Many authors are waking up this morning to find that their work has been pirated in a giant Christmas themed anthology that can be downloaded at several torrent sites. It includes several of our authors but luckily nothing we've published. I imagine it took a fair amount of work to put this thing together and can't help wishing the person who did this would have put in the extra time to do it right. This is something I seem to be thinking a lot lately. The technology for creating art and sharing it has exploded but the infrastructure of support has yet to adapt. For example, so many people self-publish books without getting anyone to edit their work or even proofread it.
There's nothing inherently good or evil about these new technologies (print-on-demand, ebooks, even social networking). It's all in how you use it. Please people, use your creative powers for good! Put in the extra work and time to create something fabulous and professional or don't do it at all. You short-change yourself in so many ways when you cut corners. If people put more time into their own projects then they would also realize what they are doing when they rip off thousands of hours of hard work. The fact is, even with all these time-saving technologies at our disposal you will not get the full experience of writing and publishing if you rush through them. Enjoy the journey, life is about the process, not the destination. If you just skip to "the good parts" the rest of the story won't make sense.