How to deal with ebook piracy

[PitterPat]

Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn

When you spend $17 on a e-book that could be purchased for $6.99 in paperback, do you believe that the ARTIST is getting $17? Do you believe that the ARTIST is going to make more money if Amazon charges $17 than if somebody bought the same book for $6.99?....

In most cases, it's the publisher charging $17, not Amazon.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

...
So, the author will be hiring an editor up-front, before she starts making any money on the book? And possibly hiring a publicity specialist to promote her book to encourage more people to check it out?
...

In the future, to be a writer won't be enough for being an author.
Authors, to survive, will have to learn editing, publishing, typesetting and promoting techniques.
They will be selected by a darwinian process, like every other profession in the world.

The rich, of course, will have a couple of employees to do the job....

[EowynCarter]

How in the world will you force everybody to adapt it? What of those who are resistant? Would you agree that this comment is by and large advocating taking free will away from the market system?

No, quitte the contrary. As long as you have multilpe DRM / format, you, the customer, find yourself bond your first choice. When everyone uses the same format, you can buy any book, anywhere, and read it on any reader.

[taustin]

Baen has already found the answers to your questions. Pretty much everything they publish is available electronically, in all major formats, without DRM, no later than when the paper version hits the shelves (and often sooner, in the form of ARCs - Advanced Reader Copies, for which the author gets a significantly higher royalty). Their webscription service is thriving.

(And for what it's worth, their free library directly drives sales of both paper and ebooks, often for the very books that are free. On Basilisk Station has been their best seller multiple times over the years, despite being one of the very first books they offered for free.)

[Cpl Punishment]

Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn

I think some people here are deliberately dense, as in purposefully misrepresenting my argument.

I think the authors should be paid. I think the artists should get MORE of the profits for themselves. I am not as interested in propping up all the middle men who make a killing. I am not against honest people making a living, but I see no reason to adjust policy to protect those making a KILLING. Im not talking about the artists here, I am talking about the producers who have monopolistic control over the industry and take the largest chunk for themselves.

When you spend $17 on a e-book that could be purchased for $6.99 in paperback, do you believe that the ARTIST is getting $17? Do you believe that the ARTIST is going to make more money if Amazon charges $17 than if somebody bought the same book for $6.99?....While contracts vary, this is most generally not the case. Artists get the smaller portion of the profits, or a fixed amount plus royalties per unit sold, and selling the book for a higher price does not mean the ARTIST gets a higher price....It means that billionaires get more profit and the artist gets exactly the same compensation. The exception of course is if they are self published.

Of course some right wingers dont believe we should even HAVE a public library providing FREE books, paid for with taxes. Amazon and Disney shouldnt have to kick down any of their hundred billion dollar profits to pay for parks, libraries, the fire department.....some people think that private fire departments should replace public ones, and that public libraries are socialist because they dont encourage people to buy their own books and resent the pittance they get taxed that actually goes to the public good.



I think the artists should be compensated for their work, and the more people who download and read their book the more they should be rewarded. Instead of piracy where the artist gets nothing, the library will let you check the book out for at least two weeks, and you can renew it for free with a limit of e-books on your reader at once, and every time you check out the books the artist gets more revenue.


I think that despite lower compensation per copy, a higher volume of sales will equalize this, and without as many middle men needing high payouts the artist might actually get MORE money in some cases. This alternative would be paid for with taxes, but would be a wonderful public service that would encourage people to read and also encourage artists to write more books.


What I am preaching here isnt some evil socialist plot. Its a modern day technological expansion of the original intention of the library. You can ALREADY read millions of books for FREE. If free books at the library offends your capitalist instincts, then you have problems.

You can buy a book if you want to, but maybe we should make the e-book section at the library better as a preferable alternative to piracy for those who dont pay for books anyway, and those who wont pay for books can divert small amounts of taxes to support the artists instead of giving them nothing at all.


Please grasp my argument before responding.

Spoken like a true elitist....

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

So, the author will be hiring an editor up-front, before she starts making any money on the book? And possibly hiring a publicity specialist to promote her book to encourage more people to check it out?

Plus cover artist and blurb writer if those are also things beyond their abilities. It wouldn't be feasible to expect a new first-time writer to do that, but there is no reason they can't use the profits from their first book to pay for those services on their second and subsequent books. They are all one-off payments, certainly not worth handing over 90% of your income forever.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn

If you cant beat them, join them.

