Publisher pirates their own books

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by juxtapose

After all, you can get a book faster buying it, then waiting for it to be posted on a torrent site (if it ever is)

And those are the best type of people to get because a big surge in sales in your first week will get you better placement in Amazon's listings. Get that and you'll drag in a lot more buyers who otherwise wouldn't have noticed you.

[Nexutix]

Another form of self-advertising! Weird.

[xg4bx]

this publisher has a totally legit free book program called the Bizarro Brigade. they'll send you a free .pdf and all they ask is that you review it on Amazon or elsewhere. for each review you post you gain "points" which you can exchange for physical books or exclusive ebooks/physical goodies.

to me, this is thinking outside the box. it satisfies peoples lust for freebies and the reviews help them move more legitimate copies. i haven't seen guerilla marketing like this before in the publishing industry.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

If you're going to be like that, copyright infringement has nothing to do with sailing around in boats wearing a pointy hat and pinching stuff from other boats.

If you do the nasty stuff with other peoples boats it's piracy.
If you do it with your own it is called barattry.

so what do we have if authors torrent their own stuff? nasty b(a)rats eh?

[aomaiga3211]

Thank you mention heart

[jhempel24]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

I fail to see how marketing your book to people that don't pay for things will benefit the author in the long run.

Because believe it or not, people do that to actually figure out if they want to support the author or not.

The meager previews you get don't really give a good sense of the book. Plus doing that doesn't mean that you will lose sales. I bet they will almost ALWAYS increase in sales.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by juxtapose

Hrm. I read a piece here about pirating ebooks http://goodereader.com/blog/electron...te-themselves/

Apparently authors are beginning to pirate their own books to give themselves more visible not only to readers but when a an ebook is listed on the torrent and wares sites it often sits high up on the search engine rankings, so the authors main webpage is more likely to show up rather then their competition for competing keywords.

Makes a lot of sense: the larger masses of dumbasses just go to pirate sites when they want books, movies, games, music etc. If you're not there, you're invisible.

[xg4bx]

i'd be lying if i said i never checked out these sites.

however as a result of my curiosity i've been exposed to both authors and entire genres that i never knew existed. i now have a full amazon wishlist and will be heading to a convention next month where i'll be buying copies of some of the books directly from the authors. stuff that i never would have bought otherwise due to either price or available samples not giving me a good feel for the book.

i am now directly involved in helping the aforementioned publisher market their books in an official,albeit underground capacity due to their "pirate" program. the bizarro genre is one i never would have given the time of day to before.

i wish more pubs would think outside the box with marketing or set up "ebook club" subscriptions and the like. if i could give a pub say $20 a month and receive all their books for that month or something i'd do it in a heartbeat. the traditional ways aren't working anymore. unless you're stephen king, good luck getting your book noticed. if authors are resorting to unorthodox marketing and seeing success from it, more power to them.

and just for the record, 99.98% of my ebooks are legitimately aquired but if someone could point me to legitimate sources for something like Pohl's HeeChee saga I'm all ears...

[Toxaris]

Most of the books I read are based on read-say. They are advised to me by friends/collegues and so or I read about it in fora or magazines.
I found out long ago that titles, covers and summaries on the back can be quite misleading. I have had too many books which end up very disappointing. The only times I still by books on title, summary or cover when they are on (big) sale.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

and just for the record, 99.98% of my ebooks are legitimately aquired but if someone could point me to legitimate sources for something like Pohl's HeeChee saga I'm all ears...

Well, you didn't hear it from me but there are rumors that someone once said that their sisters cousins hairdresser had a friend that....

Heck with it. Head over the Baen, look in the author section for Pohl. That's where I got mine. Blasted people get too much of my money as it is.

[Ryvyan]

Most of my e-books are er, from dubious sources. But they have alerted (and in one case, ruined) me to new authors and new genres. I have recommended a few books to friends, and most of us have reading choices that arise pretty much from word-of-mouth recommendations.

And I am sure I will start purchasing the next ebooks for some series based on what I have read, and eventually get around to previous ebooks from said series to replace my dubious copies.

[applepie]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Lately the amount of trash on Amazon has increased so much that I am rarely going to shop for new books there. .

Did you mean free books?

[Joseph R]

Kids and their computers. Back my days,piracy meant we went to the bookstore and copied the cook books by hand!: