Massive wave of ebook piracy?

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers

I've given away a lot of e-books -- sent mobi and epub files to strangers, just to be nice. A little voice in the back of my head always nags me about setting myself up for piracy, but I ignore it. Piracy is going to happen no matter what I do or don't do. I've decided that having more people read my books is a good thing, even if they don't pay for them. But it is unethical, especially when you can buy my books, and many terrific novels, for $2.99
L.J.
The Sex Club, now only $.99!

Is The Sex Club the first book in the Jackson series?

I think the important thing is to get your name and books out into the wild, where they can develop word-of-mouth. You may lose some sales in the short run but you will also pique interest in people who are willing to pay a reasonable price (which yours certainly are) for an ebook.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

People keep saying this, but it's not true. E-book publishers may have made their own mistakes but they have *not* made the mistakes that music publishers made.

The mistake music publishers made was that they *did not provide a convenient, legal way to buy digital music*. Not that they charged too much money, or set monopoly prices.

Music publisher did provide a legal and convenient way to buy digital music. They sold it on CD's, which happen to carry unencrypted digitalized audio signal. Everybody could rip it into mp3, all it took was a computer and 20 minutes of one's time. Unavailability of mp3 format was not an issue.

They did charge too much money, and they tried to set monopoly prices.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

People keep saying this, but it's not true. E-book publishers may have made their own mistakes but they have *not* made the mistakes that music publishers made.

The mistake music publishers made was that they *did not provide a convenient, legal way to buy digital music*. Not that they charged too much money, or set monopoly prices. They simply did not make the music available at all. Music publishing's problems were *never* about how much they charged for digital downloads, no matter how much people who don't like the cost of e-books would like for it to be.

I agree with your specific example (that pricing is not what the ebook industry is doing wrong - for the most part at least). I disagree with your opening sentence that "they have *not* made the mistakes that music publishers made".

The DRM fiasco is the single greatest mistake the music industry made. Wonder of wonders, they actually fixed it. Yes, they had to be dragged to it kicking and screaming and they only did it because it was pretty much provide unDRM'd mp3s and make money or let Napster do it for them. Still, they fixed it, which is no mean feat for an industry with all the grace and inertia of a minor star cluster. THIS is the mistake that the ebook industry has adopted. Customers flock to Baen primarily because they don't infect their books with DRM and make several formats available and you can download all the formats if you so wish (at no extra cost). The low book prices is an added bonus and a show of faith on the part of Baen that they are actually taking advantage of all that this medium has to offer and passing on some of the savings to the customer.

I like Amazon's pricing (and B&N, since they both seem to have observers matching each others' prices ) just fine, but to me, it was once the epitome of retailing. Prior to the release of Kindle, Amazon was the source of everything you'd ever want to buy. They still are, but with the notable exception of ebooks. As far as ebooks are concerned, most of the big names are device shills. Baen isn't - it's as simple as that.

The ebook industry has fallen for the marketing hacks' insistence on calling ebooks "content" to be "managed" and "licensed". That's their major mistake. Georestriction (this time, an MPAA blunder) is yet another mistake adopted from the RIAA/MPAA cabal.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I understand their *pricing scheme* fine (and not having to pay Amazon 30% for distributing their books means that they probably make about the same on a $6 book as they would on a $9. What I don't understand is that they *also* make these books available for free. So you don't have to pay even the $6.

Every single time when we start talking about e-book pricing, DRM, about how publishers don't get it, somebody mentions Baen.
If they just quietly sold their books they would be known to a small handful of hardcore fans of hard military SF.
They give books away and many, many people here said that they had no idea that there is somebody like Baen, until somebody here mentioned their free library. They then downloades some books, discovered great authors and eventually became customers.

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I am sorry for misunderstanding. From your sentence:


I understood that you are claiming that "bits of the file" are shared only when you achieve seeder status, which is not the case.

My apologies, I misread your words.

Nah, no worries.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by kacir

They give books away and many, many people here said that they had no idea that there is somebody like Baen, until somebody here mentioned their free library. They then downloades some books, discovered great authors and eventually became customers.

You misread Andrew's post, kacir. The free library, where you can download a full ebook (or few) from a series still falls into the known marketing strategy, as one can make money by selling the rest of the series.

What Andrew is questioning, and I agree with him, is the content offered on http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com, where the complete Honorverse and Vorkosigan Saga series are available for download. Weber and now Bujold are star authors.

Why would anyone pay for the stuff offered for free? And why has David Weber chosen Tor as a publisher for his Safehold series?

