this morning, while walking my dog, I listened to another passage from The Traveler and they mentioned an event that happened in the past.  Specifically, the year 1849.  No big deal, right?  But last night, I was listening to an old greatest hits album by the band Lighthouse.  I wasn’t sure, so I went down to my office this morning after coming back from the walk and looked at the song I’d paused halfway through on the computer.  It was the song “1849”.  That’s the first time I officially thought, the past harmonizes.

Then, after the walk, I decided to reward myself with a first day of vacation relaxation day.  So I popped in a movie I’ve been wanting to watch for quite a while.  It was X-Men: First Class.  And on the screen, I watched the story unfold about a fictionalized Cuban Missile Crisis and footage of…JFK.  And I thought for the second time in two hours, the past harmonizes.

Okay, none of these things are huge, and they’re all obviously coincidental.  My point is, only someone who’s an absolute master of their craft could put together story elements that, with only the slightest coincidence, leave the book resonating with you for days afterward.

Brilliant writing.

Brilliant novel.

Brilliant author.

*** UPDATE: The harmonies just keep coming.  I’m also currently reading a Conan book that brings together some of the longer short stories of Robert E. Howard.  And tonight, as the family sat watching season two of The Big Bang Theory, Penny got addicted to an online video game…The Age of Conan.

This is becoming a bit weird.