Paul Coelho on Piracy and Publishing

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by taosaur

The way ebooks are shared, more than any other media, really lends itself to exposing people to new authors. Because the files are small, they are often bundled by the hundreds or thousands, often by subject or genre. A person who has no clue who you are has now seen your name and the name of your book alongside their favorite authors--you are no longer unknown to them. They also have some sampling of your work on hand. If they read it and like it, your audience has grown by one. The odds of them spending money on your work--possibly even the same book in another format or as a gift--have just risen from zero to pretty darn likely

Readers who liked this also liked... It's usually at the end of a book though, past the weird last couple pages of author description and index that I never really get to anyway. I suppose a nicely formatted weekly/monthly/yearly epub describing what I have read recently with some related suggestions would be nice. I know there are some decent recommendation algorithms out there, are they patented or something?

[5thWiggle]

Free book give-aways, IMO, are much more likely to lessen obscurity than a file name buried in a multi-megabyte torrent of "1000s of authours i pirated for the lulz" (we're talking new authours here, not "not available as e-book, backlist, or out of print established authours).

If someone is downloading a 1000 book torrent, they are probably doing it to get the couple of books they already know about - the rest of the books come along for the ride and languish on the downloader's hard drive until Mr/Ms Pirate decides to read a thousand books! How long does it take to get to our Unknown Authour? Months? Years? More likely, the unwanted files are deleted as dross unless Mr/Ms Pirate is a file hoarder.

In the unlikely event that Mr/Ms Pirate is targeting our Unknown Authour's book, how did he/she hear about it? Right! Word of mouth, blog entries, Mobile Read, etc. In which case, Unknown Authour is no longer Unknown Authour, but now Semifamous Pirated Authour! Promotion, not piracy, lessens obscurity.

Give me free books, cause I'm a greedy bastard and the first thing I type into that search box is the word "free". I promise that if I like it, I'll buy others. Give large samples - large enough to hook me, cause three pages, most of which are a dedication to your cat, aren't going to cut it. Tell me about yourself on your authour's page, make yourself more human to me (or, in the case of SF authours, more alien ). But you must also promote! Tell the world about your book and why the should read it. Get on review sites, advertise on MR. Tell us you're there, or your only sale will be to your mother.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by sbroome

The part that makes piracy and obscurity mutually exclusive as threats to an author is wrong.

It might be wrong if it were present in the statement. The point is that obscurity is a greater and definitely real threat that we can all agree upon, whereas any threat posed by piracy is a matter of debate, and at least somewhat balanced by piracy's capacity to grow your audience, thereby relieving obscurity. The subtext is that obscurity also has the capacity to relieve you of the "threat" of piracy, but nothing is gained from such relief. It's an inverse relationship, which only becomes exclusive if one is either so totally pirated or so totally obscure that the other side of the equation drops to zero.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by taosaur

Neil Young: Piracy Is The New Radio http://gizmodo.com/5881167/neil-youn...-the-new-radio



That's penny wise and pound foolish. New authors more than anyone need the maximum possible exposure. If more authors were file-sharing their own works with a respectful introduction suggesting how readers can compensate them, the returns would be far greater than alienating potential readers and rationalizing one's lack of success by tilting at the windmill of lost sales because their work sits unread in a torrent of 3000 others.

How spamming would help them reach users? They are competing with pirate best-sellers and well-known public domain classics.

is file sharing any better than simply publishing on a blog and slowly forming a following audience? You can still make a few bucks by ads in a blog from enough readers eager to read the next chapter of a serialized story...

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by taosaur

It might be wrong if it were present in the statement. The point is that obscurity is a greater and definitely real threat that we can all agree upon, whereas any threat posed by piracy is a matter of debate, and at least somewhat balanced by piracy's capacity to grow your audience, thereby relieving obscurity. The subtext is that obscurity also has the capacity to relieve you of the "threat" of piracy, but nothing is gained from such relief. It's an inverse relationship, which only becomes exclusive if one is either so totally pirated or so totally obscure that the other side of the equation drops to zero.

This is a reasonable argument, but it really only holds for obscure authors.
Stephen King, or James Patterson, or P.D. James, or Stieg Larsson, don't suffer from obscurity, and thus there aren't really any upsides to piracy for them.

An obscure author, on the other hand, *may* benefit from piracy, although I think the benefits are, realistically, quite overstated. Since having your book hidden away on the darknet in a file with 2,000 other books isn't really doing a lot to combat obscurity either, particularly since someone probably only downloaded that file because they knew it had "11-22-63" in it.

Other kinds of piracy are more beneficial. If you have a non-DRM'd book and a reader e-mails a copy of it to a friend with the suggestion that they read this great book, the new reader may well buy the next book by this author. And I see this kind of "retail" piracy having the most impact, since the book comes with a recommendation from someone you already know. I have a hard time seeing "wholesale" piracy having anything near the same effect.

Note that piracy may work different for different media. At 3 minutes a song, you can listen to a hundred of song a day without much effort - this seems much more likely to help with the obscurity issue. As long as people aren't just downloading songs they already know...which is, I think, what most people do.

And I don't see movies being helped by piracy much at all, as movies tend not to be as obscure as other media in the first place, and there tend to be not as many tie in opportunities, either.

TL;DR:

Obscurity is a problem for new authors, but I'm not sure that piracy helps make unknown authors less obscure.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

An obscure author, on the other hand, *may* benefit from piracy, although I think the benefits are, realistically, quite overstated. Since having your book hidden away on the darknet in a file with 2,000 other books isn't really doing a lot to combat obscurity either, particularly since someone probably only downloaded that file because they knew it had "11-22-63" in it.

