ebook piracy numbers

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sassanik

Does anyone know of any articles that have ebook piracy numbers in them? As it refers to lost sales?

They don't exist. Any numbers you see are generally made up by one side or the other in order to help support whatever agenda they are trying to push on people.

Accurate numbers for "lost sales" are pretty much impossible to measure/estimate.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by carld

Yes, you're illegally acquiring something that you have no right to. That's theft.

That's pretty impressive. Two sentences, and just about every single word is flawed.

[speakingtohe]

If I was in charge of a large publishing company selling ebooks, which (luckily perhaps for the world) I am not, I would be scanning the internet/torrent sites for copies of works that I had the rights (and authors permission) to but not a digital copy. I would offer the untouched copy at a low price and an improved, formatted version at about $3.00 more.
This would put the shoe firmly on the other foot, with pirates resentful that their work is making a profit for the publisher. An interesting legal issue I am sure.

If pricing was at $1.99 and $4.99 respectively I am sure you would see approximately equal sales at both pricing levels. People like pretty shiny things

As to the piracy statistics, I doubt that 1% of the world's reading population access torrent sites. And with those that do, it is for the movies.

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Well, there is this:

Every pbook I own contains a statement similar to that, generally on the copyright page.

The fact that publishers put something like that standard in almost every book doesn't mean it is true.

Originally Posted by theducks

Not illegal. THERE IS NO U.S. LAW with those words.

Breech of contract, Maybe.
Copyright infringement, Maybe.

I don't sign contracts when I buy pbooks. So there can be no breach of contract. And whether there is copyright infringement depends on the jurisdiction you are in. In Holland the publishers even put the following in the books (translated of course):

"No part of this publication may not be reproduced, etc."

although the law says that you are allowed to make copies of a limited part. It is just scare tactics.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by BexBits

The "news" is that this is not how it traditionally worked in book sales.
Retail sellers (not consumers) bought from Simon & Schuster or McMillan and then set their own prices. They could *give* them away if they wanted.

It is how it traditionally works in book sales.

The publisher sets the price and the bookstores have to follow that price. Sales are not allowed. So, wherever I want to buy a book, online or B&M, I'll always pay the same price.

Because the prices are open in the US, doesn't mean they're open all over the world.

[afa]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I would be scanning the internet/torrent sites for copies of works that I had the rights (and authors permission) to but not a digital copy. I would offer the untouched copy at a low price and an improved, formatted version at about $3.00 more.

I love this idea!

You're not going to stop piracy, anyway, so why not make money off of it? As you stated, it will be an interesting legal wrangle. Could a publisher be taken to court for copyright infringement or promoting piracy, when they already own the copyright? I don't know.

But the idea is brilliant. Who knows? It might actually be the most effective way to combat pirates. Don't try to stop them; use them to generate income, and piss them off to the point where they don't bother, anymore.

You really should be in charge of a publisher.

[saoir]

Originally Posted by sassanik

I question how many sales are lost through piracy. I am not saying that there are not lost sales. I simply question how many people who download pirated ebooks actually read them and how many would have bought them in different circumstances.
Amy

I agree Amy.

The Music industry never established the slightest evidence that they actually lost sales due to illegal downloads. For my part several years ago I asked about ten teenage kids my son hung out with about their massive illegal downloads. What I learned was a) they hardly listened to about 90%b of it b) they actually loved having the original CD of the music that they DID love and c) they were spending amazing amounts on real CDs, far more than I imagined. The Music industry suffered a huge downturn in sales in the last 20 years primarily because they have insulted customers with inflated and unjustified pricing (I still see newly released CDs priced at 20 euros !)

In my case I am happy to admit that I downloaded an illegal copy of five of the major Beatles Albums a couple of years ago instead of paying full price for them. Firstly I had owned most of the LPS in the past and secondly I really feel absolutely no obligation to replenish Paul McCartney's bank account (I love Paul) I think he has made enough from his music by now.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Why is $10 for an ebook "unsustainably" low when a pbook can be sold for $8 (or less), despite the cost of goods sold being so much higher? Why is it necessary for a publisher to make profits an order of magnitude higher on an ebook than on a pbook for it to be sustainable?

It is the profit from bestselling hardcovers that are necessary for the publishers.

[GhostHawk]

You want to stop piracy, make it cheaper, and easier, and safer that surfing the net for the prirates next read.

Bring the price down below the 5$ mark. Cut out the DRM and the Geo restrictions, put back list ebooks on sale for 1$ each. Those will remove the temptation for 90% of all pirates. The rest are doing it because they "can". They are in effect saying "I can have what you have without paying for it because I'm smarter than you". And they enjoy thumbing their noses at those who get so emotionally upset that they call copyright infringement theft.

<insert enormous grin>

Gotcha!

[cfrizz]

[QUOTE=GhostHawk;1043278]You want to stop piracy, make it cheaper, and easier, and safer that surfing the net for the prirates next read.

Bring the price down below the 5$ mark. Cut out the DRM and the Geo restrictions, put back list ebooks on sale for 1$ each.... QUOTE]

Man, I would go on a book buying spree not to be believed!!!

[darknessangel]

Well... there are some articles about ebook piracy but most of the figures are really off, like :

3 billion USD http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/c...ok-pirate.html

More or less like the ones of movies/mp3s. Very hard to quantify because not all of book sales are of mainstream novels like with movies but there are also technical books (I still have to see a technical movie =P) and the statistics of those do not exist.

