Book Publishers Force Down Piracy Sites

[Xanthe]

I have no problem with people setting up private libraries of ebooks online, purchasing the books as a group and sharing them among themselves. It's just the old subscription library format updated to the modern world.

I am tired of the hypocrisy of the various media publishing associations; they don't protect their artists, actors, authors because those folks for the most part get less from the sales of their works than they truly deserve. All the associations are concerned with is perpetuating their lock on their various industries and keeping their personal cash cow flowing.

I hope the publishers are finally running scared, what with their foot-dragging to make books and back-catalogs available in ebook formats, their attempts to charge tree-book prices for a digital download, and the piss-poor formating of so many "legal" ebooks. Just as the music industry did before them, they are the ones responsible for driving their customers into the arms of the dark net - where almost any book anyone wants is available - in the format they need, and where the users themselves many times take the time to reformat the books into readability and check that pages/chapters aren't omitted from the final product. Fact is, some of the product on the dark net is actually better than the "official" version, and as more people realize that and take advantage of it, publishers are going to continue to lose out until they realize that they have to change their business model and become proactive rather than reactive.

Don't follow the MPAA/RIAA models, create a new one that works in today's world for your industry. Don't squander your good will like they did by treating their customer base as all potential criminals. Provide your ebooks in multiple formats - not locked into a single format, usable on only a limited number of reading devices. Price the ebooks cheaper than paper ones; we are not idiots - we know that a digital data transfer costs less than physically publishing a paper book. We are not asking you to give away the books, but don't charge us for something we are not getting; you will still make your profit. Take the time to format the ebooks so that they are both readable and complete. Give us a good ebook at a reasonable price, give us the ebooks we want to read, and we will buy your ebooks as our first buying choice, and not turn to some other option.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How does that work? How is the amount of money that each author gets decided on, I mean? With library loans, you have a direct record of the number of times each book is borrowed. If you're saying that a tax on blank media could compensate authors for piracy, how would the number of times that each book has been pirated be determined?

Why does it matter? They get some compensation. And you argument was that libraries give some compensation. The situation belongs to the same category.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why does it matter? They get some compensation. And you argument was that libraries give some compensation. The situation belongs to the same category.

I am just interested to know how it works. Are you talking about a system that actually exists, or are you proposing a hypothetical replacement for the PLR?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

You have a funny definition for "most". I wouldn't say that 27 countries out of almost 200 can be considered most.

Equally, though, your blanket assertion that:

"people that consume content that's up for sale without paying" describes library patrons perfectly.

is patently untrue.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I am just interested to know how it works. Are you talking about a system that actually exists, or are you proposing a hypothetical replacement for the PLR?

Money goes back to an organization that gives money to artists and creators. It is like an extra tax on memory and disk. How the money is distributed I do not know the details of.

And, yes it exists. For example in Sweden and I believe in France but probably also in other countries.

[plib]

Originally Posted by sbroome

This explains quite a bit about the education level of many internet users. People actually pretend that wikipedia represents some sort of academic standard. I wouldn't consider this progress.

Actually I think it explains more about yours. If you think that Wikipedia is the only source of academic material available on the internet then your search skills could do with some work. The internet has made more academic work available to more people from one technology than any other development since the invention of the printing press.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by tompe

Money goes back to an organization that gives money to artists and creators. It is like an extra tax on memory and disk. How the money is distributed I do not know the details of.

And, yes it exists. For example in Sweden and I believe in France but probably also in other countries.

And it is an extremely unfair system. You have to pay the surcharge even for media you don't use to store copyrighted information AND instead of users/readers some government bureaucrats decide how the funds will be distributed. Just what we need, more public servants. No thanks! I prefer to directly support those who write/publish the books I want to read.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by AgentOrange

I think more publishers should go the route of Baen books and partner with their authors to offer free ebooks as encouragement for people to say, buy the rest of the series that the author offered the first few books of for free. Introducing the Baen free library

Baen knows cracking down on piracy or increasing prices only encourages piracy to continue, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

as a result, i really don't see too many baen books on pirate sites. why bother pirating it when they're giving it to you for free already (unless for some reason you can't get the books in your country).

