Maggie Stiefvater writes of her experience with piracy

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Or the author spends 1/3 of the book repeating from the previous books.
Not bad if the books come out years apart, horrible if the books are coming out every three months.

Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines of another reason for the death spiral: quality control. I'd bet that the first book of a series is labored over to a much greater extent than subsequent ones, as the author starts to crank them out.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm not the target market for this kind of book, but offhand I can think of two reasons for tanking series sales.

The first is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Authors liked series because the books were pre-sold, but readers got tired of serious that just kept spinning their wheels and got nowhere, or worse, never concluded. They got wary; they won't invest in a series without some assurance that the series will both maintain the pace and conclude.

And the flip side of pre-sold is that any series will lose readers by attrition for various reasons, but books subsequent to the first won't add readers. It's built-in obsolescence.

One way series can hurt an author that is completely unrelated to piracy: Go check out the author I mentioned, Jeremy Robinson on Amazon.

He writes schlocky super-science thrillers and bug-eyed monster books that look like a lot of fun. But then most of them are followed by the dreaded parenthesis. You know. The ones that say (A Such and Such book). And he wrote several series concurrently. When you look at a list of his books, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Even the books without the parentheses may be part of a series, but not labelled as such. I see that and just decide to skip him altogether.

Also, reading a novel that is basically a Godzilla movie might be fun. But I don't want to read five books of it.

[rixte]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Another article about this, this time by The Guardian: 'We're told to be grateful we even have readers': pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series

Even though I quibbled with the author's methods, I can see that piracy can be one of the factors impacting future books in a series. On the other hand, author Jeremy Robinson also mentioned that he will stop writing series, and piracy wasn't the problem.

The comments on that first one were full of "this is why there should only be physical books, no more ebooks" solutions

I still think the Maggie S. argument is 100% flawed and doesn't prove what she thinks it proves.

What is most frustrating about these articles is that very thing - I want to see proof and most of the actual statistics and proof lean toward the piracy doesn't have a significant impact. And then we get authors like this one "Lam said that she had a trilogy cancelled through her first publisher three weeks after book two came out. “That’s an instance where if even a couple hundred had pirated instead of buying, it had repercussions. Long-term, that publisher went bankrupt and I re-sold it to my new publisher, but it was still a challenge at the time. Not everyone gets a second chance.”"

... and it's like, ok, but where's the proof that your book was even PIRATED? Isn't it more likely that nobody read it, pirated or not?

(That's backed up by the fact that I went to goodreads and looked at the trilogy she had under her name, the first book had 2312 ratings and the second had only 825 ratings. That's not piracy - that's only 1/3 of the people reading the second book as the first. And they were published in 2013 and 2014, so it's not a matter of not enough time for the reviews to catch up.)

Which, again, may not be the fault of the book itself ... they all look like they got good reviews ... but of the marketing by the publishing firm or the timing on release where it got swallowed up by something else that came out at the same time or whatever (I'd certainly never heard of the book before and it looks like one I'd be interested in). There's just nothing in there that makes me believe that a book that was ignored/forgotten in the legit publishing world was secretly a hit in the underground piracy world and 'but for the piracy of the pirates' would have gone on to commercial success. It just doesn't work like that.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by copyrite

I bought all of Bruce Springsteen's 45s for the "B" sides.

I don't buy free Kindle books like I used to... and after the first couple of times using Instafreebie and inadvertently getting signed up for newsletters I refuse to get any free books from that site!

I get a lot of eBooks from Overdrive.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by rixte

The comments on that first one were full of "this is why there should only be physical books, no more ebooks" solutions

I never said it was a good article...

[ZodWallop]

One sideways point I got out of the article. There is this quote:

Shannon wrote on Twitter that “the thing that’s really exhausting about piracy is that authors are often not allowed to be upset by theft of their work. If we ask people not to do it, no matter how courteously, we’re told we should have more compassion or be grateful we even have readers. Outside the creative industry, people broadly dislike theft. Within the creative industry, it becomes a grey area where people aren’t sure.”

“Authors who ask you not to pirate are not attacking people who are too poor to afford books, or people who genuinely can’t access libraries,” wrote Shannon

The thing is, I do believe that if authors gripe about piracy, they do get grief. An author I've never heard of has caused this thread, for instance.

Would it come off as rude if an author were to tweet or write on their blog or whatever something along the lines of "If you can't afford my books and can not get them from the library, I'd rather you not read my books at all than pirate them"?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

One sideways point I got out of the article. There is this quote:



The thing is, I do believe that if authors gripe about piracy, they do get grief. An author I've never heard of has caused this thread, for instance.

Would it come off as rude if an author were to tweet or write on their blog or whatever something along the lines of "If you can't afford my books and can not get them from the library, I'd rather you not read my books at all than pirate them"?

They have said worse. "If you read free books at all then you are not my reader. I don't want you reading my book. "

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

They have said worse. "If you read free books at all then you are not my reader. I don't want you reading my book. "

Yes, but that was an author being an a-hole as you were getting the freebies from a legitimate source.

I don't think piracy is the problem with her sales that Maggie S does. But if I were an author and knocked myself out writing a bestseller and the follow-ups didn't quite meet expectations, I would probably be furious seeing my work given away for free too.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yes, but that was an author being an a-hole as you were getting the freebies from a legitimate source.

