Piracy vs Bookstores

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by Halk

Not so sure about this. I do donate to charity, but I utterly despise people waving collection tins in my face, or coming round at work. I'm a little pessimistic about charities and I believe a great number of them are very poorly run by well meaning otherwise inept individuals. I'd much happier paying someone directly for their work, without them dictating which charities I give to.

Would it help if I said I researched charities VERY well and only give to charities where a certain percentage or more goes directly to the cause and a certain percentage or less goes to admin? Trust me, I know full well about how hard it is to find charities that actually do work and don't drive their CEO's around in Limos. I ran a charity once, so I understand intimately.

[Taylor514ce]

Nope, it wouldn't help. Charities more often than not have an agenda or philosophy I don't support, underlying corruption, and so on. What I choose to read has nothing to do with what charities I support, and I would resent any attempt at tying the two together. The merits of a book and the merits of a charity have nothing to do with each other.

This is a bad idea.

(In fact, I support no charities at all, finding too many parallels between organized charity and organized crime.)

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Redcard

Would it help if I said I researched charities VERY well and only give to charities where a certain percentage or more goes directly to the cause and a certain percentage or less goes to admin? Trust me, I know full well about how hard it is to find charities that actually do work and don't drive their CEO's around in Limos. I ran a charity once, so I understand intimately.

Your charities may not be mine; some charities may be linked to other agendas that I may not support and so it may be just enough to turn me off your book.

I'd be careful with that model myself.

[Puddytat purr]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you ran a company, you would be allowed to pass the ownership of that company - and the income from it - on to your heirs. Writing a book is just as much work as starting a company. Why should you not be allowed to pass the income from a book on to your heirs?

The difference here being that the company would probably continue to grow and flourish with a small amount of input from you - a book once written and published is complete!

Originally Posted by HarryT

...in some countries, authors do get paid for library loans. In the UK there's a central "pot" of money which gets paid to authors each year on the basis of their total number of library loans over the previous year. It's not a fortune, but a popular author can get a couple of thousand £ from it.

I didn't know that - I always wondered why authors didn't complain about libraries

[sanders]

There is an interesting thread over at slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../03/20/2351201 It's about game developers and not authors, but I think a lot of the stuff there applies to ebooks as well...

[JeffElkins]

Interesting thread. Personally, I have no qualms about downloading "darknet" editions of pbooks I own, or books written by long-dead authors. Two personal examples are the Harry Potter books and Robert Heinlein's juveniles. In the former case, I have bought two copies of each hardback (one for me, one for my granddaughter), and in the latter, both Heinlein and his wife Ginny have passed w/o children.

[Halk]

Originally Posted by Redcard

Would it help if I said I researched charities VERY well and only give to charities where a certain percentage or more goes directly to the cause and a certain percentage or less goes to admin? Trust me, I know full well about how hard it is to find charities that actually do work and don't drive their CEO's around in Limos. I ran a charity once, so I understand intimately.

What I'd suggest, is if you are selling from your own site then by all means allow people to make a donation to your favourite charities at the same time as buying from you, and why not have a little bit of information on why you like those particular charities. If I was there buying your books, then I'd be prepared to at least read about your charities. But I'd steer away from forcing donations.

Also, going back to the piracy thing I had wanted to point something out, rather than make a new post in the thread I'll tack it on here.

Watch that you don't consider pirates to be potential customers. The only way an author loses is when a potential customer is able to take the item without paying, where they would have paid otherwise. The MPAA and co are always shooting their mouths off about the amount of lost revenue from college filesharing in America. It's entirely fictitious to assume that people who have downloaded GBs of MP3s and dozens of movies would have bought them otherwise.

[Halk]

Originally Posted by sanders

There is an interesting thread over at slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../03/20/2351201 It's about game developers and not authors, but I think a lot of the stuff there applies to ebooks as well...

Ah, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Stardock make good games, nice turn based strategy rather than the usual mad frantic clicky games. Their view on it is I think the only worthwhile one. Worry about your customers, not about the pirates.

[Redcard]

You know..

You guys make a good point. I think that Cory Doctorow has the best idea on this. I think I'll simply remove the charity idea, and go with a simple sliding scale ($1, $2, $3, etc..) with a suggestion that you give an equal amount of time/money/whatever towards a good cause.

That way I also don't have to deal with people feeling guilty about giving me nothing, or people feeling guilty about my choice in charity.

Heck, I could do both. Who cares The goal of writing is to be read. Afterall.. most authors until they make it "big" have other careers.. and as much as I like writing, I love what I do for a living.

Back on the original tack..

