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11-07-2012, 12:16 PM | #76 | |
Gnu
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These are, believe it or not, the average persons first forray into torrents. Admittedly after the first time and the client is installed it gets easier, but after the first time most Aunt Mabels don't try again. We are also talking about self pubbed / small publisher books here not BPH. Picking Marie as an example, for her new book typing "Catch an Honest Thief" marie schneider into google gets me on the first page - Smashwords, BearMountainBooks, Goodreads, Amazon, Kobo, Cozy-Mystery.com (Takes you to amazon after going to the page) & Shelfari. Took me to page 7 to find something that looked like it might be a torrent site. Also as Aunt Mabel already has the book, she would have no reason to google a book she had already bought - she knows how to get it already, she just don't know how to give it to someone else. It's possible the may google something along the lines of "how do I lend an ebook" but that is unlikely to give them any usefull information short of "you can't" or "use the lendme feature on your reader" |
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11-07-2012, 01:01 PM | #77 | |
↓↓ Skirt!! Earrings!!
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11-07-2012, 01:06 PM | #78 |
Maria Schneider
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Someone said earlier that most Aunt Mabel's rely on sons, daughters or nephews. Or, from what I've seen, next door neighbor. The thing is, not every son, daughter, etc is readily available and not all of them are going to download the client--not necessarily because they are hugely honest, but because they know if Aunt Mabel wanders into a virus later, they are on the hook to "fix my computer."
And none of the Aunt Mabels are going to go through that whole sequence on her own. I have called some of the ladies in my cozy group to walk them through things on the phone and once past the second instruction and we aren't done, panic sets in. WHAT?? MY BOOK IS ON A TORRENT SITE???? Who knew!! |
11-07-2012, 02:26 PM | #79 |
Grand Sorcerer
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11-07-2012, 02:41 PM | #80 | |
Maria Schneider
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I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time chasing my own tail on issues like that. I try to watch that no one actually uploads a copy to sell on the main sites (that just happened to Ilona Andrews--someone took a freebie she had, uploaded it to Amazon and tried to sell it for 6 dollars.) But all of us are really at the mercy of fans to tell us if something like that is seen/happens. It takes more than just one set of eyeballs to find that sort of thing. |
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11-07-2012, 02:45 PM | #81 | |
Wizard
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11-07-2012, 03:49 PM | #82 | |
Maria Schneider
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Do you know of anyone who has had actual success getting a book removed from a torrent site? |
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11-07-2012, 04:08 PM | #83 | |
Apprentice Curmudgeon.
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These old retired people are just like everyone else - some have IT experience, some don't - but they help each other out. They are very social and they share. One old guy goes from house to house doing computer maintenance, installing such software and teaching others how to use it. He is very popular. Not with me, he screwed up my Father-in-Law's new computer. Took Windows 7 off it and installed XP-Pro. (Without all the necessary drivers.) |
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11-07-2012, 05:03 PM | #84 | |
Maria Schneider
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And yes, I know I came off as "all old people are Aunt Mabels." That isn't what I meant--it's just some observations from a few book groups I'm on. I'm closer to Aunt Mabel than not and I'm quite certain I could download from torrent sites if I so choose. What I won't do as an Aunt Mabel is help other people install or do it. |
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11-07-2012, 07:32 PM | #85 | |
occasional author
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Well, it is true I can't stop a thief with a gun, a knife or a brick from taking my money if he gets the chance, but I can sure make it as difficult as possible. And if he complains "Why don't you just give me the money and save me all this trouble?" I will laugh at him just like I do with the Anti-DRM types. A thief is a thief. A thug is a thug. Last edited by frahse; 11-07-2012 at 07:34 PM. |
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11-07-2012, 08:01 PM | #86 |
The Dank Side of the Moon
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11-07-2012, 10:00 PM | #87 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Almost none of us discovered our favorite authors by buying a new book. Removing the "I liked this; you read it and see if you like it" aspects of book culture is a drastic change. What would probably work best is something like Kindle/Nook's lender ability--if it weren't deliberately kept from working well. One time, for two weeks only, is ridiculous. There's no reason it shouldn't be "as often and as long as desired"--with DRM that keeps it to one registered user at a time. There's problems with that, too, but I don't think those will be as bad, five years from now, as the split between "buy full price" and "get it free from some bootleg site." Removing the option to legitimately read for other than full price means driving away potential fans, who *will* find something else to read. Or at least, something else to *do*... other than a handful of top selling authors, people don't bother buying books outside their leisure budget. And if the book they pass up is the first one they've heard of by a given author, they're not likely to read the author's other works, either. Authors who limit their fanbase to royalty-paying customers are never going to be at the top of the sales charts. Maybe they'll make enough anyway. And maybe they're not interested in having a readerbase larger than their sales counts. But it's a very different approach to an authorial career, the idea that the only readers should be those who paid the author. |
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11-08-2012, 01:37 AM | #88 | |
Not so important
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A DRM scheme where I would need to install a program would very simply not work. Installing something on my main workstation to look through a reference manual would be a pain, but doable. However, mostly I need technical reference manuals while (trying to) operate a piece of equipment, generally using one of the computers driving that specific instrument. No way I will start installing programs to read DRM protected ebooks. I've never even heard of people getting these kind of reference manuals from the darknet, it very simply doesn't make sense if one has access to a decent institutional library. I do sometimes keep local copies on my desktop computer at work or at home -- I know for the Springer books we use it is specifically indicated on every download page that this is allowed. |
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11-08-2012, 04:33 AM | #89 | |
Gnu
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I'm hoping something like that very cheap txtr reader becomes reality (Essentially a dirt cheap e-ink reader that only holds a couple of books as bitmapped pages - all processing to get the book on the device is via an app on a smartphone), if something like these become popular then I can see them doing the rounds amongst friends instead of files, just hand them the reader with the book on it and they are unable to copy the book back to their computer, eventually you get the reader back (Theoretically at the moment you could send the book to multiple devices but I see no technical issues with having a check-in check-out facility in the app, a custom time limit would be usefull so you can lend it again after a certain time if the device gets trashed). Instant lending, face-to-face only, with no chance of the book you lent out ending up on a torrent site, also no need to circumvent DRM. All we need is e-ink screens to drop in price enough as the actual device needs very little in the way of hardware other than the screen (you can get little digital keyring photo frames for a couple of quid, it's only the screen price stopping this idea). |
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11-08-2012, 06:55 AM | #90 |
cacoethes scribendi
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Being social and sharing has always been an issue when selling books. Yes, people can now share their copy and read it at the same time, but exactly how much impact this has over the old serial form of sharing is really hard to tell. Most avid readers tend to have a fairly large TBR list, waiting for a copy was generally not much of a problem.
Generally I think that people sharing within their small group is usual and to be expected - and I mean this both ways. The writer should expect it to happen and the readers expect to be able to do it, but this is where DRM steps in and - in some instances - makes things awkward and annoys the reader. You may well say that that's as it should be, but remember that if you sell your ebook for a buck or two of profit you are still doing just as well when the same happened to authors selling paper books. Large scale piracy - sharing (or selling on) to anyone/everyone around the 'net - is a different kettle of very smelly fish all together. Here it may be possible to argue that new/unknown authors could actually benefit from such distribution channels (at least they're being read/discovered). I find it less easy to argue that well known authors would receive the same benefit, I suspect there are only downsides for them. BUT I don't think that existing DRM methods make much of an impact on this form of piracy. |
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