Kindle e-Book piracy accelerates - from CNET

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Marcy

In this case, there is zero evidence of piracy of this particular author....

Yes, and he's well aware of that fact.

He's basing the article more off the fact that if piracy isn't addressed, it might be possible to download every New York Times Bestseller for the last 10 years in an hour or less. For free.

However optimistic you may be about human behavior, it's slightly irrational to presume that the effects of that capability will be purely beneficial. Again, that does not seem to be the case for the music industry so far, which has faced lost sales year after year after year, despite offering DRM-free content for about 2 years now.

Originally Posted by Marcy

Most people downloading these are pirate hoarders who barely read what they download.....

I concur, there is certainly a strain of acquisition for its own sake in this kind of piracy.

I would also assert that a $1-to-$1 ratio is not an appropriate measure, especially with a huge compilation like that.

However, it is not inconceivable that piracy may do more harm than good, especially when such extensive bundles can be easily downloaded.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

He isn't saying that "50% of the market will disappear." He's saying that many people believe that 50% of the book market will consist of ebook sales in 5 years.

Just out of interest, are there any figures that show what percentage of the current book market is second hand books? I would guess that is more than 50%. Without any second hand market for ebooks, even if they only ever reach 50% that would still be an improvement.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

that does not seem to be the case for the music industry so far, which has faced lost sales year after year after year, despite offering DRM-free content for about 2 years now.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/direc...es-slump-3197/

■Global digital music sales are estimated at approximately $2.9 billion in 2007, a roughly 40% increase on 2006 ($2.1 billion).
■Single-track downloads, the most popular digital music format, in 2007 grew 53% to 1.7 billion (including those on digital albums).
■Digital sales now account for an estimated 15% of the global music market, up from 11% in 2006 and zero in 2003.
■In the world’s biggest digital music market, the US, online and mobile sales now account for 30% of all revenues.
■The music industry is more advanced in terms of digital revenues than any other creative or entertainment industry except games. Its digital share is more than twice that of newspapers (7%), films (3%) and books (2%).
■There are more than 500 legitimate digital music services worldwide, offering over 6 million tracks - over four times the stock of a music megastore.

■Tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007. The ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold is about 20 to 1.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Not piracy related, but I had to smile at this statement:

"my e-book is currently priced at $3.99, which only leaves me with about 50 cents a book after the publisher, e-book seller, and agent, take their cuts."

Who are the real thieves here? If he priced his ebook at 50 cents how many people who actually wanted to read it would bother looking for a pirate copy?

The people who read his book and didn't pay for it?


It's $4 frikkin' dollars. If people won't buy it for that, they won't buy it for 50 cents, either.

And publishers, agents, and e-book sellers all provided services to the author. The author was not required to use them. They are not *thieves*.

But, yeah, it makes it easier to justify stealing if you claim that you are really just stealing from thieves. Good luck with that.

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by queentess

The article is worth visiting just to see the Pirate Kindle picture.

Yes, that is a very cute picture. "Argg!"

[Catlady]

I don't understand why he seems so concerned with how small book files are and how quickly they can be downloaded. So what?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The people who read his book and didn't pay for it?

What evidence is there that anyone read it? Come to that, what evidence is there that the 658 people who downloaded those 2,500 books didn't just deselect all the ones written by no-name no-hopers?

With no second hand market for ebooks, how do you propose people find their next favourite writer?

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

...

He's basing the article more off the fact that if piracy isn't addressed, it might be possible to download every New York Times Bestseller for the last 10 years in an hour or less. For free.

However optimistic you may be about human behavior, it's slightly irrational to presume that the effects of that capability will be purely beneficial. Again, that does not seem to be the case for the music industry so far, which has faced lost sales year after year after year, despite offering DRM-free content for about 2 years now....

Technology advancements kill some industries and create new ones. Get used to it.

The software industry faced the problem of piracy way before the music and publishing industry. At first they tried going draconian, some even using hardware dongles. Now that the dust has settled, they have all moved away from draconian DRM methods and are still doing robust business.

The music industry is starting to figure it out, too, albeit you can still hear the irate calls of a few dinosaurs.

Now I guess is the turn of the publishing industry.

But they (and the author of this pointless article) forget that the ease of downloading also encourage spontaneous purchases.

Case in point: I just purchased 5 ebooks from Amazon last night. All but one were books I already have (mostly in hardcover). I could probably have found at least some of them on darknet after a few minutes of searching. Ironically, I will probably not read 4 of the 5 anytime soon, since I have already read them.

But I was browsing and in the excitement of finding titles I liked in the past (like Heinrich Boll's The Clown), it was easy to click the "Purchase with 1Click" button. So, the publishers and the authors got a few $$ which they may not normally have gotten -- simply because it was easy to buy and download.

Now, I must emphasize that I personally would not have made these, or most other ebook purchases I have made, if I could not easily strip the DRM. I simply would not spend the money to buy a title, if I cannot keep it when I change devices or platforms.

In fact, if I could not strip the DRM so easily, I may have spent the time to scour the darknet, looking for liberated copies. And I am not the only one.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

He isn't saying that "50% of the market will disappear." He's saying that many people believe that 50% of the book market will consist of ebook sales in 5 years.

