Maggie Stiefvater writes of her experience with piracy

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Odd occasion Rest your love on me by the Bee Gees. I have forgotten Side A.
Of course once cassettes came out that rather put singles out of business except in jukeboxes.
Didn't many people just record the songs they wanted to hear off the radio?

Not at all. Singles lasted almost as long as the dominance of CDs lasted. It gave bands a side chance to release compliations of B-sides and as mentioned, some band's B-sides are almost as good as their singles. I love The Cure's Join the Dots B-side compilation.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

...
Didn't many people just record the songs they wanted to hear off the radio?

Yes. That question went all the way to the Supreme Court here in the States. It established the idea of "time shifting."

[copyrite]

Originally Posted by darryl

True. But at a price which made the album appear good value, and with one song you probably hadn't heard of and likely didn't want. Though of course there was always the odd occasion where the "B" side was better than the "A",

I bought all of Bruce Springsteen's 45s for the "B" sides.

I don't buy free Kindle books like I used to... and after the first couple of times using Instafreebie and inadvertently getting signed up for newsletters I refuse to get any free books from that site!

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Here's my unsolicited advice to authors and publishers. For an author's first book, don't worry about piracy. But to reduce piracy against a publisher's successful authors, hire a few white hat hackers to deliberately upload damaged copies. Sometimes they can repeat chapters. Sometimes, skip pages. Randomly change the names of secondary characters. Some things, like adding insults into the faked books, should be off limits. But generally let a small anti-piracy staff use their imaginations to make the pirate reader's experience one of risked frustration..

They can't do this or the rights holder loses the right to sue. Essentially, their copyright becomes unenforceable because they are putting forth fake copies themselves. This came up back in the 90s involving a role playing game (wasn't D&D, but I can't remember which one).

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

What about music and movies? Ethical hacking to combat piracy won't work well with them because people listen to a song a great many times, and, generally, watch movies multiple times. So the relative cost of listening or watching once, to see if the download is genuine, is small. Flooding pirate sites with fakes should be uniquely effective with books because re-reading is so much less common than re-listening.

I'm thinking, based on the studies published in recent years, that people who listen to a song a great many times or a movie are the ones most likely to PURCHASE that song or movie because they want the real deal. A CD quality song is far superior to an MP3. An HD or DVD movie is so much easier to rip 3 years down the road when you can no longer get that movie on the torrenting sites and/or want to share the movie with your parents. Things disappear because storage space isn't endless and people stop seeding. Same thing goes with books, IMHO. If you really enjoy a book, even if you got a pirated copy originally, you are more likely to buy that book just to have your personal copy. Heck, most people get it in paper form then. Hey, I have done the same with library books/audios for years - after enjoying the library one, went out and bought the commercial version.

As to the original author, interesting experiment, but it is just as likely that given the opportunity to read the first four chapters, she also attracted some new readers as well as got back some readers who were disappointed with the series earlier, so didn't bother to buy book 3. Audible found they substantially increased sales by giving those 3-4 minute snippets of books so people could decide if they liked the reader, the tone of the book, etc. I noticed you can get larger samples of many ebooks now - I'm sure this affects sales as well.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Price isn't the be all, end all. But it is clearly a factor. In the end it is price and convenience.

In the early days of digital music, the publishers tried to recreate the existing model and it sucked. Napster didn't only succeed because it was free. It was also so much easier than getting music in any other way.

Nowadays, when I remember that other Alphaville song I want, I could probably scour the dark corners of the interwebs and risk a virus to get a free copy. But it's easier to go pay $1.29 at Amazon to get it. I wouldn't be as likely to pay $18.00 for a full album when there's only two songs I'm interested in. (Nowadays, the full album is $9.49. I'm talking about if we were still following the old model.)

Movies don't seem to understand this yet, that's why piracy is much more common there.

You could argue that book publishers figured it out and strangled the e-book market in the cradle rather than face the change.

Actually Napster when it started wasn't just the easiest way to get music, it was the only way to get music online. The initial iteration of Napster lasted from 1999 to 2001. iTunes didn't start until late 2001, which was also when the first iPod came out . I think that most digital music initially was where people ripped copies of songs off their cd's. I didn't switch to Apple until around 2006. Before then I used windows and linux and had a mp3 player.

If I recall correctly, Jobs insisted on specific price tiers rather than allow the publishers to set their own prices. It took a number of years before most of the publishers put their music on line at the iTunes store. Apple initially wanted to use the same model for ebooks.

[Tarana]

I disagree Pwalker. Napster was the easiest. There were other ways to get music. I think what the downloading in those days showed though was that people were sick and tired of buying albums only to find that the rest of the songs on the album sucked. I saved a ton of money being able to get snippets of each song when visiting Borders (similar to the current 2-3 chapters of a book).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Tarana

They can't do this or the rights holder loses the right to sue. Essentially, their copyright becomes unenforceable because they are putting forth fake copies themselves. This came up back in the 90s involving a role playing game (wasn't D&D, but I can't remember which one).

Nonsense. Of course, they can't sure for people copying the fake pirated copy they put out, but they can certainly go after people pirating the full version.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Actually Napster when it started wasn't just the easiest way to get music, it was the only way to get music online. The initial iteration of Napster lasted from 1999 to 2001. iTunes didn't start until late 2001, which was also when the first iPod came out . I think that most digital music initially was where people ripped copies of songs off their cd's. I didn't switch to Apple until around 2006. Before then I used windows and linux and had a mp3 player.

