Do some publishers have any idea?

[lumpynose]

This discussion reminds me about a book I read, first published I think as Make room, make room! and later republished as A is for anything. It was about how scientists had created a machine that could duplicate anything, even humans, and the machine itself so that everyone could do it, and the effect it had on society. When digital photography came about, and then MP3s I thought to myself, hmm, we're entering the territory of A is for anything with these things.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by barryem

Not doing it is selfish and immoral.

It occurs to me that if digital media forces us to become selfish and immoral and mean spirited than maybe we should do away with it.

Now THAT'S some hardcore hogwash, right there.

Just how far and wide am I required to search in order to find someone who would WANT to read the books I buy so that I can share with them to avoid being considered selfish and immoral? 'Cause I would have to swing a really long stick to hit someone around me who even reads books; let anyone who has any interest in the books I buy/read.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by barryem

It occurs to me that if digital media forces us to become selfish and immoral and mean spirited than maybe we should do away with it. Or maybe we should find ways not to let it make us small and mean.

Barry

I'm of the opinion that at some point publishers will begin to go the same way as video and music - we'll all just subscribe to a service that provides unlimited access to large libraries of books. I'm pretty sure that Kindle unlimited is sort of a test of that idea already. It's clear to me that media providers in general are highly interested in consumers no longer believing that we own the media that we buy/rent/license, so that we can pay monthly fees that for most users will be more than they would have spent on the media anyway.

[Deskisamess]

Loaning our friends and families books we've paid for is a good thing. It may or may not be illegal. It may or may not be a contract violation. It may or may not be a sin. It's certainly the decent thing to do. Not doing it is selfish and immoral.

Really? That is awfully absolute. I'm under no moral compulsion to loan anything I've purchased, to a friend or family member. If the discussion was about a bike, or lawn mower, or car, would you feel the same way?

Certainly we should help family or friends when able to do so. To not ignore hunger, or a true need.

But saying to not loan my books is selfish and immoral? Nonsense.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

The copyright laws, or whatever laws they are, can sometimes be surprising. Another example from the early mp3 days was an article I heard on the radio. From what I understood them saying, you can't buy a CD, for example, and play it in your restaurant as background music for the customers. Unless you arrange to pay royalties to the people who manage them (BMI, RIAA, I think). So every time the radio plays a song, they're paying royalties; it might only be a penny per play, but they're paying it. In these cases there is money being made by the party playing the music, which is part of the reason they're playing the music. Another example they mentioned was a summer camp that bought some sheet music and they were using it for the kids to sing the songs around a camp fire. According to what I heard they were liable for the royalties since the camp wasn't free/nonprofit.

Royalties are related to copyright but the point is that it's about the artist being compensated for their work. But what we see is the "greedy" business that's collecting the money, and they typically take a huge percentage in comparison to what the artist ends up getting.

Please see my earlier post about the publisher's share, versus the artists'. The artist took the time to create the story, the book, the song, the artwork, yes--but it's the publisher, the music producer, the guy who pays the recording studio, who pays thousands for layout, etc. that risks the money to produce that piece of art for public consumption. Self-publishing is nothing more than authors taking those risks THEMSELVES, which entitles them to the publisher's share of the profits.

Same with "garage bands" that self-produce their music by playing crappy gigs to get studio time; record their own albums, distribute them, market them via YouTube, etc.

Anytime an artist does all the heavy lifting himself, then he is perfectly entitled to that lion's share of the proceeds. But when they ask someone else to invest in them, to take those risks;to pay them an advance, pre-publication and foot the bills for an editor, layout, eBook production, cover design and marketing--then yes, that author also agrees that the publisher gets to keep the lion's share of the money, particularly until the book earns out. That's simply business and standard investments--if you want a bigger reward, you take a bigger risk. If you want someone else to take the risk, while you don't, that gets you a much smaller percentage of the ups.

There's not one damned thing "greedy" about it. Fundamental risk-reward.

Hitch

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by Hitch

There's not one damned thing "greedy" about it. Fundamental risk-reward.

I agree, that's why I put that word in quotes.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Self-publishing is nothing more than authors taking those risks THEMSELVES, which entitles them to the publisher's share of the profits.

Hitch

That is an extremely good summary of the situation.

In a traditional publishing deal, the author brings to the table the creative work. The publisher in effect offers a bundle of services in return for the right to publish the work and to share in the profits. Some money is advanced to the author against future royalties, but is not usually recoverable by the Publisher if no such royalties materialise. Royalty rates vary but as I understand it are usually around 15% for printed books and 25% for ebooks. So in such a deal the publisher takes the lion's share of the sales revenue but essentially takes all of the business risks and in addition to the advance to the author pays all of the expenses (eg; editing, cover art, layout, formatting, printing and distribution, etc).

Amazon's KDP, in contrast, takes only 25% in return for distributing an e-book electronically. The author takes responsibility for everything else. Most books are e-books only though pod versions are sometimes made available. Amazon provides only distribution by way of its online store, with all of the other services bundled by a traditional publisher paid for by the author. Some KDP authors choose not to pay for such services, and publish their books on KDP as is. It usually shows. The better self-published authors pay independent contractors for some or all of these services. The quality of these services is variable but can often be very good indeed. Many such contractors are former Big 5 employees, and some even still perform work for traditional publishers as contractors. There are of course significant costs savings in producing e-books only, chief of which are no printing costs and no physical distribution costs including no physical returns. Also significant are the economies of scale applicable to Amazon's electronic distribution infrastructure, and the degree to which the process is automated.

