Ebook piracy?
Posted Friday, January 14, 2011 by admin
The ebook piracy thing. What do you think? Is it completely unforgivable, or are there certain exceptions to the rule? Feel free to expand on the question.
It’s a more complex issue than it seems at first glance. A number of authors believe the populatiry of their pirate ebooks is partially responsible for their success. Paulo Coelho even started a website (Pirate Coelho) to distribute his ebooks, believing that it was a good way to promote his work.
One publisher in particular (Baen) likes their authors to make one book available for free, in the hope that people will read the first book in a series online and buy the others.
There’s an ongoing debate about whether the author and publisher lose money (assuming people will buy the book if they can’t steal it) or not (assuming they wouldn’t buy it anyway).
And finally, the real losers in this debate. Textbooks. Who’s going to buy a textbook if it’s available free?
My knee-jerk reaction to it is, “Wrong. Absolutely wrong.” With further thought though, I have identified a few ways, both personally and publically, that this sort of thing can actually be advantageous to interested parties.
For one thing, I have spent much of my life broke. Being broke does not make you either dumb or easily satisfied. It does, however, make you resourceful. In my youth we all made tapes of whichever albums we managed to obtain and passed them around to one another. Now, I make CD’s for people. The thing is, this never served as a substitute for buying. Without the tape we simply wouldn’t have owned the music. Owning the music (or the book, lest you think I’m straying) is what makes a loyal fan. A loyal fan is a person who will buy, at retail, a lovely trade paperback copy of a book she already owns five muttly, used, mass market copies of, just to have that lovely book. Even though she still always reads the most muttly copy. So, access is key to building your base, whether you’re an author or a musician.
Radiohead released In Rainbows as a digital download for which customers could set their own price. It was their first album in many years and interest was high. The average price people chose to pay was something like $5 and many people did download it, though most probably paid nothing at all. The real surprise came when it was released on CD and it went on to chart success. I am convinced that many of the people who originally downloaded it liked it well enough to make them want to own a physical album. Radiohead did quite nicely here, and the press was terrific.
I wasn’t aware that Baen did that, but it makes sense. With all due respect, they publish a lot of fairly cheesy fantasy series’. With the price of production what it is, it only makes sense to hook people on a series before you start trying to reel them in.
As far as text books go, I am not familiar with the ins and outs of that market, but I will put my money on one thing: The huge bureaucracy which is academia will always find a way to get paid, at least here in the US.
In the end I think this is like any other thing that starts out underground and subversive and then attains some kind of legitimate staus. In other words, all that was ever wild and free about its spirit will be broken and it will be come one more dancing bear in the marketing lexicon. Someone will get rich but it probably still won’t be the authors. Unless, of course, they’re really bad writers.
*****Edit) I forgot to say that the vast majority of my books are puchased used because I have a voracious appetite and limited funds. Is that piracy? Or is it OK because at sometime in the distant past the author/publisher got their share?
I also forgot to say that I would never download an illegally available book or album. Ever. My primary point was that soon this entire argument will be moot because it will have been assimilated and the malefactors protected against. Unfortunately, one way or another, the consumer will probably suffer in this skirmish too.
You’ve provided a very good case, and my answer is I don’t know. I do, however, have some comments:
YES, it is extremely complex. As far as I’m concerned, piracy is rampant. Once I was in China, and desperate for some movies, but it was really hard (nigh impossible) to get non-pirated DVDs. I was so anti-pirating that I rented a movie. But later I though about it, and I knew that millions of people were pirating movies, books, music, from online and stores that day, thinking nothing of it.
We’re all bombarded with how piracy makes authors lose money, and my sympathy is with them. But still, it is easier to download something for free and not buy it, right? I’m wondering whether people think the cause of piracy is justified. Of course it’s not. It’s horrible. But still … you’re wondering.
Luthien T
And of course pirating spreads publicity. That’s a good point.
Well, I think it’s totally wrong.* Sure most people on the net have gotten something illegally at one time or another. But as a general practice I think ebook piracy is rather low.
First, it’s incredibly disrespectful. I know a few authors, and I know how hard they’ve worked to write their books and get them published. Reading pirated books disregards their hard work. I don’t understand how someone can say they LOVE an author and yet rip them off. Even for authors that make tons of money – it’s not one person’s place to decide that author has made enough money and doesn’t need the proceeds from one more book.
Secondly, it’s illegal. Even if the author is ok with it, unless they have permission from their publishing company, it’s still illegal :/
To be honest though, I’m less set against it if the author is ok with it. It’s really the disrespect issue that gets me the most angry.
I came across a blog the other day on which the blog owner was offering several popular series of books for download. People who visited the blog were leaving comments lauding his “awesomeness” and saying how generous he was. I got so angry – heck he didn’t do any of the hard work like writing the books, he just put up links to them.
He was reported to several of the publishing companies by myself and an author I am acquainted with and a day later Harper Collins made him delete the e-books from the site.
Beyond his disrespect, his stupidity irritated me. Sure people do illegal things on the net, but good lord, the idiots that advertise themselves are so stupid. Why not wave a big red flag that says “I’m breaking the law!” ?
In regards to people who are too financially strained to purchase books – there are libraries, and there are tons of excellent books on Project Gutenberg. There is never any NEED to get pirated books.
As for publicity. I don’t think it’s up to book pirates to decide how an author gets their publicity. Saying that one is helping an author to become more well known is no excuse for breaking the law. If an author or publisher wants to offer the books for free as a publicity measure that’s their business.
Maybe they don’t lose money from it – but if they don’t want their books mass distributed on the net for free we should respect that.
*As a side note: Not to say this is ok or legal, but personally I don’t have a problem with trading e-books among personal friends as long as the original ebook was gotten legally. It seems to me to be the same as if I just let my friend borrow the book. Putting the books up for download on a public site, however, is totally wrong.
I was at the American Library Association Convention. Cory Doctorow beleives that people will read the free ebooks and then buy it because they like it. However, I think that young adult books will not be purchased if the kids can read them for free. The kids will just move on to the next reading fad.
And how many of us kept our textbooks? No one will buy them if they are available for free, but I would definately consider and erental. The file could disappear in one year.
I have purchased books and music CD’s that I first heard/read excerpts of. But I believe most people, if they can figure out how to, will take what’s free…
Regarding textbooks though, I must disagree with your and others remarks on this.
My wife is presently at Phoenix online University getting her doctorate. I buy her textbooks for her. She can get almost all the required textbooks on the Phoenix website (library) for free (well, “free” isn’t exactly the proper terminology considering Phoenix’s tuition, but I digress,) she prefers real, paper books. We old-folks prefer reading books and being able to use real highlighters…
Lucky for me there are so many companies online selling used textbooks!