Is piracy likely to harm ebook sales?

[TGS]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Sorry, but this is exactly the attitude I am talking about. We ALL have to do these sorts of juggling acts in our jobs. I really resent the idea that some authors seem to have that being authors makes them a special flower immune from these realities.

I do realize what's involved. I started my working life in freelance journalism, and you know what? I hate the hustling. I hated the DIY-ness. It just did not work for me and I did not make enough money to pay my bills. So I decided I was happier *just* doing the writing, when and for whom I wanted to. And the trade-off was that I had to find something else to do to pay my bills. That's LIFE. IF you want to call it your career, your income, your livelihood, then you have to do the drudge work too because every single career has components like that. EVERY career. I can't even tell you how much time, in my new career as a teacher, I spend on non-teaching stuff like playground duty and writing up, for admin purposes, conversations I have with parents. It's part of the job. And if this is your JOB---not a hobby, not just for fun, but a JOB---then it is YOUR responsibility to keep up with what needs keeping up on, and DIY what needs to be DIY'ed. And it is INSULTING to expect your paying customers to feel sorry for you because that is your job.

Totally agree with this

Originally Posted by ficbot

As I said---it is not entirely the author's fault. But it certainly is not the customer's fault, either. And it is not their job to 'extend the drowning author a helping hand.' That is your agent's job. Or, your own job. Band together. Form an author's group. Put a website telling customers who you have been writing to and what steps you are actively taking to get the problems solved so that they really can buy the books they want legitimately. Think outside the box. Do SOMETHING! But suggesting that a customer who has spent the money to legally buy a book second-hand because nobody would offer it to them first-hand should then voluntarily spend more money just to help the author out? That is insulting.

But I don't think JaneFancher is the right target for this - I took her to be saying that she didn't expect customers to make a contribution to the author when they but one of her books second-hand.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JaneFancher

Wow! Where are you having it printed, what's the binding like, and can they handle BIG books?

This is through Lightning Source. I've provided more details by private message. The largest page count they can handle is 828 pages on white 50lb paper, or 740 pages on cream 55lb paper.

[mrkarl]

no, Ebooks will still be sold in the same numbers that real books were...there'll be a transition period until the process of getting the story from authors mind to my mind via that type of media is worked out in a way that is convenient for me............as it is right now, it's easier to download a book for free than to buy it

[Greg Anos]

I guess I'll have to take Ms. Fancher's side of the discussion.

One doesn't be creative on a schedule. And real life tends to intrude on creative processes, and if you're doing x you can't be doing y.

As a corporate drone (mainframe computer programmer) for 25+ years, I made an awful lot of money not being creative. That was somebody else's job. Mine was to just convert the creative ideas into machine logic and correct the logical errors and go back to the creative types to sort out their logical inconsistencies. Making money and being creative are two different things.

Anybody can do the drudge work in life. Being able to do the creative stuff is a lot rarer.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JaneFancher

Thanks! We hadn't thought of that...posting where they're being downloaded, I mean. I don't really know where...just have been informed they're available, but I can put my readers onto it. I'm sure they'll ferret them out.

Just search Google for your name + ebook download. I think you can set it to email you when new matches pop up too, but I don't know how.

All I saw when I had a look was Dance of the Rings 1, 2 and 3 within a collection of about 3,000 books (one big file by the look of it). I don't know if the link is still valid or not.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I guess I'll have to take Ms. Fancher's side of the discussion.

One doesn't be creative on a schedule. And real life tends to intrude on creative processes, and if you're doing x you can't be doing y.

As a corporate drone (mainframe computer programmer) for 25+ years, I made an awful lot of money not being creative. That was somebody else's job. Mine was to just convert the creative ideas into machine logic and correct the logical errors and go back to the creative types to sort out their logical inconsistencies. Making money and being creative are two different things.

Anybody can do the drudge work in life. Being able to do the creative stuff is a lot rarer.

Yes, indeed. My one true and secret wish has always been to be an author, both in the sense of being able to produce unique, compelling, and creative work and in the practical sense of being able to make a good living at it. I did not have the talent to realize either. So I made a good living by becoming an engineer instead.

To be fair, and returning to the main thread topic, while I was working as an engineer at the start of each days labor I new I would be paid in full for it. Not so for an author. To some extent this has always been true. The author must wonder: "When done will my work be one that a publisher will publish and that enough people will buy so that I will be able live off the income made."

E-books and the Internet add a new question: "How many will pay to read my work versus how many will download it, read and enjoy it, but never pay for it; presuming a certain sum total that will find my work worthwhile. "

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

E-books and the Internet add a new question: "How many will pay to read my work versus how many will download it, read and enjoy it, but never pay for it; presuming a certain sum total that will find my work worthwhile. "

Most likely the same number that would have borrowed it from the library or bought a second hand copy in ye olden dayes. Except now you are more likely to pick up new readers because of the global reach of the internet, and you have the chance to make money from all those people -- something you would never have been able to do in the past.

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Wasn't this thread started by an evangelist? What would God think of piracy?

That means "ebook evangelist" and is a title automatically generated by the forum, unless you override it with your own - based on number of posts.

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I have no intention of trying to price the Kindle eBook - I was just demonstrating how different the pbook and ebook distribution cuts can be.

I only need to take into account your second point if I'm trying to give the consumer the same value for ebook and pbook sale. I was looking at it purely from the publisher's point of view.

But looking at it from the consumer's point of view, I think a (nearly) 40% discount off the paperback price is reasonable ($12.99->$7.99). Obviously I didn't price the ebook to get the same cut.

okay I concede the point to you, I took a hypothetical as serious.