But seriously, how can you make the purchased copies more desirable and convenient than the pirated copies? If I download an ebook via torrent it will be finished faster than the checkout process, and I dont have to validate it or jump through any hoops. Why would I subject myself to difficulty just so I can pay more money?

Amazon has got the convenience factor right with their Kindle, as long as you can find the ebook you want to read on their site you can buy it direct from your Kindle with 1 click.

As for more desirable, I don't know what you could do with books but some games give you extra content if you register them online. Presumably it wouldn't be difficult for each copy of an ebook to have a different registration number and to check that those numbers aren't registered more than once? But it would need to be something good that they got for registering or people wouldn't bother. You'd probably also end up with people sharing the extra content.

[Caltsar]

People seem to pirate books, music, software, movies, etc for a few reasons.

• Availability
• Price
• Convenience
• Quality
• DRM issues
• "Just Because"

The majority of pirates would likely prefer to obtain something legally, but the barriers in place for digital goods are often too high to beat piracy... and you don't have to beat it completely. You just need a viable alternative to the illegal method.

You need to make you books available. On multiple stores, and in multiple formats. (ePub and Amazon's seem to be the minimum to get to most everyone) Ideally one format will ultimately work on all devices the same way that mp3 can be played on nearly anything. You should bring back out of print books and when an author puts out a new book in a series, make the WHOLE series available to purchase (maybe even at a "bundle price" that would get people who already own some of the books to buy them again. More sales are good, and I never said the publishers and sellers would be completely altruistic!)

The price needs to be more nimble. The author and the publisher need their compensation... contracts at their end should be able to work that out... maybe even have their compensation be higher for the first month or thereabouts so those who are willing to spend more to have it quickly can give the publisher extra profits. The store can then price the books according to demand on a... say... weekly basis. (agreements with publishers could set minimum prices? obviously higher profits work out better for everyone, so prices would never get lower than the maximum most people want to pay)

Amazon has convenience down, and B&N is nearly as good. Some other sites and marketplaces simply don't have this down. Using Adobe Digital Editions often causes major problems, many have multiple step processes in obtaining your books. This needs to be fixed.

While quality usually isn't an issue with marketplace books, sometimes the pirated versions are higher quality. Publishers need to put some money into proofreaders to at least get rid of the glaring OCR errors that seem to be common in eBooks right now.

DRM needs to be either standardized or removed. Anyone who wants to pirate is completely able to. DRM can be added on the fly for the nook or kindle loaning features. That would prevent casual piracy by the VAST majority of people (even if just by giving a warning about the fact that you don't own a book loaned to you). Most people simply don't bother to pull the books off their devices, and grabbing more marketshare by the people who do know what they're doing by allowing them to move easily between devices may be a good thing.

Obviously you can't get rid of all the piracy, but allowing the marketplaces to be as nimble as the piracy scene while making it legal and more convenient can only be a good thing for everyone. The consumers can't have it the way they want, but there are good compromises that can make it better for everyone... if only the media companies would realize this.

[Penforhire]

OP, I'm not being dense. Just taking some of your arguments at face value. Use a different phrasing if you mean something different than how I interpreted it.

You seem to think there are a lot of billionaires in the book publishing chain. How about all the shareholders of symbol AMZN? Think they are not entitled to see a return on their investment? You don't have to be ultra-rich to be invested these days. For $7 at Scottrade you too can root for AMZN to rake in more profits.

Libraries do pay for their books. We do pay taxes. Free? Not hardly. If they stocked enough books to satisfy all public need, such that we never bought our own books, content providers would get a nice chunk of coin from that.

In the end, capitalism means you don't get to decide who gets the biggest slice of a transaction. You seem to be arguing for more money going to authors. <Picard voice on> "Make it so!"

I happen to share some of your concerns about monopolies and how Amazon represents one in the making. I'm just not willing to set fire to 'the establishment' to make changes.

[EricLandes]

Tobias Buckell has a very rational, insightful blog post on ebook piracy, from an author's viewpoint.

And it's far from the shrill "I could still be on contract if not for them stealing my stuff!" garbage that's far too prevalent these days.

[Cpl Punishment]

Originally Posted by EricLandes

Tobias Buckell has a very rational, insightful blog post on ebook piracy, from an author's viewpoint.

And it's far from the shrill "I could still be on contract if not for them stealing my stuff!" garbage that's far too prevalent these days.

Thanks for that post...Interesting blog...!! I bookmarked it....

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by EricLandes

Tobias Buckell has a very rational, insightful blog post on ebook piracy, from an author's viewpoint.