I don't think piracy is the problem with her sales that Maggie S does. But if I were an author and knocked myself out writing a bestseller and the follow-ups didn't quite meet expectations, I would probably be furious seeing my work given away for free too.

Hey, I think I would have the opposite reaction. I would be dancing on the ceiling with joy because it means I've made the big time.

[darryl]

But of course it is as it is. Any serious author knows or at least should know the market into which they are trying to sell their books. That piracy exists. That books are easy to pirate, particularly ebooks. That It is easy to find pirate copies of just about anything. That despite this the vast majority of people don't resort to obtaining pirate copies. That the higher they price their book, the less copies they will sell, and that those not buying will either not bother with the book, will get it from some other legitimate source which results in them getting less (library) or nothing (used), or will pirate it. These are the facts of todays market, like it or not. Yet the Big 5 response has been to substantially raise ebook prices, to the detriment of their authors. Some of whom blame unknown levels of piracy which they knew existed before they even wrote the book.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by darryl

That despite this the vast majority of people don't resort to obtaining pirate copies

I think you just stumbled into a reason, I hadn't thought of before, why the Stiefvater experiment worked. Since common perception is of book piracy being a bit unusual, the mass uploading of damaged copies didn't cause quite as much outrage as it would have if music had been similarly messed with.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by darryl

...the higher they price their book, the less copies they will sell...

That's definitely true for me. I don't buy hardbacks. I don't buy the first edition paperbacks (I forgot the name they call these). I wait for the "Mass Market" paperbacks. And then, only once they've been out for a while and I can buy them used. There are so many books out there, that I never need to obtain a book when it's brand new and super expensive. I can wait a while. When they price eBook versions higher than used mass market paperbacks, I usually go for the used paperback instead. Of get the book from a library.

I don't go to movie theaters. Or even buy DVDs anymore. Just too expensive for what it's worth to me. I wait until it comes out at a cheap streaming price or get it for $1+ at one of those RedBox kiosks.

I'm in no hurry. I still have a VHS tape I made of "Kiss of the Spider Women" a couple of decades ago. Unfortunately, my VCR died several years back. And the tape in the VHS cassette has probably rotted. Maybe I delayed watching this particular movie a tad too long...

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by haertig

That's definitely true for me. I don't buy hardbacks. I don't buy the first edition paperbacks (I forgot the name they call these). I wait for the "Mass Market" paperbacks. And then, only once they've been out for a while and I can buy them used. There are so many books out there, that I never need to obtain a book when it's brand new and super expensive.

Smart marketing strategy is to get the most revenue from people willing to pay top dollar, and get some additional revenue from those who are not.

As for used, just as you give price support to Toyota Motor Corp. if you buy a used Civic, you support the price of the hardback when you buy the cheapest copy seen at bookfinder.com.

Allowing purchasers to pay what they can afford isn't a pricing bug, but a socially positive pricing feature.

Piracy -- now that is a bug. While it never will go away completely, it looks to me that Ms. Stiefvater has invented a good way to reduce it.

Few of us can afford to drive the world's best cars, but everyone (except in countries lacking either freedom to read or good libraries) can afford the world's best books. This should be celebrated.

The people to complain about are the university publishers, and Amazon, whose most popular eBooks are typically never made available to libraries at any price.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by rixte

I still think the Maggie S. argument is 100% flawed and doesn't prove what she thinks it proves.

Why, TBH it's the best comparison study I've seen.

Book 2 - Control, sales for paper & ebook should drop off from this

Book 3 - Released as normal
- paper sales similar to book 2
- ebook sales 50% of book 2
Book 4 - Actively tried anti-piracy measures
- Paper book sold out (only a 50% print run based on sales of book 3), reprinted
- ebook sales back to previous levels

Sure, some of those additional ebook sales could have been from people who wanted the paper book and hard numbers or at least a % split paper/ebook would be helpful, but it seems to have a better control method than any other study I've seen.

But I don't get your reasoning for 100% flawed?

[darryl]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I think you just stumbled into a reason, I hadn't thought of before, why the Stiefvater experiment worked. Since common perception is of book piracy being a bit unusual, the mass uploading of damaged copies didn't cause quite as much outrage as it would have if music had been similarly messed with.

But of course the experiment didn't work, as others have pointed out. According to her article:

1. Sales were usually evenly divided between print and ebook sales;
2. The second book in the Series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, which she referred to as BLLB, sold twice the number of print books as ebooks;
3. An earc was released for BLLB.
3. The Publisher, for some strange reason, cut the print run for the next book to less than half of the print run for BLLB.
4. The print run for the final book sold out in 2 days. Sales were again evenly divided between print books and ebooks.

It is unclear whether her anti-piracy efforts had any effect at all. I suspect not making an earc available for the final ebook did help. As discussed in a number of posts, when something is not available through legitimate means but pirate versions are available, some fans will do just about anything to get the book. I doubt the fake ebook posting had any meaningful effect at all. A much smaller print run was sold out quickly, and ebook sales were back in sync, but not in volume, with print sales of less than half the previous book. This experiment seems to tell us nothing except perhaps that earcs are not good ideas.

On a more minor and perplexing note, it seems both the author and her brother were obsessed with pdf, a format that I and many others avoid like the plague for reading books. Many vendors no longer even offer this format. Do publishers offer earcs only as pdf's? Are there groups online who prefer this format for ebooks?