Gaiman on Copyright

[OtterBooks]

I went to a torrent site to discover new books I hadn't heard of. I was hoping for a "Discover these new titles!" section, or "If you like this, you may like this!" To my dismay, I was merely presented with a search field. What? How am I supposed to discover new titles this way? Answer: I can't, and neither does anyone else. I guess I need to already know what I want. Looks like Gaiman got cause/effect backwards.

I just bought one of his books, actually. I hear good things.

[Fayth]

Well, you can easily go to a category, in this case ebooks, and then sort by the most popular, and then choose which one you want based on descriptions... Don't know what place you went to but good torrent sites have search filters.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But presumably not very likely for someone who has never heard of you? Think of it like the difference between selling your book on Amazon and selling it on your own site. Which would be most likely to get you new readers?

People browse pirate sites the same way they browse Amazon, and download anything that looks vaguely interesting. In most cases that will be the end of it, but some of them will be looked at, and then they will choose one of those to read. The odds against the person who chooses to read your book stumbling across you in any other way are pretty remote.

I haven't been to a pirate site, so I don't know how they're set up. But one of the posters further down indicated torrent, a popular one, doesn't have much of a browse feature.

There will always be people making money from you. The only way to avoid that is to never publish your writing. Like with any service, you need to weigh the benefits against the cost. Amazon brings you more buyers but takes 30-70% of your income. Pirate sites bring you more readers but no immediate income from those readers.

Let me be more specific, people I didn't contract with making money off of me. I've got no problem with Amazon getting their cut because they offer me a service of value. Bob's House of Pirated Goods on the other hand may or may not provide value to me. That's still up in the air.

If they download your book they might read it. If they read it they might like it. If they like it they might tell other people about it (through reviews, etc). If they like it a lot they will buy your next book as soon as it comes out because they won't want to wait for the pirate edition.

Or they may dislike it and write bad reviews, where not only do I not make any money on them, but they then damage my ability to sell to others. They may buy my next book, or go for the pirated version. They may tell their friends, but they'll also probably give their friends the pirated version.

As I said, I'm not clinging to the idea that money can't be made this way. That's why I'm giving copies of my book away. But there's a lot of ifs there.

With most services you would weigh that against the benefits you would gain from letting them take their cut. With piracy the choice of whether to participate is taken away from you, so it basically comes down to a choice between waving your fist or ignoring it and hoping for the best. You can have your book removed from most of those sites, or you can have Google remove links to it when people search for your name, but that's pretty much the extent of your powers.

Right now I'm not sweating it. Nor do I intend to sweat it. The time and effort necessary to stop the tide is not worth it to me. But that doesn't mean I'm thrilled when pirate sites make money off of my work.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by Fayth

Well, you can easily go to a category, in this case ebooks, and then sort by the most popular, and then choose which one you want based on descriptions... Don't know what place you went to but good torrent sites have search filters.

Something you can do much better on a retail site. Torrent sites are generally not a shopping experience. You go there with something already in mind.

I don't think organized pirating is a big deal, but let's be honest about cause and effect, here. Like any black market, it is the result of demand, not the creator of it. Some word of mouth may be created, as it is when anything is consumed.

And Gaiman's claim that nobody who downloaded his book would have bought it is all kinds of foolish imo, not only in its absoluteness, but in its ignorance of the level of commitment involved in deciding to read a book.

The fact that Gaiman is a popular writer with an already established reputation, with books that often get headline visibility on retail sites viewable worldwide, makes his assertions even more naive.

[Fayth]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

Something you can do much better on a retail site. Torrent sites are generally not a shopping experience. You go there with something already in mind.

I'm not sure you're right about that. I have friends who pirate games, and they typically do exactly what I described, only going into the video game category instead. They don't keep up with new releases and only know about games when they start seeing them on their favorite torrent site's list. I imagine there are plenty of book torrenters who do the same. The only way it is worse than a retail site is because you can't sort by genre.

I'm not saying Gaiman's blanket statement is correct. I'm of the opinion that almost all blanket statements are usually incorrect, but to say that someone can't discover new titles on a torrent site is untrue.

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

But that doesn't mean I'm thrilled when pirate sites make money off of my work.

As far as I know, torrent sites work on ads and donations. The sites don't exercise control over the content (unless they get a take down notice), the users are the ones uploading.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

Or they may dislike it and write bad reviews, where not only do I not make any money on them, but they then damage my ability to sell to others.

They would be more likely to write bad reviews if they paid for it. If you didn't like something you got for free you wouldn't bother finishing it you would just go onto something else instead. Whereas if you paid for it you would be more likely to persevere with it in the hope that it would get better. If it didn't, then you would be angry at wasting your time and money.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Fayth

The only way it is worse than a retail site is because you can't sort by genre.
.

On some of them you can ...

The one I would have thought would be the first port of call certainly does. Others will use tags a bit like in the download section for this site, so you could search for the tag.

[OtterBooks]

I'm not sure you're right about that. I have friends who pirate games, and they typically do exactly what I described, only going into the video game category instead. They don't keep up with new releases and only know about games when they start seeing them on their favorite torrent site's list. I imagine there are plenty of book torrenters who do the same. The only way it is worse than a retail site is because you can't sort by genre.

You can go to numerous retail sites, or gaming review sites, and not only search by genre but read reviews (or even watch video reviews), see screenshots, detailed explanation of the game, and often even video trailers/gameplay. I'd say that is a lot more than just being able to search by genre, and it's as easy as typing a url in a different tab. When you consider the time to download and install a modern game (including possible troubleshooting of a cracked version), and the percentage of games that are terrible, you'd be nuts to blindly pick one from a list of torrents.

I seriously doubt many people use the torrent site as part of the book selection process unless they are a masochist, have extremely low standards for reading, or can't figure out how to open Amazon in a different tab and cut/paste a title.

I think the impact of torrent sites is overblown, to be honest. Regarding games, I feel that developers waste their time with oppressive DRM schemes. However, people make a lot of dishonest arguments that don't pass the laugh test, imo. Few torrent users are acting out of economic hardship or exercising political/philosophical beliefs. It's just people getting free stuff, because free is better than not free. Fine by me, but call it for what it is.

[dallas]

Today publishers complain about piracy, in a decade you'll be able to subscribe to an ebook service* that allows you to read an unlimited number of titles a month from a massive selection of ebooks for $14.95 a month.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by dallas

Today publishers complain about piracy, in a decade you'll be able to subscribe to an ebook service* that allows you to read an unlimited number of titles a month from a massive selection of ebooks for $14.95 a month.

None of which you will ever own (not that you actually own current commercial ebooks), you will need to read them through an internet connection, and titles will be added and taken away at a whim. A bit like Marvel's digital comics subscription model, or what I'm guessing is Google's ultimate aim.

I don't think it will be that cheap though. To be worthwile to publishers it would need to be priced higher than the average person would spend on books if they chose their own. 14.99 would only really cover the cost of 3 books, whereas most people with ebook readers would average at least one book per week.