Yes, thanks for pointing this out. I did mis-read his point (I didn't click through on the link). It's quite possibly true 50% of book revenues will be from e-books within 5 years.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I don't necessarily agree with everything he's saying, but he really doesn't seem to be screaming bloody murder and demonizing the pirates. You may want to re-read the article carefully, as it's a bit more moderate than you credit.

Really ... well, we can disagree on that. His headline, after all, is "Kindle e-book piracy accelerates". The entire point of the article is about piracy, blowing out of proportion what's actually happening. (Like the $10,000 lost revenues to publishers in a single download.)

I did not characterize, for the record, his article as "screaming bloody murder" or "demonizing the pirates". And, the Kindle image, pirate-clad, is the most amusing thing about the article.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

After all, music has been available DRM-free and rather affordable for what, 2 years now? There are also countless free streaming options, ranging from Internet radio to Spotify to Pandora. Yet music piracy rates are still sky-high, and there are correlations between nations with lax IP enforcement and cratering music sales rates (note: this does not necessarily prove cause and effect).

I, for one, do not purchase downloadable music because it doesn't live up to my quality standards for the price. At 99 cents per song, a standard album costs more to purchase as downloadable content, than the physical CD. And yet, the physical CD provides a much higher quality recording. But before someone whines that it is 'transparent', what really gets my goat is that these files are not provided in a format for which you can losslessly convert into another format. MP3 and AAC are destructive formats. When you first rip a CD into MP3s, you lose some bits, which everyone already knows. But when you take that 320 kbps file, and transcode it to a 192 kbps file (because you need the space), you actually end up with less information than if you had directly gone from CD to 192.

I simply won't pay more for something ethereal, when a physical, digital, product ensures I can keep my purchase with me. As far as convenience, Amazon 2 day shipping really does wonders for not needing it right this second.

How does this relate to music piracy? Well, think about it, the worst offenders are A) hoarders B) enthusiasts. You can't care about hoarders because those aren't sales anyways. Enthusiasts, you can capture sales from, but you have to provide a high quality product for them to purchase. Right now there's an easier, cheaper, and higher quality product for the taking.

As far as Pandora and its ilk, they're not eclectic enough for my taste. I prefer to listen to internet radio, like The Current, because they actually play a decent assortment of styles. I look forward to the day when Pandora's algorithms actually work well, as I prefer not to have humans interrupting my groove

[Piper_]

A few months ago, I spent some time reading on another forum, where some well-known authors post.
It was unsettling to see the fear they have of ebooks - not just piracy, but of ebook sales cannibalizing their more lucrative p-book sales (which seems wrong to me, but..).

So some were trying to stem the tide they fear, some by holding out on releasing ebook versions of their new and backlist books, and some by pricing out of range to discourage the ebook purchase.

I feel for them, but it's clear that their reaction is based on panic and listening to the wrong people.

I think they would be better off to consider that the book industry has been in need of a boost of new readers. Even pirated books create more readers, particularly among young people, as they set aside other things, like TV, and discover the joys of reading.

For some of us addicts, the analogy of crack dealers hooking customers isn't too far off.

Seriously, were I an author, I'd focus on the old adage, "If you can't beat them, join them."

There's a psychological element, too. Rather than position themselves as adversarial to e-readers, they should embrace this new audience, taking advantage of the ability to interact and thus win our affection.

Making the ebooks and yourself more accessible gains loyalty and good will (which makes them want to pay you), and most likely more sales than they would have had in a paper-only world.

It's so simple, and many authors already get it. But it's interesting to wonder why they all don't.

[wyndslash]

@piper: maybe it's because they think they have to lower prices if it's an ebook version and they'd get less after the publishers and other middlemen take their share? (then again we do have agency pricing at the moment, but well...just a thought xD)

[troll05]

Hi all,
there's a package of 300 Kindle books available for free download, if you care to use Google for it, but looking over the list I found only three or four books interesting. So what will I do?
BTW, there are how many reading devices out there? One million, two...? and we talk about maybe 10.000 or 20.000 titles in the darknet. That's hardly the numbers all those experts refer to. Same like music piracy. The absolute number seems to be significant, but as a percentage of all sold titles it's negligible. And even pirates may have an ethos. What about books you already bought as Pbooks? How many people are willing to pay he same book twice. So they download 25.000 books via torrents just to have the 250 titles they already paid for in paper. Is that true and menacing piracy?

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

@piper: maybe it's because they think they have to lower prices if it's an ebook version and they'd get less after the publishers and other middlemen take their share? (then again we do have agency pricing at the moment, but well...just a thought xD)

Well, what seemed off to me was that they said they got a lesser cut in royalties for ebooks.

Sounds backwards, doesn't it?

I thought authors generally got a bigger share of ebook sales. Or maybe I misread. Who knows.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Technology advancements kill some industries and create new ones. Get used to it.

Yeah, the ability to steal from authors is a great advancement.

The software industry faced the problem of piracy way before the music and publishing industry. At first they tried going draconian, some even using hardware dongles. Now that the dust has settled, they have all moved away from draconian DRM methods and are still doing robust business.

Umm, what programs have you bought recently - the most popular ones tend to require online activation. And the worst of them require you to be online all the time. These are fairly draconian by any standard, I think.

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