Author Neil Gaiman no longer thinks of piracy as something to be feared [Video]

Neil Gaiman is probably best known for his graphic novel The Sandman but he is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers. As well as writing science fiction and working in films he is also a prolific blogger.

So it is unsurprising that at some point he would find his work being pirated in one fashion or another and when he came across such pirated works for the first his reaction was the typical those dirty rotten pirates are steal my work and money.

Then he noticed something – the piracy was helping to sell his work.

“Then I started to notice that two things that seemed much more significant. One of which was that places where I was being pirated — particularly Russia (where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading it out into the world) I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. And then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia it would sell more and more copies.”

This video is of a conversation with Neil Gaiman, courtesy of ORGZine, which is quite interesting.