Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
I've been thinking about this, and wonder whether the real thing that publishers should focus on is getting people excited about reading, rather than attempting to clamp down on piracy.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about : - whether piracy is good, bad or indifferent
- whether piracy is theft
- or any of the other topics into which this thread will, inevitably, degenerate
Instead, I'm wondering whether piracy is really the problem that publishers face. My view is that it isn't their big problem, and my analogy would be with the music industry.
The music industry seems to be blaming piracy for reduced sales, but I don't believe them. Overall, sales in entertainment and media keep going up - the problem with the music industry is that there is more choice, but only so much available spend to go around. Specifically, things like video games and DVDs are taking away some of the available spare cash that people would have spent on music. This view is supported by, for example, this report.
It seems to me that the problem that the music industry faces is to persuade me to buy a CD (or two) rather than Super Mario Brothers Galaxy 2.
For ebooks, I think that the same logic applies. Piracy of books is only a problem for people who could care less about books, who are the people spending money with publishers in any case. The real challenge for publishers is to make reading a book seem a better bet for your $10 than a CD, video game, movie etc. A successful clampdown on piracy would do them no good, because their problem is to gain market share vs. other options.
Publishers have a huge underexploited asset in their back-catalogues, which they could market at a low price to get people reading. I wonder whether they will pursue this, and other measures designed to promote reading - or whether they will die a slow death whining about piracy from their best customers? |
Oh please! *ALL* of these views have been discussed to the point where the only rational response is to spew chunks!
Yes, most readers understand completely that anti-piracy efforts and money spent by the publishers would be better used to develop the vast backlists for the ebook market.
Yes, most customers realize that the major publishing houses have rocks-for-brains as their senior management.
Yes, most people have been fooled-once/fooled-twice by claims of same publishers re: ebooks.
Yes, any aspect of this subject truly is
Derek