Is Rapidshare a promoter of e-book piracy?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

No one is asking that all books be $10 or less, just that as a whole books come down in price. Seems silly when some places want $27 for the ebook, when I can buy the paperbook from any store for $20 less.

Oh, certainly. I think as a rule, no one can see paying more for an ebook than the paperback edition.

My point was simply that some books by nature are more expensive and will carry a higher price, and the reasons for that will be true whether they are paper or electronic volumes.

I've seen a lot of what I can only call wishful thinking about how cheap an ebook can be, and still actually cover its costs and make money for the publisher.
______
Dennis

[Patricia]

I've downloaded from rapidshare.

An antique needlework group that I belonged to, used to upload scans of Victorian needlework books for the benefit of its members. The scans were all in the public domain, and the group's moderators took enormous care to be sure of this.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Oh, certainly. I think as a rule, no one can see paying more for an ebook than the paperback edition.

My point was simply that some books by nature are more expensive and will carry a higher price, and the reasons for that will be true whether they are paper or electronic volumes.

I've seen a lot of what I can only call wishful thinking about how cheap an ebook can be, and still actually cover its costs and make money for the publisher.

I won't spend more than $5 normally on ebooks, but that isn't so much because they're ebooks, but rather because I don't like spending more than that on books period. At the rate I read, I couldn't afford to be spending $10 or more on a book (I make minimum wage, and read like 500 pages a day. Lots gets read, and not a lot to pay for it). Now, there are tons of books in my price range, so that's fine.

I do feel that ebooks should be cheaper than paper books, but really with no set price range.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Some people feel better about their own poor choices if they can convince themselves that everyone else was making the same mistakes.
With that said, I have no idea if the majority of RapidShare files are infringing or not. But I doubt anyone else on here really knows either.

...Oddly using the same reasoning the "rapidshare infringers" do, namely, "If I X [have no idea about something], then so must everyone else".
So yes, it's pretty hard to defend against your claim that "you can't know for certain that you have full information (or even a representative sample of sufficient size)", specifically because you state beforehand (as well as afterwards) that "you doubt this to be true".

Premise/dogmatic assumption 1: Every assertion made by every MR member can be doubted.
Premise 2: Some assertion.
Conclusion: I'm unconvinced.

Exciting stuff indeed.

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

For technical books, that pricing may not be ridiculous.

All of these costs occur before the book is turned into a PDF file that can be sent to a printer as input to the imagesetter that will generated the plates the book is printed from. How much the book is priced at will be determined by what it costs to produce, and how many copies the publisher expects to sell.

Technical books are by nature expensive. They are costly to produce, go out of date quickly, and appeal to a relatively limited market.

[/b]

That may be how the publisher determines the suggested retail price, but the market determines actual selling price. And what I think is going on is that these publishers still don't get e-book pricing. Lots of wishful thinking going on.

Prices will either be set at something reasonable- which is probably less than $10 per book, or people won't buy it. Or they will pirate it- tech books are widely distributed on the newsgroups and the web.

Cluelessness abounds in today's publishing industry when it comes to e-book pricing. Some of the stuff is just ridiculous- last year I paid $65 or so for a print copy of 'Mac OSX Internals.' Big heavy book- wanted a copy I could read online. A month or so later, the company released a pdf copy. Was it free for me since I bought the book? No- they wanted $45 for the pdf (I called about this). So, I grabbed a pirated copy, which is within my rights, according to US laws.

Talk all you want about morality and the poor publishing industry, but look at this market pragmatically- few people will buy overpriced e-books, even if the publishers whine about their costs.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

That may be how the publisher determines the suggested retail price, but the market determines actual selling price. And what I think is going on is that these publishers still don't get e-book pricing. Lots of wishful thinking going on.

Pricing hinges on three factors:

1. How much does the object cost to make? That imposes a lower limit - if you want to stay in business, you don't charge less than your Cost Of Goods Sold.

2. How many of whatever it is do you expect to sell? The more you sell, the larger a base over which you can allocate your overhead, and the cheaper you can price, given factor 1.

3. How much do you think the customer will be willing to pay? You charge what you think the market will bear. Sometimes you're wrong. But in technical books, price is usually not the most important factor in the purchase decision.

I'm a computer geek, sysadmin variety. I assume books I buy relevant to my interest will be relatively expensive. But my decision will be based on which book on the particular topic I think best covers the topic. I won't buy a cheaper volume simply because it's cheaper, if I don't feel the quality is there.

Prices will either be set at something reasonable- which is probably less than $10 per book, or people won't buy it. Or they will pirate it- tech books are widely distributed on the newsgroups and the web.

Reread my original post. It may not be possible to price particular volumes at $10/book or less if you expect to stay in business. You aren't going to sell enough copies, because the market for technical titles may not be that big.

And yes, they get pirated to newsgroups and the web. But I think you'll find the majority of buyers do pay for the books. First, they are often getting them through part of a corporate deal (my last employer had a corporate account with O'Reilly for their Safari ebook library). Second, they may well be deductible expenses come tax time.