If I recall correctly, Jobs insisted on specific price tiers rather than allow the publishers to set their own prices. It took a number of years before most of the publishers put their music on line at the iTunes store. Apple initially wanted to use the same model for ebooks.

Napster didn't invent the MP3. There were ways prior to Napster to purchase digital music. They were just not very good. An industry is not going to embrace change unless they are forced to.

I was trying to look up an article on digital music prior to Napster, but my Google-fu just isn't up to it.

But here's a bit I did find on Wikipedia that illustrates my point (sorry for the long quote, but I believe it is on topic):

The major record labels eventually decided to launch their own online stores, allowing them more direct control over costs and pricing and more control over the presentation and packaging of songs and albums. Sony Music Entertainment's service did not do as well as was hoped. Many consumers felt the service was difficult to navigate and use. Sony's pricing of US$3.50 per song track also discouraged many early adopters of the service. Furthermore, as MP3 Newswire pointed out in its review of the service, users were actually only renting the tracks for that $3.50, because the patron did not own the audio file. After a certain point the files expired and could not be played again without repurchase. The service quickly failed.

Undaunted, the record industry tried again. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment teamed up with a service called Duet, later renamed pressplay. EMI, AOL/Time Warner and Bertelsmann Music Group teamed up with MusicNet. Again, both services struggled, hampered by high prices and heavy limitations on how downloaded files could be used once paid for. In the end, consumers chose instead to download music using illegal, free file sharing programs, which many consumers felt were more convenient and easier to use.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Napster didn't invent the MP3. There were ways prior to Napster to purchase digital music. They were just not very good. An industry is not going to embrace change unless they are forced to.

I was trying to look up an article on digital music prior to Napster, but my Google-fu just isn't up to it.

But here's a bit I did find on Wikipedia that illustrates my point (sorry for the long quote, but I believe it is on topic):

The major record labels eventually decided to launch their own online stores, allowing them more direct control over costs and pricing and more control over the presentation and packaging of songs and albums. Sony Music Entertainment's service did not do as well as was hoped. Many consumers felt the service was difficult to navigate and use. Sony's pricing of US$3.50 per song track also discouraged many early adopters of the service. Furthermore, as MP3 Newswire pointed out in its review of the service, users were actually only renting the tracks for that $3.50, because the patron did not own the audio file. After a certain point the files expired and could not be played again without repurchase. The service quickly failed.

Undaunted, the record industry tried again. Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment teamed up with a service called Duet, later renamed pressplay. EMI, AOL/Time Warner and Bertelsmann Music Group teamed up with MusicNet. Again, both services struggled, hampered by high prices and heavy limitations on how downloaded files could be used once paid for. In the end, consumers chose instead to download music using illegal, free file sharing programs, which many consumers felt were more convenient and easier to use.

Duet came out in 2002, so Napster was already toast by then.

Here is an article that I found by googling "digital music history napster"

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/artic...l-music/904234

-mp3 was invented in 1991.
-mp3.com was founded in 1997 (allowed users to access their music online if they had a "genuine copyright version" [kind of sounds like Apple Music now]
-eMusic was founded in 1998 and is called the first website to offer MP3 for download as well as a subscription service.
-Napster started in June 1999 by Shawn Fanning.

I had forgotten about mp3.com. Never heard of eMusic. MP3.com was shutdown in 2000, while Napster was shutdown in 2001.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Of course once cassettes came out that rather put singles out of business except in jukeboxes.

I remember cassette singles. I don't remember how popular they were (or weren't) or how long they lasted. I actually like buying albums and getting more songs from favorite artists, so I only ever bought singles for groups I normally didn't like their music but happened to like one song.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I remember cassette singles. I don't remember how popular they were (or weren't) or how long they lasted. I actually like buying albums and getting more songs from favorite artists, so I only ever bought singles for groups I normally didn't like their music but happened to like one song.

But then with the singles you would get songs that weren't on the album. At least from the '80's onward. Before then I think it was usually another song from the album and before that the singles would be songs that weren't on the album at all.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Odd occasion Rest your love on me by the Bee Gees. I have forgotten Side A.

"Too Much Heaven".

[ZodWallop]

Another article about this, this time by The Guardian: 'We're told to be grateful we even have readers': pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series

Even though I quibbled with the author's methods, I can see that piracy can be one of the factors impacting future books in a series. On the other hand, author Jeremy Robinson also mentioned that he will stop writing series, and piracy wasn't the problem.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Even though I quibbled with the author's methods, I can see that piracy can be one of the factors impacting future books in a series. On the other hand, author Jeremy Robinson also mentioned that he will stop writing series, and piracy wasn't the problem.

I'm not the target market for this kind of book, but offhand I can think of two reasons for tanking series sales.

The first is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Authors liked series because the books were pre-sold, but readers got tired of serious that just kept spinning their wheels and got nowhere, or worse, never concluded. They got wary; they won't invest in a series without some assurance that the series will both maintain the pace and conclude.

And the flip side of pre-sold is that any series will lose readers by attrition for various reasons, but books subsequent to the first won't add readers. It's built-in obsolescence.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm not the target market for this kind of book, but offhand I can think of two reasons for tanking series sales.

The first is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Authors liked series because the books were pre-sold, but readers got tired of serious that just kept spinning their wheels and got nowhere, or worse, never concluded. They got wary; they won't invest in a series without some assurance that the series will both maintain the pace and conclude.

And the flip side of pre-sold is that any series will lose readers by attrition for various reasons, but books subsequent to the first won't add readers. It's built-in obsolescence.

Or the author spends 1/3 of the book repeating from the previous books.
Not bad if the books come out years apart, horrible if the books are coming out every three months.