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by sunnysmiles

I bought some books from a well known store a few months ago . I downloaded them . I changed my book reader and my laptop so had no copy of these three books. Went in to my account at the bookstore and found that the link to the URL FOR These books are no longer valid . So Basically I would have lost these books even through I paid for them and had not read two of them. I think I would morally have the right to download them if I came across them in the ether otherwise I feel I have been cheated of my rights.

I agree with this.

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

My impression of the majority of people who provide ebooks to the various P2P site is not that they are counting coup for the number of books they provide. That type of mentality seems to be more confined to the movie and games genre, where the age range and gender is more specific . A good portion of the music down-loaders have the "stick it to the RIAA" mentality as a result of the court cases that have been ongoing since the original Napster went down. Right or wrong, that mentality is entrenched.

But the ebook and audiobook sharers, with them it seems to be more of a sense of participating in a giant, worldwide free public library, from what I've seen. (And remember, the majority of us are used to reading books for free, and we tend to create our own lending libraries among friends and family.) They tend to thank each other for posts. They recommend similar authors. They act as reference librarians for one another and do searches for requested books. It's just a different mentality, and it hasn't been one of "let's rip off the writers and the publishing houses because we can". It's more of "oh, an author I never heard of before - that book looks good - thanks!" and "I'm glad I finally found an ebook version because my paper copy is falling apart from all the times I've re-read it".

What I mean is that the ebook/audiobook down-loaders are not the hard-core pirates that everyone seems so afraid of. Most of them are buying just as many paper books as they have in the past. They are people who just love books and who finally can share what they love with others. And a lot of them are fine-tuning the ebooks they put up with more care than the publishing houses do. I know the people who only see this issue in terms of black-and-white are going to dismiss this observation, but I'm telling you, there's a sense of community in those places, the same as there is here.

What I can see happening though, is as ereaders become more commonplace, more people are going to look for content for them. With the publishing houses trying to create a monopoly on pricing, they are traveling down the same path of the RIAA in that they are concerned with short-term profit instead of a long-range selling strategy. They are out-of-tune with their changing consumer base and if they don't wake up and realize that they are on the cusp of change, all of those easy-going people on the ebook sharing sites are going to develop that same "stick it to The Man" mentality that the music sharers have and refuse to pay high prices for ebooks.

This is very well said.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

Customers flock to Baen primarily because they don't infect their books with DRM and make several formats available and you can download all the formats if you so wish (at no extra cost).

Unlikely. If that were the case people would be flocking to Smashwords too, but most of the ebook sales are still on Amazon. DRM is transparent to most people, and they neither know nor care about it. The only reason it was (reluctantly) removed from mp3 files was because people were upgrading their players and finding out they could no longer play their music. With so few manufacturers in the ebook reader market, and all the main ones aiming to tie users to their own hardware forever, that won't be a problem for most people.

[Fbone]

When people mention high cost of ebooks I assume we are talking their price in relation to paperbacks and hardcovers. According to my previous thread about books and inflation paperbacks are a very good value. Their costs since 1980 have mostly kept pace with the official US CPI but when you figure in sales and discounts (Border's 40% off coupons, etc) book prices are very low. Too low possibly deflationary.

[NVash]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Unlikely. If that were the case people would be flocking to Smashwords too, but most of the ebook sales are still on Amazon. DRM is transparent to most people, and they neither know nor care about it. The only reason it was (reluctantly) removed from mp3 files was because people were upgrading their players and finding out they could no longer play their music. With so few manufacturers in the ebook reader market, and all the main ones aiming to tie users to their own hardware forever, that won't be a problem for most people.

I wouldnt know a thing about Smashwords or Baen if I hadnt come to this site. I knew there were other sites to get ebooks but I had no idea what they were. Main place I got my books was Amazon and I didnt bother with Borders since they always seemed overpriced. They were overpriced on hardcovers, never touched their ebooks. Are the ebooks there overpriced too?

[Blue Tyson]

Yes, they are.

Borders is a synonym for overpriced.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Fbone

When people mention high cost of ebooks I assume we are talking their price in relation to paperbacks and hardcovers. According to my previous thread about books and inflation paperbacks are a very good value. Their costs since 1980 have mostly kept pace with the official US CPI but when you figure in sales and discounts (Border's 40% off coupons, etc) book prices are very low. Too low possibly deflationary.

The price of paperbacks really shot up in the '70s, so by 1980 the publishers had probably found the maximum price that the market would bear. There hasn't been a lot of "bearable" room for them to exploit for price hikes since then.

[Blue Tyson]

Not so long ago they raised them from 6.99 to 7.99, though?

A pretty hefty 14% increase or so.

[jhempel24]

Does anyone happen to think that since the publishers don't really like the e-book they are driving the prices up on purpose to piss everyone off making the eReader obsolete and go back to paper books?