If you ask an author whether they'd rather be paid or read, they'd say read. That's not to say they don't want to be paid.. and that you should rip them off.. but in my instance, I have a number of copies of Chronicles of Narnia. I don't think, were CS Lewis alive, he'd be upset that I have an illegal ebook version. Frankly, between the Extended Edition of the movie, the fact that my entire family will pay $10 per person + popcorn and soda for the kiddies in the second movie, and the random rebuying they'll do of things.. an ebook collection doesn't really hurt the Lewis Estate.

I wish we were in a society where information could be free, and you could trust people to pay for what they value an item at. And I think plenty of authors will go by that mentality.

However, until that day comes, I'll go with a case by case basis.

Personally, though? Copyright should end Ten years after the death of the author. I know, I know.. families of popular works must make a living.

But be honest. How many families of popular works out there REALLY and TRULY own the rights 40+ years after the fact? They don't.. big business does.. and that's not the point of the copyright law.

Just my opinion.

[spooky69]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Charities more often than not have an agenda or philosophy I don't support, underlying corruption, and so on.

An so on? An so on? I'll assume your comment about the link between organized charity and organized crime was facetious and address this statement righ' here.
Most charities are pretty good, and there are plenty of resources to judge their distribution of wealth, lack of distribution, or lack of disclosure about how they distribute. Trust me; there are plenty of charities to meet any requirement of dedicated altruism and not enough donors to sponsor those charities' interests.

[Taylor514ce]

I won't make you work disaster relief with me if you don't try to take my money and give it to a "charity". Fair enough?

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

I won't make you work disaster relief with me if you don't try to take my money and give it to a "charity". Fair enough?

Fair enough

Just leave the world in a better place every day, and I'll be content

[JSWolf]

Do you know the publishers are to blame for a lot of eBook piracy? I bet you didn't know this. But now you do.

Because they don't put out enough eBooks or do it in a haphazard stupid manor (such as book 3 of a series and not books 1 & 2) people turn to the darknet to find the Ebooks the publishes do not release. And if they find whay they are looking for they think "Gee, I didn't have to overpay for this eBook, let me see if I can find other's I want to read." So they do and they find and they keep doing it. Now if the eBook were originally available for sale then they'd have kept on purchasing.

As a really good example of publisher stupidity, I was looking at Fictionwise & BooksOnBoard at eBook from David Edddings. His series The Belgariad is available sort of. It is a 5 book series. I was able to find one eBook that contained 4 & 5 but I was unable to find 1-3 at all. So why would I buy just 4 & 5 when I am unable to get 1-3? Now this is why some people then turn to the darknet to try to find 1-3. But if they find 1-3, chances are they may also find 4 & 5 and thus, sales of 4 & 5 don't happen. So my question is WHY? Why release part of a series instead of the entire series?

Is it because publishers don't understand eBooks or have they fired anyone who does understand them and tries to speak up? It makes no sense to what they do sometimes and why. When a book is released as a hardcover, the eBook also at a really high price. I understand why the hardcover is priced higher... because it costs more to print a hardcover then a paperback. So what that says to the consumer is that the container is more expensive so we have to have a higher price tag. But for an eBook, the container is EXACTLY the same regardless if the pBook is hardcover or not. So why should the eBook be priced so high? It should not because no matter what format the pBook is, the container for the eBook doesn't change. A BBeB (Sony reader), Mobipocket, MS Reader, eReader etc will still be the same even when the pBook container changes. So they basically make up prices as they go along for the eBooks. And how often does the price change when the pBook goes from hardcover to paperback? A lot of times, it takes a while for this to happen. And we have this new format of paperback that is taller and thinner and has larger print and a higher price tag and is really god awful to hold. It's the sort of paperback book that makes hardcovers a joy to hold. Anyway, they base eBook prices based on pBook prices and that's not fair. The container of an eBook is 100% the same and never changes no matter how the pBook is printed.

So, given a lot of this stupid things done by publishers who could care less if eBooks fail or not cause a lot of people to run to the darknet to find the eBooks they want to read and that won't stop until publishes get their heads from out of they asses so they can finally see the light and do something intelligent about eBooks.

[cmbs]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you know the publishers are to blame for a lot of eBook piracy? I bet you didn't know this. But now you do.

Because they don't put out enough eBooks or do it in a haphazard stupid manor (such as book 3 of a series and not books 1 & 2) people turn to the darknet to find the Ebooks the publishes do not release.

You do know that blaming other people for your behavior is lying to yourself and others. Right? You choose to do something, you're to blame. Be an adult and take responsibility for your actions.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by cmbs

You do know that blaming other people for your behavior is lying to yourself and others. Right? You choose to do something, you're to blame. Be an adult and take responsibility for your actions.

Actually, I don't know that Jon has ever downloaded an illegal book. He seemed to be talking generally - and I agree with him that some publishers' actions are inexplicable.

But you are right to point out that an individual is responsible for her (or his) own actions. (This was one of my points in my previous contribution to this thread.)