ebook piracy numbers

[Worldwalker]

@Elfwreck, that still leaves the problem of sorting out a difference in sales based on illicit downloads versus a difference in sales based on, say, reviews for the book. That's the big problem with any attempt at teasing out one variable out of the many that affect book, music, movie, or any other sales: it's impossible to have a control group. It doesn't help that ebooks are rarely downloaded individually; they're usually in bundles of hundreds or thousands. So it's hard even to determine if a downloaded ebook is a read ebook -- it could just be bycatch to whatever the downloader was really after -- let alone whether it was the existence of that ebook which had an effect on sales. There are just too many factors, such as reviews, marketing, word of mouth, etc., that are individual to any given book.

[BexBits]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

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.

Let me modify my statement: That is not how it traditionally worked in the US.

Now you can say that it IS how it traditionally worked in Europe.

And we will once again have found a difference I didn't know existed.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

@Elfwreck, that still leaves the problem of sorting out a difference in sales based on illicit downloads versus a difference in sales based on, say, reviews for the book.

Definitely.

It's not a perfect system, & it'd need a lot of tweaking. There's a lot of uncounted variables.

It'd be a *start*, a way to begin collecting data about how piracy actually affect sales, instead of blithely claiming that every download is costing the company a new hardcover's price.

That's the big problem with any attempt at teasing out one variable out of the many that affect book, music, movie, or any other sales: it's impossible to have a control group.

The control groups are "books with no legit ebook edition that we can't find pirate versions of" and "books with legit ebook editions that we can't find pirate versions of." (I own several in-print books in category 1; I'm less sure if the others exist, but certainly "books with legit ebooks whose pirate versions are really hard to find" is possible.)

I freely grant that it's a very loose, rough way to gather data. It won't get nice chartable numbers; at best, it gets general-overview data indicating trends, not hard fact points. It's *possible* that more specific tests could be established if publishers did some general data-searching, but it's also possible that there are just too many variables.

The publishers who've admitted to doing the general data-checking have come back with reactions like Baen's: "Pirates? You mean, those people who are telling other people that our books are worth reading?"

There are just too many factors, such as reviews, marketing, word of mouth, etc., that are individual to any given book.

Can't get (useful) data for individual books, but tracking data across a couple dozen or a couple hundred of them would show whether there are trends. If the data showed "hardcover sales went up after ebook release, even when ebook sales were pathetic," that indicates that piracy might increase hardcover sales. The real fun is trying to track connections... do Book 3 Of Series sales increases when Book 1 is released for as a free ebook? (Baen knows the answer to that one. Macmillan is apparently convinced they lose too many Book 1 sales to bother with it.)

[BillSmithBooks]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

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?

Yes!!

1) The music industry made enormous profits by basically forcing you to buy an album with 1 good song and nine songs'o'crap because a "CD Single" was very close to the cost of the entire CD...once you provided people a chance to buy what they REALLY wanted, album sales tanked. Of course, many people miss out on good songs from those artists because they don't get the whole album...I still think the sweet spot for an MP3 album is about $5, so that it's much more tempting to just buy the album instead of a 99 cent single.

2) Look at the decline in music sales and compare it to the rise in video game sales in the past 15 years...the kids are spending just as much, if not more money, on entertainment media, they're just spending it on a different type of product.

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

Look at the decline in music sales and compare it to the rise in video game sales in the past 15 years...the kids are spending just as much, if not more money, on entertainment media, they're just spending it on a different type of product.

I think that this is a very intriguing idea. I would love to see some numbers on the decline in "traditional" (for lack of a better term) versus the increase in "new" entertainment media. (Of course you can prove anything with stats; 17% of ALL people know that...)

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by AlbertaCowboy

Of course you can prove anything with stats; 17% of ALL people know that...

Oh, too true..

The music and entertainment industry are always throwing doctored statistics around about piracy induced lost sales costing their respective industries billions of dollars!

When in reality, they assumed that the parrot doting and eyepatched downloader would have bought their product (rubbish or not) in the first place.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" to repeat the oft quoted gem from Charles Wentworth Dilke

[banjobama]

I have often heard that piracy has nothing to do with the cost of something. Even if a song costs one dollar on Amazon or iTunes, as I think most do, people will still try to get it for free. I think this is an entitlement attitude more than anything, or some kind of sense of "sticking it to the man" or whatever.

Even if ebooks cost fifty cents each everywhere, people will still copy, share, and pirate them, just because they can.

