China Mieville on why writers should embrace fixed incomes and digital piracy

Mieville has described anti-piracy measures in digital publishing as 'artistically philistine' and said that writers should be paid a uniform salary

The leading fantasy writer (three-times winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award) was speaking yesterday at the Edinburgh world writers' conference, part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He said that in the digital age, there was a 'blurring of boundaries between writers, books and readers, self-publishing, the fanfication of fiction,' and that writers should be prepared for 'guerilla editors' and the possibility of their work being reworked in a similar fashion to the way music files get remixed and posted online.

As reported in the Guardian, he also noted that if writers received a fixed income ('the wage of a skilled worker') it would combat the 'philistine thuggery' of the market.