There's a better way to beat the ebook pirates

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by boxcorner

You are mistaken; had you taken the trouble to actually read my posts you would have realised.



Oh, really? So, publishers are 100 percent focused on marketing, therefore zero percent on piracy, consequently presumably DRM and geo-restrictions are dreamt up by authors, or is it the fairies?



Had you read my post (the one you quoted!) and you'd have seen that I already receive e-mails from at least one publisher, no I don't need more junk mail, and yes I was already aware of the forum dedicated to freebies and promos - which by the way mostly seems to be aimed at Kindle owners - thank you.



Had you bothered to read my posts you'd know that I have not suggested publishers ignore pirates. Presumably you just don't get it, or you're playing games, either way I can't be bothered to repeat what I've already written. This is just too tedious and I'm bored by it.

I'm not at all persuaded by your arguments, so the publisher(s) that you represent - if that's the case - will just have to continue doing without my business. When I buy e-books, it'll be from sources such as BeWrite Books, O'Reilly Books, Baen Books, Smashwords, and so on.

Whatever, dude. You really did give the impression that you thought publishers were focused on piracy to the exclusion of anything else. You aren't persuaded by my arguments, fine- all I was arguing was that publishers had the right and the duty to take action against pirates, along with marketing and all the other things they do. Sorry if it bored you to tedium.
If you want to join with WW and Kenny C in their joint delusion that I'm working for the publishers, feel free-my guess is its not the only delusion rattling around in your head

[NVash]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

You missed Stonetools' constant drumbeat of "You can't succeed, the pirates are stopping you, it's not what you're doing, it's all the pirates, the people on MobileRead are helping them, the pirates will keep you from ever succeeding, it's all the pirates' fault." If there is anyone to blame for Steve's ragequit, it's Stonetools and his incessant "give up, the pirates are winning" routine. And he got exactly what he wanted, too.

Thanks. I went back and skimmed a few pages, I see what you mean.

Originally Posted by stonetools

OK, I'm willing to backtrack here and admit that I overstated my argument about DRM.I believe that I was responding to a poster that claimed that DRM had nothing to do with copyright. I responded to that overstatement with an overstatement of my own.
I agree that there can be legit personal reasons for breaking DRM. The premier example is Xenophon's own- the company that goes out of business and leaves consumers in the lurch with a defunct DRM scheme. I think that its legal to break DRM in that case.

Cant just admit DRM is a horrible idea can you? It shouldnt be illegal to break it. It shouldnt even exist. You speak of it being allowed if the company goes under, alright, what of an example I used in another thread? The computer goes under? You have one authorized to read on a certain computer, said computer crashes. You saved the book but you cant authorize your new computer so you cant read the book. Is it legal then? Why are we even quibbling with this? You really think someone cares about something like that after a computer crash? 'Oh, let me go buy it back from the publisher for the exact same price even though I already bought it once'. In the words of my old 6th grade History teacher. 'Let me think about that for a second. Uh, no.' Not everybody is out to break the law sir. Not everyone wants to rip DRM off to 'share' it. Some just want to rip the DRM off to read the book they just purchased because, for one reason or another, the DRM has made it impossible to view the book. But yet you have no sympathy for that man who lost his computer and book. Well, hell have no sympathy for you as he downloads it somewhere for free and you start whining about how hes a pirate.

Question is, are they really pirates if they already paid for the goods? I think not.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Noooo, that's what "blod" stands for.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Here you go. These are brand new, with no missing pages.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Stephen-King-Col...item1c1b3f47b8

Ah, you found my listing!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

..
If you want to join with WW and Kenny C in their joint delusion that I'm working for the publishers, ....

You've done nothing to dispel the belief and there is no other reason you would continue to push such malarkey as you do.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ApK

Ah, you found my listing!

.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Steve, I figured I'd try to give you some assistance privately. I'm not really a heartless so-and-so. But I find you've disabled all means of contacting you, deleted your visitor messages, and gone off to sulk.

That's not professional. Hell, that's not even amateur. That's childish. It's what a teenage girl does when people tell her that her fanfic story about how Harry Potter fell in love with Mary Sue really should use the same spelling that the rest of us use. You really are trying to do an Anne Rice.

Get over it. If you want to be a successful writer, you're doing it wrong.

I did that months ago, guys, back when I was rebuilding my presence on the web and at MR. It's just that I forgot to reset them, and no one's noticed until now.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

For people who are refused a sale because they live in the wrong country the "otherwise" would only come into play after they have exhausted all "legal" options. At least for the first time they hit that barrier. After they find out how easy it is to get around that barrier without having to pay anything to read the book a new "pirate" is born.

I don't really see how this transfers into the real world, because in the real world those barriers don't exist. There has always been mail order companies that will post you a book regardless of where you live. So there was no reason to look for alternative ways of reading it.

I would certainly agree with you there.

Geographic restrictions can and do prevent ebook purchasers from buying even a local authors works which is a plainly ludicrous situation.

As for DRM, I remove it because I do not want to get burned due to when the agency 5 decided 80% of the ebooks I legally purchased were off limits. Diesel, to their credit agreed with my complaint and refunded me the cost of the denied ebooks.

To get around such a ludicrous restriction, I buy an ebook in what format I can get it, remove the DRM, convert it to my ereaders format (ePUB), enjoy the book and there you go, the author has been paid as well.

[NVash]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I did that months ago, guys, back when I was rebuilding my presence on the web and at MR. It's just that I forgot to reset them, and no one's noticed until now.

Well Im glad to see you back and find out that you didnt just flip out and leave. Never mind your stance on piracy, the whole topic has been beaten to death here. That old horse cant catch a break it seems. But Im wondering, what do you think of your own work? Do you think you should advertise some more or do I have no idea what Im talking about?

