Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
There were 144 payments for 100,000 downloads. Perhaps I am naive, but I have more faith in humanity, particularly in the book-reading part of it, than to accuse 99.8x% of them of being thieves. You say that people are too ready to accept "that behaviour" - but what behaviour, exactly? The problem with this situation is that we don't have the facts about what people did. It's possible (though unlikely) that everyone who read and enjoyed the book paid for it. It's possible (though unlikely) that 100,000 people read the book, but only 144 people paid for it.
We don't have many reliable figures on ebook sales, but JA Konrath has shared some of his here. He's selling a few 100 copies of many of his titles. His free title has had over 100,000 ( ref.). This suggests to me that the volumes that Richard saw might be typical. Now, you can interpret this as "everyone is a thief and the world is going to the dogs", or as "it's human nature to grab a freebie, even if only 1 in 1000 people who do so are actually going to use it". I prefer the latter, and in a digital world where the freebie costs nothing, I don't see the harm in people hoarding a copy.
Nobody who fails to pay for "donationware" is a thief - they haven't even broken civil law, as far as I can see. Not even people who illegally copy content are thieves - they are illegally infringing copyright, which is not the same. I have been a victim of both theft and copyright infringement and, trust me, theft is a lot worse.
This kind of emotive language does nothing for the debate, other than to turn it into a slanging match.
I can't speak for anyone else's attitude, but my attitude is not to "support thieves rather than the Author", but rather to attempt to have a rational discussion.
Looking at the figures from JA Konrath, it may be that the ebook market is, as yet, too small to support an author unless they are (a) very prolific and (b) skilled at marketing their ebooks. |
I am sorry Ben,
a) That you have been a victim of theft, and of Copyright Infringement, I think them equal in all honesty
b) That i have to again disagree with you, It is morally wrong, I Don't think we are given the right to help ourselves, just to take and make fair payment, and to me it sounded in the original post, that the author was upset and felt cheated by people downloading the book in large numbers, but so very very few making ANY payment at all,
anyway I have had my fair share of this thread, I still think attitudes need to change, A lot of members here moan about being riped of by publishers, but then dont think it wrong to not make even token payments for eBooks, I can't see how BOTH attitudes can be held by one person,
Sorry Again Ben,