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Originally Posted by GA Russell
I suspect there are more pirates than there are personnel of the big publishers devoting themselves to back catalogue. I believe that we see books which are available at the pirate sites but not legitimately (ie, Perry Masons) because there are more pirates working at it.
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There are several forces at work here.
• Not all authors / estates have authorized ebook editions to be released. In some cases this is an issue about who owns the rights, in others the author is holding out for higher royalties etc
• No one is paying the pirates or directing their work. At least some of them see what they are doing as a "social good" and, despite the fact that they are currently working for a salary of $0.00/hour, they would likely walk if offered the same job for $7.25/hour. And when you have to pay people and (theoretically) offer a higher standard, that requires infrastructure, overhead costs, proofreading, etc etc it's going to take time to crank out the backlist.
• Demand for backlist is, with a few notable exceptions, fairly low. For every
On the Road there are hundreds of nearly forgotten titles that can barely justify more resources than a cursory Google-style unedited OCR scan.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by GA Russell
Let's say the publisher offers a perfect back catalogue edition for $2.99. I believe that many customers will limit their selections to low-priced editions which they know are in perfect condition rather than consider other titles (the pirate books) which probably have typos.
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People are going to pirate no matter what.
The idea that a higher prices and/or DRM will drive people to piracy is a misperception. We currently have multiple retailers of DRM-free and cheap digital music, and music piracy is still rampant. It's not clear that music going DRM-free made so much as a dent in piracy rates.
Offering a $3 backlist title also undercuts the value of their wares. That might be a viable price for a reprint of a crappy dime novel, but not for more popular backlist titles.