Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
And as I've illustrated, simply giving customers good quality product, low prices, multiple formats, no restrictions and no DRM is no guarantee they won't be pirated.
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But I don't think you *have* illustrated it. If your book is in a torrent with a thousand other books by 'name' authors, how do we know that the downloader wasn't really interested in them? How do we know that any of the downloaders have even heard of you? Do you have ANY numbers for torrents containing only your books?
Look, every industry has 'losses.' It's part of doing business. And yes, you take *reasonable* steps to prevent the losses you can prevent, but if you are so skittish about 'losses' that you don't even get into business in the first place, that makes no sense.
Are there a few people who obtained your product and did not pay for it? Yes. And that would be true for any business in the world. What you need to focus on are the sales you CAN make. So, for example, if 100 people downloaded the book without paying for it and 40 of them could have been converted into paying customers in other circumstances, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on how to get those customers in the future, rather than focusing on how to stop the evil pirate who was never going to get it in the first place?
Here are some factors that have stopped me from buying a book before. I will put a star next to the ones that apply to books with no DRM too:
- *the price was too high for what the book was
- *there was no sample available to help me make a choice
- *there were no reviews so I did not have enough information
- *the author's website was confusing or poorly written or badly done and either did not give me the information I wanted or made me think the book would be awful
- *the sample and/or reviews were available but did not give me enough information to make an informed choice on the book
- *the sample and/or reviews were terrible so I opted not to buy the book
- the book was not available in a format I could easily read or convert
- the book was geographically restricted and I could not purchase it
- *the book was no available at a venue from which I purchase and I did not want to set up a new account
- *the book was part of a series and the whole series was not available to me
- *the author said something in a message board or internet forum which turned me off or made me think they were not a good writer
I'm sure I could come up with more
But you get my point, I think. Even for books with no DRM, there are plenty of reasons a customer would choose not to buy. You need to work on those reasons of you wan tto sell to them.