landing the whole honor harrington series on a pirate site really isn't a coup when they pretty much give you the entire series with every new release

with their lack of drm, reasonably priced ebooks, free library, relatively inexpensive print omnibuses, etc, baen bends over backwards to satisfy their customer base and as a result i've been checking out more of their titles.

angry robot is another good publisher. they don't hand out freebies but their books are drm free, no territory restrictions and priced from $3-$4.75. they must be doing ok with the business model, their 2012 release list is almost triple the size of last years.

its just little things other pubs could be doing but they're not. got a new installment of a series coming out? what would be the harm in giving the previous books a deep discount for a few weeks?

unfortunately it seems like publishers believe capitulating even an inch on drm or prices is tantamount to negotiating with terrorists.

[plib]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

landing the whole honor harrington series on a pirate site really isn't a coup when they pretty much give you the entire series with every new release

with their lack of drm, reasonably priced ebooks, free library, relatively inexpensive print omnibuses, etc, baen bends over backwards to satisfy their customer base and as a result i've been checking out more of their titles.

.........

unfortunately it seems like publishers believe capitulating even an inch on drm or prices is tantamount to negotiating with terrorists.

Plus there is a certain satisfaction in supporting a supplier who doesn't consider you a terrorist over one who does!

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

LOL, I was just talking about this to my husband the other day. They never will stamp out piracy because the art of pretending to try to stamp it out in mock outrage just makes too darn much money. Plus their staff of people to make official looking graphs and studies of all the "lost dollars" for shock value.

They can't measure the "lost sales" of piracy anymore than you can measure the "lost sales" from people for whom the item in question isn't even on their radar! I am a lost sale for "Scary Movie" because I had no freaking desire to see it, ever...

what about lost sales from poor word of mouth while they're at it? i would bet my arm that more sales are lost across just about every genre and item due to poor word of mouth or miserable reviews than any conceivable amount of piracy.

if i go on amazon and loudly proclaim that a book stinks on ice and that it isn't fit to line a bird cage i guarantee that will provide for more lost sales and income than a handful of people who would pirate said book.

not all of us know pirates. but we all know someone who has taken our word of mouth about an item to heart.

so should we ban negative reviews?

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

so should we ban negative reviews?

I read on one blog, someone who was miffed because a negative review he wrote didn't pass through moderation because it provided a negative review of the story and writing style. He wrote to the website and was told his review was filtered due to poor publicity and won't promote increased sales. It was one of the "popular" book stores and was before e-books.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by plib

Plus there is a certain satisfaction in supporting a supplier who doesn't consider you a terrorist over one who does!

I'm just waiting for the day when it becomes illegal to buy a book and take it home if more than 3 people reside in your household, then you must buy more copies.

I can just see publishers dreaming up all kinds of ridiculous laws with regard to book buying.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Are you talking about a hypothetical pirate that never buys content, one that all research shows doesn't exist?

Sorry, are you honestly saying that all research shows, that there are no people at all that only consume pirated media and never buy any?
If so I could name a few people I know that will break that research.

Also I know people who would buy more if they were unable to pirate anything.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Sorry, are you honestly saying that all research shows, that there are no people at all that only consume pirated media and never buy any?
If so I could name a few people I know that will break that research.

Also I know people who would buy more if they were unable to pirate anything.

Research indicates that people that pirate also tend to buy media; so you'll get people that pirate some things, but that will buy other things that they could have pirated. This is mainly a response to arguments that pirates won't pay if there are free versions available. It turns out a lot (but not all) piracy is a result of people not being able to get what they want in the format they want from legitimate sources.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Equally, though, your blanket assertion that:

is patently untrue.

Which part is untrue? Are they not consuming content? Is the content not up for sale? If you are disagreeing with the "without paying" part because they pay taxes and the taxes go to the libraries and from there in some countries some money goes to some authors, then you are considering a very indirect way of payment. On top of this the contribution to this payment doesn't come only from the library patrons, but from everyone that pays taxes, including pirates, which would mean that pirates are also paying the authors.