It has come to my attention recently that more and more occult forums are passing along links to illegal downloads of magical books that are still under copyright and are still in print, my books included. It is a difficult topic as there is a need for freely available work that people can get their teeth into, but on the other hand, without some form of financial come back or help, many magical writers would not able to make work available. Many authors find this balance by writing books to be sold, along side making text freely available. The occult market is a niche market, which means unless you are willing to write complete tosh for a mass market, you are going to make very little in financial terms, but often that little bit can go a long way, so it is very important. When that little bit of financial income gets stolen, then it becomes a problem for magicians in general. Why? Here is why. For the last fifteen years I have made magical texts freely available on the net for people to use, and when someone has been in dire need, I have been very happy to personally send them whatever they need, freely. In the past I was able to do that by having a full time well paid job, so income was not a problem for me. I live very frugally which means my needs are minimum. When I started having my books published, I did not need the income so I donated my royalties to occult projects and magicians who were in financial distress. More recently I lost my full time income so I needed to start taking the royalties in order to eat. I work small part time jobs as I can get them and between those, selling things on line, and book royalties, I manage to make ends meet, which is all that I need and all that I wish for. This in turn enables me to continue writing and to also help magicians in their training, and when they are in distress. I keep a balance between making work freely available on my websites, and also publishing some work in order to bring in some income. If those books are pirated, I lose a section of my small income, and because my income is already small, any loss has a significant impact on me. Many may not be aware that most authors, particularly of small presses, make between fifty cents to a dollar on each book that is sold, and most occult books tend to sell a couple of hundred copies a year, not thousands: it is a very small market . The small royalties are not because the independent publishers are greedy, but because the production and distribution is expensive. Companies like Amazon take a massive cut of the cover price so what is left over for the publisher and author is small indeed. If an author chooses to go with a mainstream major publisher, they may get more income from the books they write, but they lose control of how the content is presented, what the content actually is, and worst of all, they are often quickly remaindered and taken out of print. The author also often has to contractually agree not give away free text or offer chunks of the book for free. Because of these issues, and to support the wonderful work that small presses do, I prefer to stay with the small independent publishers. For them it is often a labor of love, and their work ensures that the more unusual, obscure and cutting edge writers are brought into print; often these writers are not acceptable to main stream publishers for obvious reasons. So how is one to navigate their way through this? As a writer and teacher, I feel it is very important to ensure that magical works are kept freely available, alongside published works that are sold. This keeps the work alive, dynamic and reaches people who would not have the financial resources to continually buy books, and the sale of books helps to keep the author fed and gives then a bit of time to write. For the readers, if you find an author who is willing to put work out there for free, help support them buy buying their books if you can afford them. But to pirate a published book is effectively taking the food out of the mouth of the authors. It takes a lot of time to write a book: it is months of hard work. Royalties from my books add up to two months income a year, and they help to keep me going, but they do not represent even a fraction of the amount of time I put into them. So when people pirate my books, and my income drops even more, it is no longer worth my while to write a book for publishing. I don’t mind making sacrifices to put work out there, but if my income drops any further, then I simply will not have the time to write those books – my time will be taken up with more part time jobs in order to pay rent and buy food: I already live off of an income that most people would not even consider trying to live off of, particularly a person of my age I will never stop writing; it simply means I will have even less time to write, so the work will dribble out very slowly over many years, rather than appearing in months. So for those smart young people in those occult forums (Wizard forum et al) who do this sort of pirating and passing on of pirated books, understand that you are cutting off magical development and the future of magical writers by doing this sort of thing. If you are broke, I have a lot of free magical texts up on various websites to make sure you can access what you need if you are willing to look.
I have changed the last paragraph of this blog as I ended it with a sarcastic English bit of dark humour. It seemed to go over the heads of many and was taken the wrong way, so I have removed it. Sometimes culture does not travel well.
Giving and Stealing: Finding a Balance for Occult Authors
This entry was posted in Magic and tagged money and magic, occult authors, pirated books. Bookmark the permalink.
Josephine McCarthy 
Great piece as always I feel your frustration, the bit on the end scares me and I’ve done nothing wrong!.
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lol….yes… stealing from the Cailleach is not good for your health….:)
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Reblogged this on OurPantheons.
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Thanks for the piece Josephine, thoughtful and timely.