Cluelessness abounds in today's publishing industry when it comes to e-book pricing. Some of the stuff is just ridiculous- last year I paid $65 or so for a print copy of 'Mac OSX Internals.' Big heavy book- wanted a copy I could read online. A month or so later, the company released a pdf copy. Was it free for me since I bought the book? No- they wanted $45 for the pdf (I called about this). So, I grabbed a pirated copy, which is within my rights, according to US laws.

Whether it's within your rights under US laws is questionable. Expecting the publisher to give you a free copy of the electronic version because you bought the paper version in understandable, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any publisher to do it.

Talk all you want about morality and the poor publishing industry, but look at this market pragmatically- few people will buy overpriced e-books, even if the publishers whine about their costs.

The question is what overpriced is. My basic point is that there isn't an all inclusive definition. The fact that a price is higher than you wish to pay does not, ipso facto, make the book over priced for everone, and without knowing the production budget on the particular book, you have no way to tell whether the publisher could price the book at a price you think is reasonable and stay in business.

Pragmatically, if I'm the buyer, I want the cheapest price. Pragmatically, If I'm the publisher, I need to make money to stay in business, and I won't charge a price where I'll lose money on the deal.
______
Dennis

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

So yes, it's pretty hard to defend against your claim that

You don't really seem to have any idea of what claims I'm making (or didn't make). Do you have a point anymore, or are you just rambling?

[charleski]

That is such a rubbish NYT article. It's little more than the 'reporter' rewriting a press release, and Randall Stross should hang his head in shame.

Baen has been selling DRM-free eBooks for years now. What's more, Baen publishes SF, and is anyone going to try to tell me that the sort of people who read SF are not the same sort who could easily locate and download pirated material if they wished? The fact is that enough of them don't to allow Baen to keep making a profit and stay in business. They don't because they respect the publisher and they respect the authors. At least part of this respect comes from the fact that Baen in turn respects its readership enough not to cripple its wares with DRM.

Yes, you can search out torrents that will allow you to download thousands of books, which you will probably never read and would not have paid for. This means absolutely nothing to the realities of the book trade.

The book trade needs to face up to reality fast, because running around waving its hands will just mean it lands up in the same mess as the recording companies.

eBooks must be:
1) Cheap. Yes, we aren't stupid, and we realise that a large part of the price of a book is amortisation of the non-material production costs. But when I can buy the hardback of Dan Brown's latest for almost half the cost of the eBook (from the same bookshop, in this case Waterstones), then something is seriously wrong. Stop playing pricing games and peg the eBook price at a standard discount of the price of the cheapest material version to reflect the considerable savings in production and inventory costs.
2) DRM-free and convenient. Buyers should not have to jump through hoops to enjoy the books they have bought. They should not have to worry about what happens if they buy a different reader or move to a different computer. You are NOT SELLING A LICENCE, you are selling a BOOK. Once you've sold it, then that specific book belongs to its new owner and you have nothing more to do with it.

The answers are so, so simple. And at the root of them is the fact that if you want your customers to respect you, then you have to respect your customers first.

[Ervserver]

The USA has recently made strides in going after secret Swiss bank accounts maybe the RIAA and publishers will demand they go after Rapidshare and arrest everyone who downloads from there. More prisons would have to be built first though

[GhostHawk]

Well I'm going to get flamed for this, that's ok. I've been flamed before.
But I'd like to add a disclaimer. "This is NOT personal"

I'm too new here to dislike any of you. My opinion of your opinion is worth what any opinion is worth, nada.

So here is my opinion. First off, leave the laws out of it.

1 Hardcover's sell for more than a paperback book because
A: It costs more to make and ship.
B: They used to release to the market before the mass market versions.

2 Paperback's should sell for less than a hardcover and more than a Ebook because
A: It costs more to make and ship than an Ebook, yet less than hardcover.
B: It too "could" release to the market sooner than Ebooks, and after hardcovers.

3 Ebooks cost virtually nothing to produce and ship, they are a digital copy.
The only legitimate cost of an ebook should be the authors royalty.
Period.

So, if Dan Brown's royalty for a Hardcover which sells for 27$ is 10%
Or a paperback which sells for 8 - 12$
The Ebook version should sell for less than 3$.
How much could even be time based. Your choice, pay a premium for instant access, or wait and get it for a reduced price.

Cut out the BS, cut out the middle men, cut out the price gouging. And most people will find its easier to buy than pirate. And most authors will find they get more exposure, and more people reading their books.

Look at the Baen free library! (which btw is how I got started reading ebooks)
This is the Information age, the days when you can keep a book locked in a cage by DRM are numbered.

(Climbs off soapbox)
Thank you very much for your time all, good evening!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

3 Ebooks cost virtually nothing to produce and ship, they are a digital copy.
The only legitimate cost of an ebook should be the authors royalty.
Period.