I am a collector. I have around 20k books most of it science books and some art and just around 200 fiction. I really like to go and pick one at random and read something from art or some other science book for a short while. I started my collection mostly because I couldn't afford the books at the time and there weren't any online (no kindle/amazon at the time). And I further enriched it when I was confronted with 5 massive boxes of books during moving. Now I would only buy a book if it's an antique. Also I wouldn't buy a DRMed/geographically locked book if possible.

If you think I don't have any moral fiber left you may be right. In reality I've worked very hard to get rid of that quality for years and am quite proud of the results. On the other hand you may find that I have a different "set of moral values" where killing and so on are bad but downloading digital media from the internet is not really in the baby-killing category.

Furthermore, I really consider that copyrights for science and reference books shouldn't be handled as the fiction because this just limits the progress of every country. What I perceive is that usually the people that take the moral high ground are the people with means to buy while the people scorned are the poor that cannot buy things. While in the realm of physical things this is certainly valid it loses a lot of weight when we go to digital media. Would that poor student buy that $400 reference book? Or that doctor from a third world country? Certainly not. Was the "illegal" download from I-kil-babies-for-fun.com worth? most probably! On the other side, for fiction books like from Stephen King, J.K. Rowling I fully support the legal copyrights because a) they directly earn their daily bread from it and b) it's just for leisure that you read those books... it's a luxury.

On the other hand... apparently ebook piracy is not that bad for book sales:
http://www.bnet.com/blog/publishing-...publishing/417

[alecE]

It's obviously very difficult/impossible to come to any accurate figure for the claimed lost sales due to ebook piracy. I cannot even gauge how representative my own purchasing history is, but, in the 18 months since I purchased my 505, the book industry has received more money from me that it did in the previous 10 years - so the industry has gained sales. And this despite the fact that I do, very occasionally, download from the darknet. I acquire ebooks from the following sources, in order of moral preference:
1. Legitimate purchases and PG downloads;
2. used books, scanned and OCR'd into ebooks by my own fair hands;
3. Darknet as a very last resort, where my desire to have an ebook is frustrated by geo restrictions or unavailability.

As a general principle, I would always prefer to buy legitimately; sadly not every title in a publisher's backlist will be made available electronically, even more sadly, geo restrictions will continue for the forseeable future.

Overall, the publishing industry has done better out of me now I've got a liseuse, any piratical acts I've committed are NOT lost sales - if I could buy the titles, I would.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by alecE

It's obviously very difficult/impossible to come to any accurate figure for the claimed lost sales due to ebook piracy.

It'd be difficult to be definitive, but not impossible to put together some useful statistics.

1) Start with a list of 20 books of comparable print sales, in groups. Maybe 5 bestsellers, 10 midlist, 5 backlist available only as mmpb.

2) Note which have legit ebooks available. (Ideally, you want about half yes, half no.)

3) Go looking on torrents & file-exchange services for these books. This is the hard part... most mainstream businesses have no idea how to find the sites that Google doesn't turn up, and no patience for building the relationships it takes to get access to the more hidden places. But even public-search torrents & upload sites would be useful.

4) Track downloads/torrent seeding activity for 6 months. Compare to book sales.

5) Compare to comparable print books that have no easily-findable ebook version.

It wouldn't be definitive, and getting really useful statistics would probably take studying a hundred or so titles and some real consideration of what numbers to compare.

The problem with that method is that it's likely to discover that pirate ebooks have either no effect on sales, or a small positive effect on sales. And publishers don't want to deal with free downloads as word-of-mouth advertising; they want to insist "Reading for free! That's stealing!" ... and very carefully never compare torrent downloading to buying books at a rummage sale for $4/bagful.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by saoir

I agree Amy.

The Music industry never established the slightest evidence that they actually lost sales due to illegal downloads. For my part several years ago I asked about ten teenage kids my son hung out with about their massive illegal downloads. What I learned was a) they hardly listened to about 90%b of it b) they actually loved having the original CD of the music that they DID love and c) they were spending amazing amounts on real CDs, far more than I imagined. The Music industry suffered a huge downturn in sales in the last 20 years primarily because they have insulted customers with inflated and unjustified pricing (I still see newly released CDs priced at 20 euros !)

Several studies I've seen, that I am likely to agree with, is that the downturn in the music industry is largely due to the return of singles sales through places like iTunes. Why buy an album full of songs you don't know or don't like, when you really only want one or two?

[warrend405]

I've been reading the arguments on DRM and Piracy for some time. It seems clear that the definitions and rules that have been common sense for years don't seem to apply to digital media. The problem being there is no physical object to tie ownership to. Example: A friend just sent me a copy of a p-book that he suggested that I read and he didn't want any more. I suspect almost all would agree that common sense says this is a legal and ethical act. What then is the status if he sends me an ebook? Is it OK if he deletes the book on his end, after all then there would still only be one. What happens if he doesn't but never looks at it again? or two years later happens to notice it and sends it to someone else. Does it then matter if I read it or just let it sit? Most publishers would argue you don't have the legal right to give the ebook away, saying you just have a license and they still own the IP. This doesn't sit well with most people's common sense. After all, I bought it so I own it. On the other hand, if I own one copy it doesn't seem right to give away 100 copies regardless of what they do with the copies after all I only have one.

I suspect this is one argument that will never be settled until the rules are mostly common sense and people understand and believe them. Right now with the two options being having the ability to turn one copy into many or not having any rights of ownership it seems we aren't real close.