I’ve written from a slightly different angle here: http://www.loraobrien.com/loras-blog/its-not-about-the-money, but covering some of the same points re making work available, but also trying to earn a living at this. We should have a chat some time 😉
Lora O’Brien
Irish Magic & Spirituality Author.
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Hi Lora, thanks! yes, a chat would be great sometime. Keep in touch, I have subscribed to your blog… it looks great!!
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With you all the way on this one! My problem is I have bought all my copies of your books from Amazon. Would it be better to go to the publishers direct? May I also say your books are a great source of solace to me. I mostly have read them from cover to cover and find myself implicitly agreeing with everything you write about. Your words are honest and open and ring with unbiased truth. Long may you continue to write and do what you do.
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Hi Jim, when it is possible, which sometimes it is not, it is better to buy from the publisher or author. But that is not always possible. Thankyou for your kind words xxx
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Pingback: Giving and Stealing: Finding a Balance for Occult Authors (REBLOGGED) | Fanny Fae
I fully support you on this, Josephine, and I reblogged it on my website, here:
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thanks Fanny!
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I just was approached on Facbook by a fellow Kemetic asking me if I knew of a place where she could get “a free pdf” of Jeremy Naydler’s “Temple of the Cosmos. Rather than jumping all over her and reading the riot act , I told her, “No.,” explaining that I had paid full price for both my print and Kindle versions. I also told her that Inner Traditions is absolutely ruthless about tracking down hand having deleted any books of their catalog it finds online.
It still galls me that there are those who can afford things, or could go to a library,, but choose rather to steal.
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HI Fanny, I don’t people see it as stealing, as there is so much free content that is out on the web. I don’t think people, for the most part, are being intentionally bad, they just don’t realise the effect it can potentially have.
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Hi Josephine, What outlet gives you the most return on your books? I’d like to purchase one of your ebooks but I’d prefer to do it in a way that gets you more than 50 cents! Thanks, Raheli
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Hi Raheli,
At present the only pace to get the ebooks is through amazon. The physical books can be bought through Goblyn Market http://www.goblynmarket.com/ or from the publishers directly, but as yet the ebooks are still only through amazon. We may look into seeing if the publishers can provide them in future. But thankyou for your kind thought!
Josephine
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Hi Josephine,
I noticed that some of your ebooks are available through different stores too (lybrary.com, tookbook.com, ebookmall.com and others)
Do you know what is the case with them?
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People who need access to books and to learning on the cheap should visit the Library more often. Both in its outer and inner manifestation.
One thing I would like to see happen, both in the world of libraries, and in the small press, is the development of relationships between libraries and small press. I work in a big library, and we have a great selection of texts on religion, spirituality, magic, mysticism, etc. Yet most of that collection was established before recessions, and when the collections development department fortified the collection with materials outside of the major publishers. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of independent publishers represented in the collection… but not as many as could be. When it comes to occult books, the curious seeker is not going to be able to find your works in the library, Jo. Or of many other worthy writers, because we get titles suggested by the American Library Association, etc., and the occasional patron or librarian request.
It’s a personal dream of mine to see some of the occult small press develop ties with key libraries in their home countries and around the world. Maybe offer subscriptions to all that they publish or start with donations. This would also be good for the publisher and author. Many discoveries I’ve made in the library I’ve gone on to purchase and collect myself. It’s probably tax deductable in some way for the publisher. These things are worth thinking about, because otherwise the student who steps into the physical library is going to only find the Golden Dawn, Wicca 101, Crowley and the New Age until they learn to look deeper. It’s not that these aren’t good stepping stones, but it would be great to see the cutting edge of the occult small press represented and saved in a place dedicated to saving books.
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that is some very important points and ideas Justin, thanks! It sad what is happening to the libraries. Here many of them are closing down. Very sad and a great loss.
Jx
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Dport – no, I don’t know the ins and outs of the selling of the ebooks, it is a bit of a mystery to this old dog!
J
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Hello Josephine, it’s a bit disheartening to hear your tone in that last post. The work that you are doing, not just what you are teaching, but how you are teaching it, is very important and empowering for me. I can respect how challenging it can be on a practical level. If there is anything I can do to support or enable these teachings, I would be more than pleased to help.
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Please David, don’t be disheartened, I tootle along despite the challenges, which are all a part of the magical process… but thankyou for your kind thoughts, they are gifts indeed xx
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