[JaneFancher]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Put a website telling customers who you have been writing to and what steps you are actively taking to get the problems solved so that they really can buy the books they want legitimately. Think outside the box. Do SOMETHING! But suggesting that a customer who has spent the money to legally buy a book second-hand because nobody would offer it to them first-hand should then voluntarily spend more money just to help the author out? That is insulting.

Oh, my. Sorry I punched your buttons. Seriously. This reaction's not good for your blood pressure. There was a reason I put a smilie behind that particular comment. It was a joke. The point was, simply, a suggestion to help, not insult.

But in case you haven't noticed, I am doing something and I'm also encouraging other authors caught in the same mess to do the same by sharing freely all I'm learning. Authors are banding together, as witness Book View Cafe and other similar sites. I simply suggested, in response to a previous post, that rather than chastising an author whose book you bought at a used bookstore, you might invite them to Mobile Read for some ENCOURAGING input on viable options.

I won't address the issue of the differences between corporate jobs and creative jobs or even the differences between types of writing...even short stories vs 200,000 word novels. Or the issue of those people now writing who have been writing full time for decades, who are nearing the age when non-creative people retire, and are seeing what should have been their retirement, i.e. their backlist, caught in the cross-hairs from both sides of this issue and beyond their ability to save it because of decisions made when the only game in town were dead tree books.

Others have done a very nice job of that, and I thank them for it.

Bottom line, you're yelling at the already converted and it seems to me that your attitude will scare off the very people you imply you to would like to convert. But I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

[JaneFancher]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Just search Google for your name + ebook download. I think you can set it to email you when new matches pop up too, but I don't know how.

All I saw when I had a look was Dance of the Rings 1, 2 and 3 within a collection of about 3,000 books (one big file by the look of it). I don't know if the link is still valid or not.

Thanks for the info. I'll see about setting that email thing up.

I understand there used to be more, but DAW got snarky last year and went after a bunch with cease and desists on all of their writers. Don't know how effective that was. The GroundTies series is older, came out from Warner and is a lot more rare. It might not have made its way into the hands of knowing scanners.

and, yeah, it'd be a BIG file! Each book is well over 150,000 words.

[JaneFancher]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Most likely the same number that would have borrowed it from the library or bought a second hand copy in ye olden dayes. Except now you are more likely to pick up new readers because of the global reach of the internet, and you have the chance to make money from all those people -- something you would never have been able to do in the past.

Here here!

The great thing is, the books that didn't get into libraries now have a chance to reach the readers...pirates or legitimate free samples, I don't care. If it gets them reading, then my job as the author is to make them want more and get to searching....

[delphidb96]

Having just been forcibly refunded money from FW so that the publisher could yank a title I'd pre-paid for in order to raise the price, here's how I see this going down. More and more customers, realizing that this is now an internet-wide bait-and-switch operation, will find themselves perfectly willing to darknet the titles across the board. Who will get harmed the most, the small publishers who didn't agree with the majors' policies.

Derek

[Laura81]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The agency model is more likely to harm eBook sales.

I fully agree with you there.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by JaneFancher

How many copies of the same movie have people bought because they went from tape, to dvd to blueray?

Probably approximately the number of copies of different movies (perhaps less well-known ones that the buyer might have otherwise taken a chance on, and found a new favorite) that people have not bought because they spent their entertainment budget on re-buying a new version of something they already owned.

The fallacy here is assuming that the controlling factor in people's entertainment purchases is the number of items/formats available, rather than the money those people have budgeted (formally or otherwise) for that purpose. If someone has X amount of money free to spend on entertainment, which happens to be exactly the price of a Blu-Ray movie, they have a couple of choices. They might buy a Blu-Ray version of Labyrinth, which they already own on DVD. Or, they might be satisfied with their existing Labyrinth DVD and instead buy a Blu-Ray version of Dark Crystal, which they don't have. What they're not going to do is buy both Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, because they only have the money for one of them. If someone spends $100 re-buying the same content, or spends $100 buying new content, it's still $100, and their wallet doesn't suddenly contain $200 because there's a new format available.

Now, there is a scenario that could lead to shifting money from other priorities (do I really need clothes that aren't freebie T-shirts?) to buying entertainment: The one thing that is almost guaranteed to bump my book-buying budget is finding a new (to me) author that I absolutely love. For instance, it happened when I discovered Steven Saylor's "Gordianus" books (via a short story in a big collection I bought for a couple of dollars off the Borders' discount rack, by the way). I went and bought every last one that was out at the time. If my whole budget had been tied up in re-buying content I already owned, Steven Saylor wouldn't have had any chance at a share of the Worldwalker market (small though it is), because I wouldn't have known his books existed.

Buying the same thing over and over again doesn't make people happy. It doesn't make them like the people selling them something they already own. It makes them feel used and resentful. That, added to the fact that getting something you already have just isn't as much fun as getting something new, tends to make people's interest (and their dollars) shift from that form of entertainment to the many competing varieties. My entertainment budget drifts between movies, music, books, and many other things, depending on my interest at the moment. The real challenge for any of those producers is to get me to buy books instead of movies, or movies instead of music. Making me dislike them, their industry, and their business model (and forcing me to buy the same thing multiple times is a good start on that) tends to make that interest drift to one of their many competitors.

There are exceptions. A few days ago, I bought an ebook of Dreamsnake. I have it in paperback. And SF Book Club hardcover. And I think there's a second paperback lying around somewhere in my thousands of physical books. And now ebook -- I think mostly so I can FIND the thing when I want to re-read it. But what did I pass up -- what book or author might I have found a passion for -- because my five bucks bought me Dreamsnake instead of some other book I hadn't read (and read, and read, and can quote)?

The bottom line is that re-selling people things they already own may, at best, maintain the status quo, but it will not -- it can not -- grow the market.