There's a better way to beat the ebook pirates

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

How about Star Trek's 1966 episode "The Man Trap" aka "The Incredible Salt Vampire"?

"Shambleau", C.L. Moore, 1933.

[elcreative]

Nice one, an under-rated classic... and a good reason to hunt down the rest of her work together with her husband's, Henry Kuttner...

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

"Shambleau", C.L. Moore, 1933.

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

"Shambleau", C.L. Moore, 1933.

I'll have to look that up.

[Anke Wehner]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

So the secret to making a living as a writer would be to write more?

That's what I keep hearing on blogs by and for writers: More books out means more chances of a given person coming across one of them, and when a given person likes one of your works, it becomes quite likely that they pick up whatever else you wrote, too. If you've got a bunch of books, it's easier to offer one for free as a loss-leader to get more people to give your work a try, too.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

That's what I keep hearing on blogs by and for writers: More books out means more chances of a given person coming across one of them, and when a given person likes one of your works, it becomes quite likely that they pick up whatever else you wrote, too. If you've got a bunch of books, it's easier to offer one for free as a loss-leader to get more people to give your work a try, too.

I get suspicious when an author is too prolific. The word "hack" comes to mind, if you're just churning out books without taking the time to get them right..

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I get suspicious when an author is too prolific. The word "hack" comes to mind, if you're just churning out books without taking the time to get them right..

Sometimes but not always. There's Glen Cook, the great Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey (but she fluctuates), Marion Zimmer Bradley, Moorcock... they have a huge backlist and most of what I've read by these authors was pretty decent, if not a potential favorite (I heart Andre Norton)

[NVash]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I've already written short stories and offered them for free. The feedback I got from them was slim. And topjars are notorious underperformers. By request of one patron, I added a tipjar, and got exactly one tip... from the one patron.

Think that could be because no one knew who you were then and even now no one knows? Could that be it? This is what Im saying, youve just added more proof. You gave away books for free and had a tip jar, only one person tipped you. Now it could that only one person out of who knows how many cared enough to tip you OR maybe, just maybe, no one even knew you existed. I think its the latter. This also adds to what I was saying about the pirates. If no one knows who you are and you arent taking time to advertise Id say these 'pirates' have complimented me. At least someone thinks youre good enough to pirate. Shows somebody is reading your books besides that one person who gave you a tip. Maybe you should consider some sort of advertising.

Seriously though, Ive said it before and Ill say it again. The pirates arent the problem. You can blame them all you want but what you just said about your free stories proves it. They have very little to do with this and are stealing very little, if anything, from you. No one knows a thing about you. Go out, advertise and get your name out. If you did some before, do some more.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Nice one, an under-rated classic... and a good reason to hunt down the rest of her work together with her husband's, Henry Kuttner...

Mimsy Were the Borogoves is my most favoritest short story of all time!

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by intheendofdays

Is this for all files or just for e-books?
How would this be managed?

I can see lots of people put up any random crap just to make some money from being downloaded.

You say that as if it's a bad thing ...

I don't know how it would be managed, that would be someone else's job. But it would be trivial to count the number of downloads of any individual file, and could easily be automated. The main thing would be to make sure that any money collected through taxes, ISP levy or whatever didn't just get stolen by some big corporation that kept it for themself. Which is what happened with the blank tape levy some countries had in the 70s.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by ApK

Found that wormhole, eh?

I have as much hard evidence to support specific numbers as you do (virtually none) but I think you're wrong in your 'majorities' and 'mosts.'

But to be clear, is it a matter of percentages for you? It would be a different matter if the percentages were different?

The "majority" statement comes from personal observation. A lot of pirate ebooks come in bundles of 3,000 vaguely related books (scifi, etc). It doesn't seem likely that everyone downloading those will read them all.

It's also based on experience of trading old radio shows on the internet. Years ago I got together with a few other people around the world and we made a definitive collection of one particular show, using the best possible sources and patching on any missing bits from lower quality recordings. But when you see that show for download now, it's always the original ones with missing beginnings/ends, low quality, some with the wrong episode names, etc. So it's unlikely any of the people who upload those actually listen to them or look for upgrades.

Back to unauthorised ebook downloading, I don't really think percentages matter that much. Some people buy after downloading, some people download instead of buying, some people collect files and never do anything with them. Which group has the highest percentage wouldn't really be possible to prove even if you wanted to. Even if people who download instead of buying were a high percentage it still hasn't stopped ebook sales from rising at a phenomenal rate.

I think any attempt to stamp out piracy is futile and a waste of time and money. I also think it is foolish to cut off the supply of people who might go on to buy something else just to spite the people who were never going to pay anyway.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

It's also based on experience of trading old radio shows on the internet. Years ago I got together with a few other people around the world and we made a definitive collection of one particular show, using the best possible sources and patching on any missing bits from lower quality recordings. But when you see that show for download now, it's always the original ones with missing beginnings/ends, low quality, some with the wrong episode names, etc. So it's unlikely any of the people who upload those actually listen to them or look for upgrades.

I used to be big in the MAME scene, and that group is about the only one I've seen that would update. There were many that had what we called "Pokerom", who just had to have them all, and most of them would keep up to date with the latest version. I think the reason for that though, was updates to MAME would make old ROMs no longer usable.

[NVash]

Would I be wrong if I asked why were still discussing piracy and why were not trying to figure out a way to help Mr. Jordan and possibly give him inspiration to write again?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Hi! If people could download book samples freely, as they can do currently at most sites, and then at the end of the sample also had the option of downloading the entire book for free, said book would have the payment button inside of it, I think piracy could be done away with.

Why would that work any better than tip jars? Maybe if the payment was made automatic upon reaching the last page? Then anyone who got bored with it before that point, or never got around to reading it, wouldn't have to pay.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Nice one, an under-rated classic... and a good reason to hunt down the rest of her work together with her husband's, Henry Kuttner...

If I recall correctly, it was her first sale. That makes her one of the very few (RAH and Lifeline being the only other that crosses my mind at the moment) to write a classic on the first try.

Her work and Kuttner's are both well worth reading, as are their "Lewis Padgett" collaborations. They're one of the reasons I dislike the modern trend toward massive wordiness, which echoes back to the 19th-century novels that I also dislike: someone like Moore could get more into one short story than some writers can pack into a novel.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I get suspicious when an author is too prolific. The word "hack" comes to mind, if you're just churning out books without taking the time to get them right..

Some people like hack writers

I can juggle 3 or 4 stories at a time and switch between then easily enough. When I get stuck on one I just move on to another, which means any spare time I have is pretty productive.