illegal ebooks how many are there?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by toddos

Not that I would know, having not read them electronically. Because that would be illegal.

Although, somewhat tangentially, a bee in my bonnet lately is people who see a not-released-as-an-ebook book on my reader and ASSUME I acquired it illegally, when in reality I format-shifted the darn thing myself.

[pwalker8]

I would say that almost any book that was remotely popular is out there somewhere. According to an article that I read, the vast majority of them are scanned copies ranging for extremely well proofed in the case of the Harry Potter books to not proofed at all. I don't know if it's changed, but apparently the reason that most of the books are scanned rather than de-drmed ebook copies is that the driving force is building credit in the community and you get that by scanning books in.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would say that almost any book that was remotely popular is out there somewhere. According to an article that I read, the vast majority of them are scanned copies ranging for extremely well proofed in the case of the Harry Potter books to not proofed at all. I don't know if it's changed, but apparently the reason that most of the books are scanned rather than de-drmed ebook copies is that the driving force is building credit in the community and you get that by scanning books in.

anybody can post de-drmed books, to me thats lazy piracy . i have to give credit though to the guys who will go back, scan and compile stories from old sf and horror magazines then compile them into an anthology. thats dedication and frankly doing those genre fans a service.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by sabredog

If it has been published, it is online and available to be downloaded (in the vast majority of cases).

Not true. If it's popular fiction, yes. Older fiction (pre-2000 or so) that wasn't science fiction or wasn't a bestseller is hit-or-miss. Mostly miss, for the YA stuff that wasn't award-winners. Nonfiction that doesn't have an authorized ebook edition generally doesn't have an unauthorized one either.

Science fiction: almost everything.
NYTimes Bestsellers, most genres: almost everything.

Romance, mystery, thriller: except for officially-released backlists, almost nothing.
Nonfic: If it didn't win any awards, don't count on finding it. If it did, and it's more than 10 years old and has no official ebook release, expect the ebook version available to be scanned and auto-OCRd, or just scanned images.
Comic books: almost all available somewhere. Call 'em a subset of science fiction.
Gaming (RPG, wargame) books: most available; those that aren't, someone'll scrounge up & scan on request. Gaming communities have always been big on sharing materials. (They've also been aware of the need to support the authors & companies that bring them what they want; it's always been a balancing act between sharing & buying. But when buying is impossible, the sharing takes over.)
Children's & teen books: almost nonexistent, even in the science fiction genres, except for the top bestsellers & award-winners.

Public domain nonfic: erratic, and most of what is available, is scan-and-autoOCR at archive.org or google, not decently-formatted ebooks. Post-1923 books in the public domain tend to be locked into paid archives that have researched the copyright status.

[sabredog]

Perhaps you are not looking in the right places then?

Legal and not so legal stuff, yes I agree with your listing.

However, though quality does vary enormously, there are stacks of megatorrent variations available via the darknet if you look hard enough, especially in dark dusty recesses.

[Xanthe]

Violating copyright or not, I give kudos to those folks who scan those OOP books that will never get an official ebook release. You know, those books from authors who only published a couple of books and were never heard from again, or who died young and never fulfilled their literary promise.

Just came across one recently, of a sci-fi paperback that I actually own and have packed away in a box somewhere, and it was good to see that book and that author's name again, and know that others will finally be getting a chance to read that book again.

If I had a scanner, and was willing to dismember my books, I've got a few of them that I would convert to ebooks just to get them back into circulation because you simply can't find them anymore, and I happen to think that having the book available to readers is more important than some publisher sitting on the copyright with the story gathering dust and remaining unavailable.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by carld

Yeah, I meant to add another 0, but thinking about it, there might be millions.

Even tens of millions could be a fraction of all books ever published. Someone at Google estimated that there are 130 million "modern" book titles out there, although I agree with the author of my link who writes that "my gut says this number is too low." Then there are all the world's magazines and newspapers.

As to whether all this is worth reading, interests vary. Most books, not to mention periodicals, are non-fiction. I often want to read an article or book on a topic, even though there are much better articles and books on other topics.

My gut feeling is that the darknet is weighted towards fiction, and mostly for books that sold well, and thus has only a tiny percentage of what I want to read -- although I admit to not really knowing what I am talking about here. I do have plenty of evidence that the great majority of outstanding books are not available for sale, in Kindle format, at amazon.com. If you don't believe me, check out a few randomly choosen twentieth century titles from this list. And for every one on the list I just linked, there are dozens of other history books that got good reviews that year. If it really is true that most of what's worth reading is on the darknet, the darknet must have hundreds of times more than Amazon's Kindle store. Is this plausible?

[wizwor]

Well, I've looked pretty hard for Peggy Bacon's Ghost of Opalina. I can't find a library that will lend me a copy. It was stolen from the library where I read the book as a child. I contacted the original publisher, the people they sold the right to, and a publisher in Minnesota that was going to reprint the book. No luck. I searched online libraries, torrents, and forums. So, there is at least one book that is not out there.

[carld]

@SteveEisenberg

Oh, there's no doubt that Amazon has a LONG way to go with getting books into Kindle format. Have they crossed 1 Million books yet? They were getting close last time I checked.

I'm sure you're right, the darknet probably has many more books than Amazon has available, so it is indeed likely that there are millions of books out there for downloading ... all just guessing on my part. I've browsed around at a couple of sites out of curiosity, but not much, so I'm really not that familiar with that side of the internet.

[taosaur]

Elfwreck's assessment sounds about right. Even titles that make a brief appearance on the internet don't necessarily persist.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Well, I've looked pretty hard for Peggy Bacon's Ghost of Opalina. I can't find a library that will lend me a copy. It was stolen from the library where I read the book as a child. I contacted the original publisher, the people they sold the right to, and a publisher in Minnesota that was going to reprint the book. No luck. I searched online libraries, torrents, and forums. So, there is at least one book that is not out there.

So you know what needs to be done, now

Modified Rule 34: If it exists, there is an ebook of it
Modified Rule 35: If there is no ebook of it, it will be made

You must find a copy of this book, scan it, and upload it (though of course I would never suggest or recommend you do that). With prices in the $300-900 range it'd be pretty expensive to buy if you can't find it in a library, but a scanner setup can be done pretty inexpensively.

[elizilla]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Well, I've looked pretty hard for Peggy Bacon's Ghost of Opalina. I can't find a library that will lend me a copy. It was stolen from the library where I read the book as a child. I contacted the original publisher, the people they sold the right to, and a publisher in Minnesota that was going to reprint the book. No luck. I searched online libraries, torrents, and forums. So, there is at least one book that is not out there.

Wizwor, have you asked your local library whether they can get if via inter-library loan? I have gotten otherwise-unavailable books from my local public library, this way, though it tends to take them a couple weeks to get them.

[wizwor]

I think I did, but it would not hurt to ask again.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Well, I've looked pretty hard for Peggy Bacon's Ghost of Opalina. I can't find a library that will lend me a copy. It was stolen from the library where I read the book as a child. I contacted the original publisher, the people they sold the right to, and a publisher in Minnesota that was going to reprint the book. No luck. I searched online libraries, torrents, and forums. So, there is at least one book that is not out there.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/ghost-.../oclc/01170474

[Giggleton]

What is this illegality you speak of?