The cost to produce and distribute a self-published e-book is significantly cheaper than the cost to produce and distribute a Big 5 e-book. In the former case it is likely that only an e-book is produced, and any print book offering is incidental to the e-book. In the latter case both a print book and an e-book is produced, with most of the initial costs including the advance and even the initial print run and distribution of the print book considered by the Publisher as part of the costs of the project as a whole. Promotional costs whether initially or continuing will also be attributable to both print and e-book. If print book sales deteriorate too far the costs of producing a print book in the future will rise. Publishers tend to regard at least the initial costs as format agnostic. Thus a traditionally published e-book sold on Amazon will have a significantly higher cost to the publisher than the e-book of most self-published authors. In a competitive environment, as KDP is, these lower costs are partially or sometimes wholly passed on to readers in the form of lower prices. Which is, I suspect, one of the major reasons for the price gap between top Indie titles and Big 5 titles. The other major reason is I think the need to consider the effect of e-book sales on print sales and vice versa. This also neatly accounts for e-book price reductions for some Big 5 back-list titles, which publishers seem to be experimenting with. Such titles have usually by this stage long repaid their initial costs and e-books of course have an effectively zero marginal cost.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

But saying to not loan my books is selfish and immoral? Nonsense.

I no longer loan printed books. Too many lost, dog eared, etc. It amazes me that people think it's ok to dog ear someone else's book.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

I no longer loan printed books. Too many lost, dog eared, etc. It amazes me that people think it's ok to dog ear someone else's book.

Or the nameless genius who borrowed 4 of my Agatha Christie books and returned them with multicoloured highlighting on every second page. Oddly, there seemed to be a lack of understanding of why I would object to having my books marked up when it made it much easier to see the relevance of those passages to the denouement of the story.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

I no longer loan printed books. Too many lost, dog eared, etc. It amazes me that people think it's ok to dog ear someone else's book.

Same here. I don’t lend books, either paper books or ebooks.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Not really. Both the uploading and downloading of ebooks with no distribution contract with rights-holder in place to do so is copyright violation. And whether money changes hands or not, the ebooks in question have been pirated. Many uploaders make money from their efforts whether it be through direct payment or ad revenue. Neither scenario is more, or less, piracy.

You want to argue that a friend passing another friend a copy of an ebook (outside of any official "sharing feature") isn't piracy? I'll entertain that notion (but I won't definitively agree with it, either). But online file-sharing sites? That's piracy whether money is directly changing hands or not. Uploading or downloading copyrighted ebooks you've no right to upload or download is both copyright violation and piracy.

You have a different definition of piracy that I do. The term piracy was hijacked by the music and movie industry since it has a much more negative connotation than copyright violation. People redefine words a lot for rhetorical purposes, that doesn't mean that I have to accept their redefinition.

Yes, I would argue that someone passing a copy of an ebook to a friend isn't piracy. However, it's neither legal nor moral in my opinion. As I said earlier, IMPO, the case of the orphaned work is a lot less straight forward from a moral point of view.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

The copyright laws, or whatever laws they are, can sometimes be surprising. Another example from the early mp3 days was an article I heard on the radio. From what I understood them saying, you can't buy a CD, for example, and play it in your restaurant as background music for the customers. Unless you arrange to pay royalties to the people who manage them (BMI, RIAA, I think). So every time the radio plays a song, they're paying royalties; it might only be a penny per play, but they're paying it. In these cases there is money being made by the party playing the music, which is part of the reason they're playing the music. Another example they mentioned was a summer camp that bought some sheet music and they were using it for the kids to sing the songs around a camp fire. According to what I heard they were liable for the royalties since the camp wasn't free/nonprofit.

Royalties are related to copyright but the point is that it's about the artist being compensated for their work. But what we see is the "greedy" business that's collecting the money, and they typically take a huge percentage in comparison to what the artist ends up getting.

In the US, that system is actually based on a consent decree from a legal case way back in the 20's, I think. Like a lot of copyright law in the US, it was originally judge created law rather than based on legislation.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

You have a different definition of piracy that I do. The term piracy was hijacked by the music and movie industry since it has a much more negative connotation than copyright violation.

This is not so. The word "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted books for at least 400 years. Eg. Thomas Dekker laments the actions of "word-pirates" in the introduction to his book, "The Wonderfulle Yeare", published in 1603. It predates by centuries any such usage in the film and music industries.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by HarryT

This is not so. The word "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted books for at least 400 years. Eg. Thomas Dekker laments the actions of "word-pirates" in the introduction to his book, "The Wonderfulle Yeare", published in 1603. It predates by centuries any such usage in the film and music industries.

Oh, THANK YOU, Harry! I knew I'd seen that someplace, dogs' years ago, and for the life of me, could not recall it. TY!

Lending: I lent a book, within the last 10 years, to someone in the business--and it came back with the spine cracked. She didn't understand why my face made that squunched-up look....arrrgggh! But DNSB's example is worse--I can't imagine marking up someone else's book. Good GOD.

Do you ever wonder--would those folks borrow a piece of clothing, a jacket, say, and return it with cigarette holes, or torn? I don't see that it's significantly different in concept...

Hitch

[Apache]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

This discussion reminds me about a book I read, first published I think as Make room, make room! and later republished as A is for anything. It was about how scientists had created a machine that could duplicate anything, even humans, and the machine itself so that everyone could do it, and the effect it had on society. When digital photography came about, and then MP3s I thought to myself, hmm, we're entering the territory of A is for anything with these things.

Make Room! Make Room! was a book written by Harry Harrison and published in 1966. It dealt with unchecked population growth and it's consequences. It was later made into the movie Soylent Green.
Apache