ebook piracy numbers

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by saoir

That is quite honestly the silliest comment I have seen in this wider eBook debate.

Perhaps you could say why you disagree, rather than merely dismissing it as "silly"? Do you live in a large house where storage space for books is not a concern? I don't, and the fact that e-books need no physical storage space is an enormous benefit for me, and is unquestionably a feature which adds value.

[ficbot]

Yes, it adds value. But then that value is taken away by the fact that you cannot legally share or sell an ebook as you can with a paper back, so it pretty much comes out as a wash. I would be fine with the concept that an ebook is not yours to do with as you please and is merely a rental if they were charging rental prices. But if they insist on charging full, retail, paper price for something that I can't do with as I please, then I think I am justified in feeling a little ripped off. You want it to be an ephemeral rental, you need to charge ephemeral rental prices...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Yes, it adds value. But then that value is taken away by the fact that you cannot legally share or sell an ebook as you can with a paper back, so it pretty much comes out as a wash.

I never share or sell my books, so for me, that is not an issue. I appreciate, however, that it is for some.

The previous poster doubted my view that e-books were generally cheaper than paper books, so I've just done some checking on Amazon, which is where I generally buy my e-books. The books I buy are mainly crime fiction, and, in every case I checked, the e-book was cheaper than the cheapest paperback edition:

Eg:
Agatha Christie: e-book £3.54, paperback £4.26
Colin Dexter: e-book £4.27, paperback £4.49
Ian Rankin: e-book £4.66, paperback £4.99

and that's despite the fact that the price of the e-book includes 17.5% VAT, whereas the paper book is not subject to VAT.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I never share or sell my books, so for me, that is not an issue. I appreciate, however, that it is for some.

The previous poster doubted my view that e-books were generally cheaper than paper books, so I've just done some checking on Amazon, which is where I generally buy my e-books. The books I buy are mainly crime fiction, and, in every case I checked, the e-book was cheaper than the cheapest paperback edition:

Eg:
Agatha Christie: e-book £3.54, paperback £4.26
Colin Dexter: e-book £4.27, paperback £4.49
Ian Rankin: e-book £4.66, paperback £4.99

and that's despite the fact that the price of the e-book includes 17.5% VAT, whereas the paper book is not subject to VAT.

Problem is, that is dependent on where you live.

Agatha Christie: e-book: $7,81, MMP: $6,99
Colin Dexter: e-book: $9,53, MMP: $7,99
Ian Rankin: e-book: $12,44, paperback: $10,19

I'm not allowed to buy in Amazon.co.uk, so these are Amazon.com prices.

So, my view is that ebooks are generally more expensive than paper books... And that is everywhere I've looked so far, also in Dutch stores.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Problem is, that is dependent on where you live.

Agatha Christie: e-book: $7,81, MMP: $6,99
Colin Dexter: e-book: $9,53, MMP: $7,99
Ian Rankin: e-book: $12,44, paperback: $10,19

I'm not allowed to buy in Amazon.co.uk, so these are Amazon.com prices.

So, my view is that ebooks are generally more expensive than paper books... And that is everywhere I've looked so far, also in Dutch stores.

Yes, indeed. That's why I said that it was "my personal experience". I am well aware of the fact that ebooks are more expensive in some countries than they are in the UK. I was just a little annoyed by the fact that the previous poster appeared to think that I was not telling the truth. It is a fact that, for UK buyers, Amazon always seem to set the ebook price below that of the cheapest paperback edition.

[mike_bike_kite]

The ebook piracy will always be there while ebook prices are so high and pirated copies are so easily available. Manufacturers realise this otherwise they wouldn't sell the devices with 4GB of storage. Filling such a device with legal books would cost approx $28000. That's not going to happen and even downloading the complete works of Shakespear and Dickens isn't going to alter that price much. It's the same story with mp3 players - it costs a similar amount to fill an old ipod with music.

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite

The ebook piracy will always be there while ebook prices are so high and pirated copies are so easily available. Manufacturers realise this otherwise they wouldn't sell the devices with 4GB of storage. Filling such a device with legal books would cost approx $28000. That's not going to happen and even downloading the complete works of Shakespear and Dickens isn't going to alter that price much. It's the same story with mp3 players - it costs a similar amount to fill an old ipod with music.

In my view, manufacturers provide storage to keep up with other devices - to make the spec. look good. I doubt that many people fill their readers (though a few will of course). I don't think that it's to accommodate pirated books.

With MP3 players, it's different, because lots of people have large music collections. I have over 100GB, so would like a player with 200GB to provide growth room. Alas, I've only been able to get 64GB in solid state - but this will change. All my music is ripped from CDs that I've bought - perhaps 1000 albums. At, say, £5 each, that's only £5000 over 20 years - hardly an impractical level of spending.

My point is that I don't think that reader storage is there for pirated books, and the MP3 storage is legitimately large and needs, for me at least, to be larger.

[saoir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Perhaps you could say why you disagree, rather than merely dismissing it as "silly"? Do you live in a large house where storage space for books is not a concern? I don't, and the fact that e-books need no physical storage space is an enormous benefit for me, and is unquestionably a feature which adds value.

I assumed that the reason was self evident. evidently not.

The arguments that such characteristics of eBooks is 'added value' does not stack up imho. Firstly I have to buy a device just to read them costing a substantial amount. Secondly I cannot share them with my wife or son. Thirdly I don't have the same security of ownership after seeing how Amazon reached out not so long ago and erased books directly from people's readers. Fourthly I as a reader resent the Publisher pocketing substantially higher profits for substantially less costs, all at my expense. So no I don't see it as added value at all.

