ebook piracy

[andyafro]

Just read this article

Code:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...d-books-piracy

He's talking rubbish first thing you do when you buy an ebook device is go looking for free books, main reason ebooks havnt taken off is cos an ebook device cost so much, you can buy alot of dead tree books for £300, its only those who read all the time who pay out for them, plus they taking the piss charging the same amount for a ebook as a dead tree, takes 2 mins to make a ebook and at no extra cost really (its on the publishers pc before it go's to print) its not taking off cos they taking the mick charging like that and if that company go's bust all them books you bought are worthless. DRM & price is whats slowing it down. make an ebook device for £50 and everyone will have one.

Microsoft should bring out a cheap ms reader device.

[rcuadro]

I dont think he is talking rubbish. I think his thoughts on the music industry and dead on. I think the biggest problem is that, generally, people do not read... but damn near everyone I know listens to music be it on the radio or an MP3 player. Or they dont read enough to purchase an eBook reader to turn around and purchase books. it is simpler for them to just spend some money on a paper back and call it a day. Or even better, go to the thrift store and get a book for a damn quarter.
Piracy will not help the eBook industry. Every book that is pirated becomes another excuse why authors dont release books electronically.
The general public needs to read more before eBooks become as popular as MP3's...

[rcuadro]

Oh, and the proce on the ebook readers I dont think is as big an issue as people make it out to be. I think the real issue is the lack of an eBook standard. Or at least readers that can display the popular formats. There are popuat formats out there like MOBi and ePub but you may be hard pressed to find a reader that can support them both. What about PDF?
Hell, I wished my Kindle 2 would read PDF's and ePubs right out of the box....

As far as DRM is concerned, I wish there was a way to tie the purchases to an individual and not a device. That way I would be free to purchase a different brand reader in the future and still be able to use my legally purchased items.

[Penforhire]

He's rubbish because the total number of people using e-readers is still tiny compared to paper books. E-book piracy is thriving very well, considering what can be found with zero effort on the darknet. An honest survey of the dishonest would show, IMO, that technically savvy users are pirating at similar rates to music piracy. It is just we don't have as many e-readers as DAP's (digital audio players) yet.

There is an entire market segment among Kindle users who purchased that device because it requires almost no computer literacy and makes purchases easy and painless (ignoring what happens if the DRM server or Amazon ever dies). I can believe there is reduced piracy in that particular group.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by rcuadro

Oh, and the proce on the ebook readers I dont think is as big an issue as people make it out to be. I think the real issue is the lack of an eBook standard. Or at least readers that can display the popular formats. There are popuat formats out there like MOBi and ePub but you may be hard pressed to find a reader that can support them both.

You CAN'T find a dedicated reader that will support them both, because Mobipocket (owned by Amazon) won't allow it! If you have DRM/mobi, you can't have DRM/anything-else.

You can, however, have any or all other formats supported on the same reader, just not mobi.

[Who are you?]

Paper books aren't that expensive to make, think around the $1 mark. Selling an ebook for $15 doesn't mean that much more profit than selling a paper book for $15.

And MS already have a free reader application for your smartphone/pda, so you could be reading ebooks at no additional cost.

[cstross]

Originally Posted by Who are you?

Paper books aren't that expensive to make, think around the $1 mark.

Actually more like 70 cents for a paperback, but $2-3 for a hardcover.

What eats up the cover price is the distribution chain -- wholesalers and retailers between them trouser about 70% of the cover price, leaving 10% for the author, 10% for manufacturing costs, and 10% for the publisher.

Originally Posted by Who are you?

Selling an ebook for $15 doesn't mean that much more profit than selling a paper book for $15.

Correct. Moreover, the publishers have cunningly decided that an ebook is simply a new edition of a book, and must therefore be "printed" and "distributed" exactly the same way, so that royalties can be accounted for using existing bookkeeping methods. The result is an inane concept called an "ebook warehouse", where imaginary books are stored until a bookstore decides to take them to stack on imaginary shelves until a punter buys them, or until they're returned for credit (with imaginary covers stripped)!