[Freeshadow]

except that they didn't legally BUY the BOOK: they bought a license to access the efile, which remains on the bookstore's servers.

Exactly and as long as they do that they print their licences out, stuff em up their rear ends and go elsewhere. Instead they prefer to lie to their customersand say "Buy"

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by NVash

But Im wondering, what do you think of your own work? Do you think you should advertise some more or do I have no idea what Im talking about?

I believe my work has quality... if I didn't, I wouldn't sell it. I would like to advertise more, but I don't have a budget for it; I've tried select advertising with what I had (Facebook, convention programs), but it went nowhere.

My aim, in spending time on sites like this and others, was to have word of mouth accomplish a lot of my advertising. But that, too, never took off... I never got a "buzz" going from any online presence.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I believe my work has quality... if I didn't, I wouldn't sell it. I would like to advertise more, but I don't have a budget for it; I've tried select advertising with what I had (Facebook, convention programs), but it went nowhere.

My aim, in spending time on sites like this and others, was to have word of mouth accomplish a lot of my advertising. But that, too, never took off... I never got a "buzz" going from any online presence.

Try doing simple things, such as having links it in your signature. Also, every now and again, you can get promocodes for google adwords. I know right now if you goto https://services.google.com/fb/forms/yourbusiness/ you can sign up for $75 worth and they periodically send you more. Plus maybe run a sale or promo. One thing that seems to work is to put the first book in a series on sale for like 99 cents, or even free, to get people hooked.

[NVash]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I believe my work has quality... if I didn't, I wouldn't sell it. I would like to advertise more, but I don't have a budget for it; I've tried select advertising with what I had (Facebook, convention programs), but it went nowhere.

My aim, in spending time on sites like this and others, was to have word of mouth accomplish a lot of my advertising. But that, too, never took off... I never got a "buzz" going from any online presence.

Just Facebook and conventions? Surely there are other outlets. And the word of mouth, thats not going to work very well when no one knows youre an author. As I said, I checked out your profile and it didnt have so much as one link to your official site. I found that listed as your website once I clicked on your name, think WW told me to do that Im not sure, but even so, maybe you should make it a little easier to access your site. A link in your sig has already been mentioned, for instance. I dont know if a picture of one of your books as an avatar will help but it might. I do know I had no idea what your avatar was until I went to your site and most others will not either. Thats just a few ideas, Im sure there are other ways to advertise without much money. There has to be, you arent the first and surely wont be the last author with very little money.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I did that months ago, guys, back when I was rebuilding my presence on the web and at MR. It's just that I forgot to reset them, and no one's noticed until now.

And that is your problem in a nutshell: no one's noticed until now.

Even Stonetools couldn't argue that piracy was somehow keeping people from noticing your lack of accessibility.

Take me for an example: I do not pirate ebooks. I buy science fiction. I read science fiction. I buy ebooks by self-published writers. Every last one of them totally, completely, 100% legitimate. And I couldn't bring the name of your book (books?) to mind right now to save my life.

There's your problem.

As for your book sales funding your retirement, I'd like to direct you to some comments by Eric Flint. Aside from the sales of his own books, note what he says regarding books in general: The average paperback sells 15,000 copies, of which 80% are in the first three months.

Look at that number again: 15,000 books. That is for books that are in bookstores, sitting on the "new books" display, etc., that someone can find out about just by walking into the store. And that's paper books, books that anyone can read, not just the people with the knowledge and equipment to search them out and read them. If we assume that your ebook sells 10% as many copies as the average paper book -- all else aside, the market penetration of ebook readers and the visibility of pbooks in large chain bookstores are both major factors -- we're talking 1,500 books. If you make a profit of $2.00 per book, that's $3,000. You're not going to fund much of a retirement out of three grand.

And I'm being generous in my estimates there. Very, very generous. There probably aren't 1,500 people who have even noticed that your book exists, let alone who thought it was something they wanted to read. The economics of ebooks are not in your favor. Writing is not, except for a rare few, a lucrative profession. Unless you are one of a small handful of writers, you can't make a living (or even a good retirement nest egg) from writing. For every famous Dan Brown there are thousands of eternal unknowns.

I'll say again: J.K. Rowling's problem may be piracy (if a multi-billionaire has problems). Your problem is not being J.K. Rowling.

I have some more bad news for you regarding pirate sites, torrents, etc., that have your book listed: They have your book because either a) someone (probably someone who bought it) gave it to them, or b) because they sucked it off some other website. People who download it from those sites do so because it was packed in with a bunch of other books, and the one they really wanted "Twilight", but they had to take the whole zip of 1,000 books to get it. They're not going to read it; it's just clutter. It's baggage. They're not costing you sales because they're not reading your book. They're reading the three books in that torrent that they wanted, and maybe one or two others whose authors they recognize, but you're not any of them. Even the pirates aren't reading your book.

That's what you have to fix.



Edit: I want to add this link: http://www.baens-universe.com/articl...ics_of_Writing

And I want to point specifically to this passage:

In fact, it’s not even close. Most published authors derive only incidental income from their writing...

That's not me. That's not Stonetools. That's Eric Flint, a guy who ought to know.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

People who download it from those sites do so because it was packed in with a bunch of other books, and the one they really wanted "Twilight", but they had to take the whole zip of 1,000 books to get it.

You're exaggerating a bit there, aren't you? I googled up the title of one of his books, searched for a torrent containing it, and the torrent containing a copy of "Kestral Voyages" has only 989 books in it, not your figure of 1,000!