Quote:
Originally Posted by Serpentine
... and in before publishers publish some made up stats about piracy.
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No, we're not concerned about piracy. If we did, we'd do DRM, which we don't. DRM is evil.
I've done some extensive testing putting my own books up as if pirated, and concluded that the people who read pirated copies are very unlikely to have have made a purchase, so there's virtually no lost revenue.
I've done several experiments and surveys. In one survey, conducted via bittorrent, I asked people what fair pricing would be based on various parameters. Lots of responses. I then did an experiment, putting up some of my own ebooks on bittorrent with a note inside saying, for example, "If you read this, please pay $3 if you really liked this, $2 if it was just okay, and $.89 if you weren't feeling it" -- numbers arrived at as fair from the survey of torrent users. I found a number of hits to my web site (which was mentioned inside it) so I know at least some percent of them opened the file and read enough to see the URL (as opposed to just collecting it and never opening it). Of those who I can tell opened and read the ebook, which numbered in the several hundred when I checked on it -- ONE person paid for it. I've repeated that experiment with variations, and the same net effect, that torrent downloaders do not represent much in lost sales. I haven't seen any difference in sales in my titles that are on bittorrent vs. the ones that aren't. My sense is that people who are able to pay for ebooks they read will be fair and pay, and those who don't are either unable to afford it, live in a country where they can't easily pay, or weren't that into the book enough that they even finished it. I suspect the number who actually read a pirated book all the way through and are able to pay, but don't, is extremely small. They're more like people reading the book in a bookstore. But they don't represent any significant lost revenue.
So, there are your stats about piracy -- probably not what you expected!
And @ozron, yes, we did have good response to the coupon, so see OP -- we've put it back on again for a few days since you missed it last time.