Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
All the piracy talk ignores some fundamentals that are really important for the book publishing industry.
1. No one has any idea of how many books are really being downloaded and read.
2. No one has any idea of how many of the downloaders are downloading the book simply because it is downloadable.
3. No one knows what percentage of the downloads are truly lost sales.
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These problems aren't unique to electronic versions of books. Let's rephrase these points.
1.) Nobody knows how many books are being checked out of the library, or bought used, or are given to someone, and read
2.) Nobody knows how many of those books are taken only because they are free, or very cheap
3.) Nobody knows if that person would have paid full retail for a new copy if they didn't get the free or cheap copy.
I (almost) never buy deadtree books new-- I always wait until the book has been out for a while and look for good deals on a used hardback copy through
http://www.fetchbook.info/ (and usually end up buying it from a used book seller on Amazon or Ebay.) Almost all the deadtree books I buy are science non-fiction, and more often than not get the book for $1.00 or less plus shipping, while a new copy (if they are still available) costs tens of dollars.
That's a null for book publishers-- they don't track every sale of a used book, so they don't know of that copy sold once went to me instead of me buying a new copy. And they don't know of anyone else I later lend the book to. And they don't know if I, or the person I lendeded it to, would have bought a full-price copy if a cheap or borrowed copy wasn't available (for me, almost always NO.)
The electronic book market is like the deadtree book market in that there will always be people willing to pay top dollar for a new copy when it first comes out (willing to pay for the download) and there will be people wiling to wait for the cheap used copy (willing to wait for, and search down the pirated copy.) And there likely isn't much overlap in the groups from either medium.