Why Do People Think Books Should Be Free?
Hello, dear readers,
Recently, I came across a post by a very well-known and respected fantasy author discussing book piracy. The post itself was thoughtful, respectful, and completely understandable.
What genuinely surprised me, however, was the comment section. Thousands of people were explaining why they believed piracy was justified.
"Books are too expensive."
"I read a lot, so I can't afford to buy every book."
"Authors make enough money anyway."
As I kept reading, I found myself asking a very simple question: Why do we use this argument almost exclusively when it comes to creative work?
Food is expensive. Rent is expensive. Electricity is expensive. Fuel is expensive. Yet we don't assume that gives us the right to take those things without paying for them. We don't expect a supermarket to hand us free groceries simply because we eat every day.
But when it comes to books, music, films, games, or artwork, many people suddenly begin looking for reasons why creative work shouldn't be paid for.
Maybe that's because we only see the finished product—a book. What we don't see is everything behind it.
While preparing my debut novel, The Puppet King, I paid for professional editing, an ISBN, a custom map, character illustrations, formatting, cover design, my website, domain, and many other services. But that's only the financial side.
Long before any of those expenses came years of work. Writing the novel. Rewriting it. Deleting hundreds of pages. Researching. Learning. Building a website. Writing blog articles. Creating daily content across multiple social media platforms. Growing an audience before the book has even been published.
Those are thousands of hours of work that most readers never see.
And no, I'm not saying books can't be expensive. Sometimes they are, especially if you're someone who reads a lot.
But today, there are more legal ways to enjoy books than ever before. There are public libraries, second-hand bookstores, sales, subscription services, and platforms like Wattpad, where many authors voluntarily publish their stories for free. There are countless ways to discover great books without making life more difficult for the people who create them.
Because in the end, when we pirate a book, we're not just taking paper and ink. We're taking years of someone's life. Years they chose to dedicate to creating something meaningful.
I believe creative work deserves to be valued, not because artists are somehow different from everyone else, but because their time has value, just like everyone else's. Every book represents years of learning, writing, rewriting, editing, and countless invisible hours that readers never get to see.
Maybe that's the part we forget. We're not paying for paper. We're paying for the years it took someone to fill those pages.
If you’d like to follow the journey of the book I am writing and see how it’s coming together, you can find more here:
But if you want to, you can see more about my work as a ghostwriter here:
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