This has been discussed here several times. Ebooks do take time to produce; conversion from print-ready formats to (non-print-sized-PDF) ebook formats takes editing skills and special programs. It's not a particularly difficult set of skills, nor are they expensive programs, but it's another phase of production that has to be budgeted, especially if done for many books.

NEW ebooks being produced at the same time as new books, have minimal conversion/production costs. They still have distribution costs--someone has to manage the sales, host the file exchanges, code the search engine and all that--but we pretty much agree those are substantially less than physical bookstore costs, and even less than warehouse inventory costs.

Ebooks made from not-new books are often made from scratch; the digital copy may not exist. (Even for fairly recent books. Publishers don't keep their print-ready copies hanging around indefinitely, waiting for the possibility that the book will need a reprint.) If the book's more than 10 years old, you can expect it has to be scanned, OCR'd, and (theoretically) proofread; there's a good chance of this if it's as little as 5 years old.

Scan-OCR-Proofread-Convert a book is, at a bare minimum, 5 hours of work--if you've got a crew of incredibly skilled technicians working on it, and the original is of a style/quality that scans well. An average novel, converted with an expected commercial level of skill, should take 7-15 hours. (Now, that's a one-time cost for as many copies as sell. However, it means they're not going to bother for books that won't sell, and they're probably putting money into advertising or other promotions to make sure it does sell.)

Textbooks or other strangely-formatted or image-heavy books would take a lot longer.

DRM costs money. I think DRM is basically a gov't-supported virus, but the fact is: it's common in the industry, and most forms of it aren't free. It adds to the cost of the ebook.

And publishers do have to consider: is the ebook sale a missing print sale? If it is, can they make a profit on ebook sales alone?

[GhostHawk]

Elfwreck, granted, turning an existing paper book into an Ebook will have some costs involved. How much is partially dependent on how many copies it gets spread over.

Spreading 2 -5,000$ over 100,000 copies gets the cost per copy down pretty low.

The fact remains from what I see the vast majority of the cost of a new E-book is not the Authors Royalties. Its publishing houses, middlemen, and the big distributors.

And while I don't mind seeing an author I love get their share, I don't see why I should make anyone else rich.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

3 Ebooks cost virtually nothing to produce and ship, they are a digital copy.
The only legitimate cost of an ebook should be the authors royalty.
Period.

Flatly wrong.

There are an assortment of costs that are incurred by any book, whether it is issued in paper or not.

There will be the cost of acquisition, as the publisher offers a contract and provides an advance against royalties for the rights to offer the books in specified formats and locations.

There will be development costs, as the manuscript is line edited by an editor, then copy edited and proof read when an acceptable manuscript draft is arrived at. An art director will design a cover, and likely commission an illustrator or photographer for it. There may be interior graphics as well, and another book designer will do the interior design. There will be lawyers involved in the contract, and rights and permissions people. The book will need to be marked up and typeset when a final manuscript is approved, and the files generated that can be handed to printers. And there will be an allocated share of the overhead of the publisher - rental on office space, electricity and phone bills, general expenses not allocatable specifically to a particular book...

All of these costs are there even if the book is not actually printed, bound, warehoused, and distributed, and is instead issued as an ebook. The costs, together with the publisher's best guess on the number of copies the book will sell, will determine the suggested retail price.

Assuming the author's royalty is the only legitimate cost of an ebook demonstrates ignorance of the publication process.
______
Dennis

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Cut out the BS, cut out the middle men, cut out the price gouging. And most people will find its easier to buy than pirate. And most authors will find they get more exposure, and more people reading their books.

Well said!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Elfwreck, granted, turning an existing paper book into an Ebook will have some costs involved. How much is partially dependent on how many copies it gets spread over.

Spreading 2 -5,000$ over 100,000 copies gets the cost per copy down pretty low.

If you are an author or a publisher, you wish you have actual sales of 100,000 copies of a book. That puts you in bestseller territory, and you break out the champagne.

For books by new authors and midlist titles, assume 5,000 - 10,000 copies is more realistic. What do your costs look like spread over that base?

The fact remains from what I see the vast majority of the cost of a new E-book is not the Authors Royalties. Its publishing houses, middlemen, and the big distributors.

And while I don't mind seeing an author I love get their share, I don't see why I should make anyone else rich.

And if you take the publishers, distributors, and retailers out of the picture, just how does the author you love sell books?

Sure, an author can write books, do their own ebook conversions, and offer their work for sale over their own website. MR's Steve Jordan does just that.

But for Steve, it's at best a part time occupation. He has a day job, and the money he makes from selling his books doesn't do a lot more than cover his costs. He's highly unlikely to make a living as a freelance writer of fiction going the self-published route.

If you're an author, your biggest problem is simply letting the audience that might want to buy your books know you exist, and having a means to sell to them. That service is what publishers, middlemen, and distributors provide.
______
Dennis