I remember going to an online policy conference in Korea years ago that ended up with me and some representative of the IFPI discussing copyrights and whatnot. I took my usual line, that filesharing and the like overall helps music and art. He responded with what he thought was a great rebuttal, asking me how I would feel if my book were pirated (I only had one book to my name at the time).
At the time, book piracy was pretty obscure compared to music piracy, but I could tell he really thought he had a home run counterargument. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t really care about such things. Heck, if someone were pirating my book, at least that meant they were reading it — score one for me.
(I’m sure my publishers would disagree, but our interests are somewhat different).
Jump ahead a few years, and I was zipping around the Internet the other day, looking for reviews of my books — and lo and behold, I did indeed find download sites for both K-POP NOW! and POP GOES KOREA. Yay! I feel so wanted.
Anyhow, here are a couple of reviews for K-POP NOW! that I found:
- Pop Matters (“the literary equivalent of a K-pop disco night” — that amused me)
- Hypnoticasia
Plus I’m happy to say that I’ll be talking about my books and K-pop at the end of July (official announcement to come soon) and that charming Colin Marshall of the Notebook on Cities and Culture blog recently interviewed me for his podcast (hopefully that link will also come soon.
