Photocopied Books

“Sir, the students said your book is not available in the medical book stall. They have to buy photocopies of that book” one of my colleagues told me. “The owner of the bookstall opposite our main gate has purchased the whole edition from my publisher” I said. “He should have enough copies. If they had run out of stock, the publisher would have told me they had to reprint, if I did not want to bring out a new edition of the book. Thanks for telling me. I will check it out.” The said book0stall owner had sold some copies of another book I had written and he had published, but had not given me the royalty for the same. We had had some discussion on that issue, and he still did not pay, though he could not give any reason for doing so. I had stopped communication with him subsequently, because I did not like being cheated. So I requested my lecturer to check out if he had any copies left. The book-stall was just across the road, on his way home. Two days later he informed me the book was available in all book-stalls in the vicinity of the institute. “Sir, the students buy ready photocopies of different books from a shop near the hospital. Your books’ photocopies are also available there” another lecturer told me. “I know they buy photocopies” I said. “A lecturer appointed in our department a few years ago came to see me in my office once. She saw a copy of this book on my desk and asked me if it was a new edition of the book. It was. I asked her if she had read it. She said she had read a photocopy of the previous edition. She thought it was a perfectly natural thing to buy photocopies. She did not even want to hide that fact from me, the author of the book, who was denied the royalty of that sale by her act. Buying photocopies saves some money. My book we are talking about has three hundred pages. Its price after discount is two hundred and forty rupees. A photocopy costs one hundred and fifty rupees. One saves ninety rupees.” “But then you lose your royalty” she said. “That is true. But that is not all. The publisher invests a lot of money in printing and distributing the book. Piracy of books deprives him of income that is rightfully his. I myself don’t mind so much if I don’t get the royalty. I wrote books because I wanted the knowledge I had acquired to reach students. Even if they use pirated copies of my book, the purpose is served. Their indulgence in a little piracy for the sake of getting educated is definitely bad and illegal too, but it is far better than using pirated music CDs, movie DVDs and computer games. At least the purpose is noble.