[Penforhire]

I agree it is nice not to have to find a place to store my e-books or otherwise dispose of them (sell, donate) when I'm done. But I don't see that as adding value in a price sense.

E-books are generally overpriced in my opinion. But price is always an opinion. Someone who always buys hardcovers will be happy with current e-book prices. I tended to buy paperbacks on discount so I'm more price sensitive.

[speakingtohe]

I think that publishers are missing the boat in many areas.
Lots of tried and true marketing techniques that could be appled to ebooks.
Buy one get one free, subscriptions like the book clubs where you buy 3 and get x at a very cheap price, family /group licenses etc. These and many more have often been applied on pbooks in the past. Perhaps these offers are out there and I am just not aware of them?

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite

The ebook piracy will always be there while ebook prices are so high and pirated copies are so easily available. Manufacturers realise this otherwise they wouldn't sell the devices with 4GB of storage. Filling such a device with legal books would cost approx $28000. That's not going to happen and even downloading the complete works of Shakespear and Dickens isn't going to alter that price much. It's the same story with mp3 players - it costs a similar amount to fill an old ipod with music.

That's just plainly wrong. I just measured the storage of my ebooks on my MacBook: it is 2GB. I haven't paid more than $200 for it and they are all legal. And I don't have the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens, just one or two of each. And they aren't all old works either. There are more ways to legally acquire ebooks than buying overpriced items.

[mike_bike_kite]

Originally Posted by pietvo

That's just plainly wrong. I just measured the storage of my ebooks on my MacBook: it is 2GB. I haven't paid more than $200 for it and they are all legal. And I don't have the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens, just one or two of each. And they aren't all old works either. There are more ways to legally acquire ebooks than buying overpriced items.

The average size of an ebook is somewhere between 300K and 1MB (say 0.5MB to make maths easy). Your 2GB would equate to approx 4000 books. This means you paid $0.05 on average for each of your books. Obviously if you just read pre 1920's literature or modern SciFi / Romance novels from mostly unknown authors then you can get your books for free and this would reduce the total cost considerably. If you want to read anything approaching a best seller then the cost per ebook is going to be way higher than $0.05.

PDF files containing lots of images will be larger than my average figure above but these aren't typical of what's on most ereaders. I guess if you have lots of graphic novels then that would fill 2GB quite quickly. Most books however are TXT, EPUB or MOBI and these are reasonably small. I can't find any details on an average price for a modern ebook but $7 seems close. So to fill your 2GB with 4000 books, at $7 each, it comes to around $28000.

I'm generalising a lot and there will always be exceptions - you're obviously an exception

[saoir]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I think that publishers are missing the boat in many areas.
Lots of tried and true marketing techniques that could be appled to ebooks.
Buy one get one free, subscriptions like the book clubs where you buy 3 and get x at a very cheap price, family /group licenses etc. These and many more have often been applied on pbooks in the past. Perhaps these offers are out there and I am just not aware of them?

I agree with you fully. What we have to remember here is the the major publishers are not in that kind of mode yet. They are playing catch up after ignoring all the signs for years of the potential of eBooks. They see a group of early well off adopters and are doing their best to screw every last cent from them while it lasts in the idiotic short termist way they do. They appear to have no clue or concern for about how to grow the market because their focus is so tightly concentrated on screwing the last dime. In a year or so the market will probably shake out, the monopolies that dominate right will start to be broken up and the smart publishers/agents with new business models will start growing the market - especially when eReaders drop down to reasonable prices and offered in package deals.

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite

The average size of an ebook is somewhere between 300K and 1MB (say 0.5MB to make maths easy). Your 2GB would equate to approx 4000 books. This means you paid $0.05 on average for each of your books. Obviously if you just read pre 1920's literature or modern SciFi / Romance novels from mostly unknown authors then you can get your books for free and this would reduce the total cost considerably. If you want to read anything approaching a best seller then the cost per ebook is going to be way higher than $0.05.

PDF files containing lots of images will be larger than my average figure above but these aren't typical of what's on most ereaders. I guess if you have lots of graphic novels then that would fill 2GB quite quickly. Most books however are TXT, EPUB or MOBI and these are reasonably small. I can't find any details on an average price for a modern ebook but $7 seems close. So to fill your 2GB with 4000 books, at $7 each, it comes to around $28000.

I'm generalising a lot and there will always be exceptions - you're obviously an exception

I rather think that the $28000 price would be an exception.
But the point here is not the price of ebooks but how reasonable the amount of memory in an ereader is. I do have a couple of ebooks with images which grows the size considerably. I also have quite a number of newspaper issues, which come at approx. 1.5MB each. These were also offered as a trial subscription, otherwise I would have spent something like €200 more. I also have several ebooks that were offered free for a limited time, including bestselling authors like Tess Gerritsen, Paolo Coelho, Steve Berry and Larry Niven, a few (also free) audiobooks which come at 80MB each.

So my point is, it is not difficult to fill 2GB without downloading illegal stuff and without spending an extreme amount of money.

[HarryT]

If you're talking about audiobooks it's very easy indeed to fill up a lot of space. An audiobook version of a large novel can easily top 1GB in size. Audiobooks and radio shows are the primary use of my 160GB iPod Classic.