[sassanik]

Originally Posted by banjobama

I have often heard that piracy has nothing to do with the cost of something. Even if a song costs one dollar on Amazon or iTunes, as I think most do, people will still try to get it for free. I think this is an entitlement attitude more than anything, or some kind of sense of "sticking it to the man" or whatever.

Even if ebooks cost fifty cents each everywhere, people will still copy, share, and pirate them, just because they can.

I am not sure that I agree with that. I could have gotten Enya's last CD off the darknet for free. However I love Enya's songs and wanted to support her, so I bought her CD, and then put it on my computer.

I did the same thing with the dvd of Nausica of the Valley of the Wind, I watched it on Netflix and I loved it so much I bought the dvd, which is very rare for me, I think buying dvd's of movies is silly.

While people will continue to get books for free and not want to pay prices, I also think that many people realize that authors and musicians are trying to make a living.

Amy

[captcrouton]

I've never felt the need to go to the darknet for books. There are so many great ebooks available, I'll never be able to read them all in my lifetime. So if an author/publisher chooses not to release it in "my format," I'll choose another author/publisher.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by sassanik

I am not sure that I agree with that. I could have gotten Enya's last CD off the darknet for free. However I love Enya's songs and wanted to support her, so I bought her CD, and then put it on my computer

The other way around is also possible.

I once downloaded an album from Enigma. Never heard of it, but it turned out to be exactly my type of music. I now have 6 or 7 CD's of Enigma...

The same with books. I once downloaded "Neanderthal" from a writer I'd never heard of. I just liked the title of the book. I now have bought 4 of his books...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Re-read the initial post, Nathanael. This thread is not about whether it's legal or moral to pirate ebooks, it's about "how many people who download pirated ebooks actually read them and how many would have bought them in different circumstances." That last part is the key for me: there does seem to be MANY people who would have bought them in different circumstances, and that is all some of us are trying to point out to you.

Remove all the artificial barriers to sale that the publishers impose and there will be more sales. This "darknet" thing grew up to fill a void that the publishers deliberately left. If they want the money they seem to think they are losing, they need to provide what those customers want.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, at present, it is necessary.

"International rights" tend not to exist for books. An author writes a book, gets lucky, and gets published. When the rights are sold to a publisher, they don't normally buy all rights, everywhere. (Among other things, authors and agents don't like to sell all rights, everywhere, to a single buyer.) So a US publisher may have the rights to sell a title in the US. If the book gets foreign interest, it may have a different publisher in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, etc. Those publishers bought the rights to offer the book in their respective territories. The US publisher may issue an ebook, but may not have the right to sell it abroad, so a purchaser outside the US may discover the website won't accept their order, because the site knows where they are based on their IP address and the publisher doesn't have the rights to sell the book there.

The customer must then play games to get around the restriction, like using a proxy server that makes their location appear to be different that it actually is, or work through an agent where the book can be sold, or resort to the darknet.

It's a very real problem, but it isn't going away any time soon, and it can't. There are too many people with a legitimate monetary interest, and any proposed solution will gore someone's ox.
______
Dennis

I have bought lots of paper books published by foreign publishers, even when there is a local publication available.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by banjobama

I have often heard that piracy has nothing to do with the cost of something. Even if a song costs one dollar on Amazon or iTunes, as I think most do, people will still try to get it for free. I think this is an entitlement attitude more than anything, or some kind of sense of "sticking it to the man" or whatever.

Even if ebooks cost fifty cents each everywhere, people will still copy, share, and pirate them, just because they can.

People who collect digital files for the sake of collecting them should be discounted from any negative impact on sales, but can't be discounted from any positive impact on sales that may arise from what they tell the rest of the world about them. Assuming your book is one of the 1% or so that they actually read.

[esecallum]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

People who collect digital files for the sake of collecting them should be discounted from any negative impact on sales, but can't be discounted from any positive impact on sales that may arise from what they tell the rest of the world about them. Assuming your book is one of the 1% or so that they actually read.

I KNOW THIS GUY WHO HAS DOWNLOADED TONS OF BOOK TORRENTS AND HAS ABOUT 500 GIGS OF BOOKS IN EVERY FORMAT!

just scrolling the book folders is exhausting

i estimate he must have more then a 10 million books.

but you know something ?

he freely admits he has not read a single one of those books!

first he can't make up his mind what to read and then because he has so much choice he becomes indecisive and ends up watching tv!

[GhostHawk]

And more to the point, he never would have spent a dime on any of those books.


He is "hording" because he can. In that case its nothing to do with ebooks or reading, those just happen to be what he's collecting. His way of "keeping score".