Way to lose 70% of the revenue stream (or the opportunity to deliver price cuts direct to the public as a purchasing incentive), guys.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Who are you?

Paper books aren't that expensive to make, think around the $1 mark. Selling an ebook for $15 doesn't mean that much more profit than selling a paper book for $15.

It's not a ton, but it's more than $1 in most cases (at least for HC). A couple big things ebooks don't have are warehousing and returns to the publisher which are a big cost.

[pdurrant]

Ah - if you print 10,000 paperbacks, you might be able to get them printed and shipped to a warehouse for $10,000. And then you ship 10,000 out to bookstores - whoopee.

And then after six weeks, the bookstores destroy 5,000 of them, sending you back 5,000 covers ripped off the ones that didn't sell.

Suddenly that $1/book looks a lot like $2/book.

Which is a big chunk out of that $7.99 paperback you printed.

Originally Posted by Who are you?

Paper books aren't that expensive to make, think around the $1 mark. Selling an ebook for $15 doesn't mean that much more profit than selling a paper book for $15.

[K-Thom]

E-book piracy is thriving very well, considering what can be found with zero effort on the darknet

Don't confuse leechers with readers. Actually the active eBookz scene is rather small. The people scanning and proof-reading and formatting usually know each other. Some of them even would like the illegal scene to be closed to leechers, which are the ones who cause the problems by distributing without thinking.

And as much as I believe that most of the music leechers download is actually heard by them as most movies may be watched, I think very little of the literature is actually read. If it would be, these people simply wouldn't find the time to download all this material.
Reading still is a time-consuming hobby. You either download a lot or read a lot.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Don't confuse leechers with readers. Actually the active eBookz scene is rather small. The people scanning and proof-reading and formatting usually know each other. Some of them even would like the illegal scene to be closed to leechers, which are the ones who cause the problems by distributing without thinking.

And as much as I believe that most of the music leechers download is actually heard by them as most movies may be watched, I think very little of the literature is actually read.
If it would be, these people simply wouldn't find the time to dowmload all this material. Reading still is a time-consuming hobby. You either download a lot or read a lot.

I'd have to agree. Piracy, of any media, isn't hurting anybody's bottom line. Whatever sells the most product is also the most pirated. Dan Brown books fly of the shelves in book shops, they're downloaded a lot from .torrent sites and newsgroups. The Dark Knight was one of the biggest grossing films of all time, it was also one of the most downloaded. Nobody is hurting from piracy, no matter what the companies actually think.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcuadro

As far as DRM is concerned, I wish there was a way to tie the purchases to an individual and not a device. That way I would be free to purchase a different brand reader in the future and still be able to use my legally purchased items.

The currently best format for that is ePub ad more and more devices take on board ADE with DRM.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Don't confuse leechers with readers. Actually the active eBookz scene is rather small. The people scanning and proof-reading and formatting usually know each other. Some of them even would like the illegal scene to be closed to leechers, which are the ones who cause the problems by distributing without thinking.

And as much as I believe that most of the music leechers download is actually heard by them as most movies may be watched, I think very little of the literature is actually read. If it would be, these people simply wouldn't find the time to download all this material.
Reading still is a time-consuming hobby. You either download a lot or read a lot.

I'm not going to get into a debate about piracy but......

I find it very easy to leave my computer running and downloading while I'm out in the lounge room reading.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by khalleron

You CAN'T find a dedicated reader that will support them both, because Mobipocket (owned by Amazon) won't allow it! If you have DRM/mobi, you can't have DRM/anything-else.

I know, though I still wish they will eventually come up with a standard...

[fugazied]

Honestly I think people who shell out $300 for a reader don't mind paying for books, but many of those kinds of customers HATE DRM and hate the possibility that they are 'renting' ebooks rather than buying them. Also they hate the fact they can't loan an ebook to a friend.

For those reasons you sometimes get affluent people pirating books. The publishers pretty much shoot themselves in the foot with DRM. There are already very cheap chinese no-name readers, so DRM and ebook pricing are what's hurting them.