What realistically is the harm done to the obscure author? If his/her book stays hidden with other few thousand books and never gets read, no lost revenue. And who can realistically read 2000 books without spending years and years of reading (and that is if you read ALOT). So it is just a huge library. If that one obscure author has a real nice cover, or name, or something, it might stand out, get noticed (to that person looking through it), and will get read. And quite possible someone that looked for unknown authors and reads them that are inside thousands of other, possibly already more popular, then that author has a new fan. If you downloaded that huge library for the sole purpose of having different books available (again you cannot read em all anyway) then you might end up buying the, say, 10 books you really liked.

[cjr72]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

This is a reasonable argument, but it really only holds for obscure authors.
Stephen King, or James Patterson, or P.D. James, or Stieg Larsson, don't suffer from obscurity, and thus there aren't really any upsides to piracy for them.

Well known author Neil Gaiman:

"Then I started to notice that two things that seemed much more significant. One of which was that places where I was being pirated -- particularly Russia (where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading it out into the world) I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. And then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia it would sell more and more copies."

[Ninjalawyer]

Well, clear Neil Gaiman is a filthy pirate, hates copyright and just wants to get everything for free! He's exactly the reason my cliched scifi stories, which frequently involve lesbian threesomes and have covers carefully designed in MSPaint, aren't selling! Thanks for stealing the bread from my baby's mouth, asshole.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by cjr72

Well known author Neil Gaiman:

This is what's called cherry picking a quote. Neil Gaiman may believe that piracy helps sales- many well known authors disagree. Certainly Mr. Gaiman 's publisher disagrees-and it is they, not Mr. Gaiman, who would have detailed knowledge of his sales figures
In any case, both of these authors have a perfect right to give away their works if they want- that's why its called COPYRIGHT . It doesn't mean that there is any sanction for pirating any other author's work.

[cjr72]

Originally Posted by stonetools

This is what's called cherry picking a quote. Neil Gaiman may believe that piracy helps sales- many well known authors disagree. Certainly Mr. Gaiman 's publisher disagrees

I'm sure the publishers would disagree but history shows that the content industry is often spectacularly wrong in that regard. Google VCR and the Boston Strangler.

Originally Posted by stonetools

and it is [the publishers], not Mr. Gaiman, who would have detailed knowledge of his sales figures

Call me naive but I don't find it hard to believe that Neil Gaiman has sufficient knowledge of sales figures for books authored by Neil Gaiman.

Originally Posted by stonetools

In any case, both of these authors have a perfect right to give away their works if they want- that's why its called COPYRIGHT . It doesn't mean that there is any sanction for pirating any other author's work.

Point missed entirely. It's that works that can be found for free (sanctioned or not) does not necessarily preclude healthy growth in sales as Neil Gaiman found out.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by stonetools

In any case, both of these authors have a perfect right to give away their works if they want- that's why its called COPYRIGHT . It doesn't mean that there is any sanction for pirating any other author's work.

You're ignoring what Gaiman actually said so that you can trot out a talking point. He's not discussing whether he likes or dislikes piracy, or whether he approves or disapproves of people pirating his own works. He's simply looking at the real effects.

[stonetools]

[QUOTE=cjr72;1954024]I'm sure the publishers would disagree but history shows that the content industry is often spectacularly wrong in that regard. Google VCR and the Boston Strangler.



Call me naive but I don't find it hard to believe that Neil Gaiman has sufficient knowledge of sales figures for books authored by Neil Gaiman.



Point missed entirely. It's that works that can be found for free (sanctioned or not) does not necessarily preclude healthy growth in sales as Neil Gaiman found out.[

He may have done even better if he simply released his book in Russia through the normal channels. We just don't know at this point. Color me skeptical about piracy being a better way to distribute books than going through a publisher.

[stonetools]

G

Originally Posted by taosaur

You're ignoring what Gaiman actually said so that you can trot out a talking point. He's not discussing whether he likes or dislikes piracy, or whether he approves or disapproves of people pirating his own works. He's simply looking at the real effects.

It's a nice anecdote. Ain't data, though.
Gotta balance that against authors who believe that they lost sales through piracy . They don't get quoted on this website, since the prevailing meme here is that piracy is OK, but they are out there.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Color me skeptical about piracy being a better way to distribute books than going through a publisher.

Originally Posted by stonetools

the prevailing meme here is that piracy is OK

You're still arguing against points that no one is making.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by stonetools

G

It's a nice anecdote. Ain't data, though.
Gotta balance that against authors who believe that they lost sales through piracy . They don't get quoted on this website, since the prevailing meme here is that piracy is OK, but they are out there.

I would have liked to read about the author you found that thinks he lost sales through piracy. Maybe you find the link you originally wanted to put in before editing. And I myself probably come over as someone that supports pirating by what I post. I am not offended beeing called a pirate, because I am. I just don't see that I am attacking a certain author personally. Reading at the rate I am reading is not unaffordable for me if I only had to pay for what I read. Finding a book that I like is a different story.

On the other hand - in the last batch of bluray disk that I bought last week was a movie called Skyline you might have heard about. That was a complete waste of money. The movie itself was beautiful made, nice cg-fx and all - but the story especially the end just plain aweful and disappointing. My wife and me suffered through the thing in the hope it would get better - but it didn't.

I am just afraid that would happen with a book - takes so much longer to consume it. And if it is bad do you just read it in the hope that it will get better?