And it's far from the shrill "I could still be on contract if not for them stealing my stuff!" garbage that's far too prevalent these days.

It's good that he thinks that piracy isn't costing him money. As I have said elsewhere, the author and the publisher cannot practically or morally decide who it is that gets to enjoy a book.

However...this guy writes for a living? I think he needs an editor!

"Lastly, if it becomes damaging enough, assume that the large corporations, who’s interests are somewhat aligned with ours in this instance, will come up with a strategy."

"So from my point of view, it’s a rather neutral phenomena that hasn’t been proven to, with a very solid set of data, cause career implosions." Talk about your split infinitive!

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

You seem to think there are a lot of billionaires in the book publishing chain. How about all the shareholders of symbol AMZN? Think they are not entitled to see a return on their investment?

No, they are not entitled to a return on their investment. Buying individual stocks/shares is gambling. Sometimes you lose money - if you are not better at it than some other people you will very likely lose money.

[Kali Yuga]

Yeah, there is all sorts of Wrong with your recommendations.

A critical point to note is that there already are lots of free ebooks available, many of which are high quality (and very popular) notably public domain books. It's unclear whether this beneficial public service has made any sort of dent in piracy rates.

For general interest books, the paper costs are only around 15% of the total costs. Basically, retailers and publishers have spent the last decade squeezing those costs as much as possible in order to increase their profit margins. Things like author's advances, editorial costs, marketing and other overhead make up most of the costs these days. (As a published author, go ahead and ask your publisher for a breakdown of the costs....)

Last I heard, Americans collectively spend around $35 billion on books per year (including all markets). At a minimum, your proposal means the total destruction of the entire book retailing industry, which is slightly ridiculous.

This also means the creation of a very expensive new entitlement, in an era where every federal and state government is slashing costs.

It also essentially means turning over content decisions to government agencies. How many members of Congress are likely to support spending Your Tax Dollars on books like Not Just an Orgy? How about The Chomsky-Foucault Debate? Or Mein Kampf?

There is also a limited market for readers; in the US it's around 65 million, or 1/5 of the US population. While offering free books will help grow this a bit, it's unlikely to, say, double it or double the amount of time that readers have or want to spend reading. I.e. you can't "make it up on volume" if there's a ceiling to the sales volume.

By the way, libraries do have an ebook option, it's offered by a company called Overdrive.

Finally…. I see little reason why this is going to thwart piracy. People will just break whatever DRM you put on the library ebooks and swap the titles, even if it costs them almost nothing to borrow the ebooks.

[Nick_Djinn]

Originally Posted by abookreader

I think artists should get to make those decisions for themselves.

Me too! Nobody should be forced to make an agreement with the public library. It should be a choice for the author if their patent is still valid.

Originally Posted by abookreader

If they want to sign a contract with Penguin where in exchange for the large percent of the sales price Penguin handles production and distribution -- then that is the choice of the author.

I agree with the letter of your statement, but disagree with the implication. Of course each individual should have full control over their own actions, but just because somebody 'consents' to an agreement does not mean that its free from exploitation. On the contrary, there are many voluntary agreements in a so called 'free market' that are full of exploitation and usury, and people only 'consent' because a monopoly over an industry makes it preferably to being shut out. Preferable < ideal.

Also, just because an author agreed to sell to a publishing company does not change the fact that you are handing the money to the publishing company and NOT to the artist who produced the material. You claim that without paying $17 to Amazon that there would be no incentive for writers to produce books for us, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Originally Posted by abookreader

How in the world will you force everybody to adapt it?

I wont, and dont put words in my mouth. If you dont want to receive money from the public library system you dont have to. You only have to pay taxes to gain the benefits of society, like roads, and the benefit of living in a place where most people can speak fluently and understand written instructions. We provide free books to students in grade school all the time, paid for with taxes.

Originally Posted by abookreader

Not inhuman mythical greedy "corporations."

Yes. Corporations have all the rights of a flesh and blood human being now. Pretty soon they will be able to vote.

Originally Posted by abookreader

But the good news is that so far most book buyers seem to be willing to pay a reasonable price for content.

Source? Do you have any real data that shows this definitively? Of course books are still popular, but can you prove that more people are paying $17 for the content you can read in a $5.99 paperback than are downloading content for free from ThePirateBay.org? Of course you need to download a bittorrent client, like Bitspirit first, then it will open the torrent automatically when you download it in the link.