01-18-2013, 05:41 PM | #16 | |
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01-18-2013, 06:10 PM | #17 |
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Rationalize piracy as you will, the blame rests strictly with the pirates. Theft is theft, even accompanied by a victim mentality. I dislike DRM as much as anyone and balk at paying some especially high prices. However, I have the option of resorting to the library or buying a used print book or even making choices about what to read or not based upon the current irritant.
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01-18-2013, 06:38 PM | #18 | |
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01-18-2013, 06:52 PM | #19 | |
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There there was the DRM based on a defect on the CD or DVD and that meant that if your optical drive could not properly read the defect or the disc became lost or damaged, say goodbye to playing the game. Right now we have issues that we should not have. Let's say Amazon has a sale on some eBooks and you own a Sony, nook, or Kobo. If these eBooks have DRM, most people won't be able to do a think to get them moved over. Now let's say you have a Kindle. BooksOnBoard recently had a sale on Simon & Shuster titles (sale is over now). But because you have a Kindle, touch luck. They have DRM. So you have to pay a higher price because you don't have an ADE based reader. Go onto S&S's website and you can usually see the pBook version discounted and the final price being less then the price for the eBook. Let's say you have a Kindle and want the latest Sony. So you gave your Kindle to someone and bought the Sony. Wait, you've lost access to all of your DRM laden eBooks. Now if someone with a Kobo got fed up with all the firmware bugs and wanted to move to a Kindle. Same issue, DRM eBooks are gone. This is why people turn to the net to try to find the eBooks. They can get the help they need getting them in the format they need without the issue of DRM getting in the way. It's just easier in a lot of cases then it is to try to jump though the hoops the publishes are making customer jump through and the hoops keep getting smaller each time they make a change that "good for the customer" and we have a harder time fitting through the hoops. The publishers don't get it that reasonable prices and no DRM are the key to success. We used to have BAEN as the one we could point to for a business model that was very good. Well, it's not very good now. It sucks in fact. The changes they've made are no good for the customer. They've raised prices. They've made monthly bundles available for a very short period of time. They've removed a lot of eBooks from the free library. basically, they are losing what made them different. None of this is good for the consumer. Last edited by JSWolf; 01-18-2013 at 07:11 PM. |
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01-18-2013, 07:09 PM | #20 |
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I think you meant Baen not Bean JSWolf. lol. Point taken though. I have that problem with books I bought from Mobipocket.com. They are owned by Amazon, but since they are books I paid for (rather than the free ebooks on site) they won't open on the Kindle even though they are mobi books. So I either have to find a way to break the DRM for such or buy new copies from Amazon although I already bought them over at Mobipocket. I don't think that's fair myself.
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01-18-2013, 07:09 PM | #21 | |
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Why should consumers pay extra money that's not supporting the author--if $4 is enough profit for a hardcover, why isn't it enough for an ebook? The print cost shows an equity between author and publisher: after development and retail costs, the author and publisher make about the same amount of money. For the ebook model, the publisher makes almost three times as much as the author. Setting aside "why would authors tolerate this?" (more of them are deciding not to), why should I, as a consumer, pay that? Of course, the other option is "don't buy that book." Shrug. I don't. I don't like supporting scam artists, and I don't see what publishers offer that I should pay them more than twice as much as the author gets. Especially when they've gone out of their way to kill the ability of retailers to offer bargains... the agency model's a big part of what killed Fictionwise. The chart is also flawed, as it doesn't show per-unit costs; the print costs exist per-book no matter how many books get sold; the editing costs are eventually paid off and stop being an expense. And it definitely doesn't work when applied to paperbacks. |
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01-18-2013, 07:14 PM | #22 | |
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It isn't fair that your Mobipocket eBooks might be worthless unless you can strip the DRM. All of the Mobipocket eBooks I bought before I upgraded my computer would all be worthless as the PID is tied to the computer's hardware. Most were bought from Paperback Digital (because they had some really good discount codes) and give that PD is out of business, there's no way to go back and update the DRM. If I did not have the ability to remove the DRM, they'd be wasting hard drive space right now. |
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01-18-2013, 07:16 PM | #23 | |
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As a ratio, the price difference between a a 99 cent book and a pirated book is the same as the price difference between a 99 dollar book and a pirated book -- infinity. So what's more important, the ratio or the absolute difference? And how's the publisher to know? It's a little more complicated than that, I know, because convenience and risk factors mean nothing is totally free. You could assign a price to the risk of getting a computer virus from a cyberlocker site. And, in the other direction, you could assign a price to the risk of identify theft when you give your credit card information to a on-line bookseller. I'd personally rate the cyberlocker malware risk higher, but there surely are cyberlocker fans who think differently. A really big publisher can experimentally approximate the most profitable price points. I can't think of ways the publisher can know why that price works best. |
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01-18-2013, 08:00 PM | #24 |
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01-18-2013, 08:01 PM | #25 |
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And get used to even more poorly written, badly edited, typo-ridden, badly formatted crap books.
No thanks. Turn a manuscript involves as many man-hours of work as writing the manuscript in the first place. Without publishers, you don't get books, you get unedited manuscripts. |
01-18-2013, 08:44 PM | #26 |
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Depends on the author. Courtney Milan, for example, self-publishes and her books are essentially error-free, well edited as well as well-proofed, plus they're a reasonable price.
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01-18-2013, 08:47 PM | #27 | |
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01-18-2013, 08:54 PM | #28 | ||
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Yes, that's why I said "if". I don't claim to know what effect pricing has on piracy.
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01-18-2013, 09:51 PM | #29 | ||
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While not knowing the best price for a book, I admit to liking the idea that they start out high, and go down. It is quite rare I read a book that wouldn't be just as good five years from now. I get the same great reading experience as a billionaire, just later, and maybe not even that if I go for paper from the library. Is there any more perfect an example of social justice? Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 01-18-2013 at 09:55 PM. |
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01-18-2013, 10:43 PM | #30 |
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I was simply pointing out that it isn't the ratio that was important. If it was, people would be as likely to pick up a penny as they would a quarter. People will drive across town to save $50 in a TV, when that might be less a 5% difference. They probably wouldn't drive across town to save a much larger percentage on a much cheaper item. They aren't that concerned about the percentage, they just care about $50 extra in their pockets. The higher the price, the more motivated people are. Whether raising the price actually translates into higher rates of piracy, and how much of an impact that has is uncertain.
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