[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Steve's books would likely be just as widely available on torrents even if he used as much DRM as currently available. When you consider the best form of eBook DRM is not to release an eBook (no DRM to strip) and that those books (Harry Potter for example) are still actively pirated in electronic form, it doesn't say a lot for the success of DRM.

Agreed, DRM is trivial to bypass, but authors who release with an anti-DRM stance are more likely to be taken seriously I think, at least by me. Any author who advocates DRM in any shape or form I would class as uninformed and possibly stupid.

If I were an author I wouldn't be excited to see my books torrented, but I do agree that I also wouldn't see it as a lost sale. However, I would make an attempt to have the torrent taken down or the website remove my books.

I admire your determination, but as someone much more intelligent than I said; "Trying to take something down from the internet is like trying to remove piss from a swimming pool." At the very least you'll be seen as an idiot by the greater internet community, and more than likely you'd become a target for scorn and attack if you tried to enforce your copywrongs.

I've often wondered why well known authors don't sell eBooks directly from their own on-line site. There is still a need for publishers in the print world, but other than marketting is there really such a need online? Ideally authors would sign contracts that allowed publishing ebooks on their own sites whilst still also distributing them in various on-line stores. Best of both worlds, hardcore fans may buy direct giving the author a higher income, whilst stores will help get the book under the eyes of new customers.

All I can think is that many print authors had their ebook rights tied up as part of their print contracts? Any authors on here able to give us some insight into this?

As far as I know there are a few reasons the agented/trad published authors don't release their own work online and without publishers:

1: Stephen King Syndrome. This author has reached a point where he or she or sometimes It (Dan Brown) can release whatever they like and it will sell. You can visually spot this kind of author in the wilds of your local bookstore. They're the ones whose names are bigger than the titles of the books. They don't have to think about sales in the first instance, so they don't think about selling their own wares without a publisher in the second instance.

2: Book Fundies - These authors still believe that the actual physical books are magical, that the very act of transference from one media to another will kill whatever magic was there in the first place. They're fundamentalists of paper and pulp and will never make the switch.

3: Bluddites - these authors have no idea what's going on and can barely use a computer, let alone figure out how to produce and sell books from their own website.

4: The Misinformed - A lot of top-selling authors would probably make just as much from ebook sales direct from their own site as they would through trad publishing, but the beasts in the middle, the gatekeepers whisper constantly into their ears that it won't work, that it can't work, that the old system is the only system that can be sustained. Agents, editors, PR people, Marketeers (pretty much not human anyway) all feed off the backs of the writer and if the status quo is broken they're all out of pocket.

5. Contracts - Stupid, locked-in, only-benefit-the-publisher contracts written up by the parasitic, inhuman, corporate lawyers. The writer (as most artists in these awful industries) is tied up and bound and has no freedom to do anything.