Quote:
Originally Posted by spooky69
The upside of the the whole piracy thing is that it usually vastly increases the availability of media, and there's probably some saturation point where the increased exposure of a piece of media will coincide with a certain amount of legal purchases (though probably resulting in fewer overall sales than we've seen in the traditional market system, at least in the short term).
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See my apple analogy
above. The problem is, you can't depend on the rest of those guys to all go out and buy an apple, especially if they've just been shown how easy it is to steal one, so you can't build a business model on that.
Now, if you use the free apple to entice people to your farm, where they will see other fruits that they
will buy (translation: Want and can't steal)... you've got a system. In fact, you have the system used by commercial television and radio, giving you free programs in the hopes that you'll go out tomorrow and buy the soap they advertised during your favorite show.
For e-book publishers, this may mean giving an e-book away in order to get the consumer to buy others... giving an e-book away in order to get you to buy the print book... or giving an e-book away in return to a paid subscription for some other service (a blog, say). These are fair and equitable deals with measurable results. Better than hoping the pirates send some legitimate buyers to your door (and not just more pirates).