There's a better way to beat the ebook pirates

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

You know what? SCREW YOU. You sit here and smugly call people names and then try to act like you are on the side of “good and justice.” I would bet that YOU have more pirated works than anybody on this thread and you’re talking out of guilt. You “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Time after time people are telling you that THEY DO NOT WANT TO SHARE THEIR BOOKS WITH THE WORLD and yet you keep coming back with the same You keep proclaiming that authors aren’t going to write books…well they can STOP and find a full time job. I don’t give a good damn. I can live just fine without their crap and keep my hard earned money in my pocket. You don’t get it, do you?? There are NO AUTHORS without readers and you, my friend, turn my stomach.

I have spent over $300 on books this calendar year and you know what?? If some stupid publisher or author didn’t get my money cause they don’t get the message – well it’s their loss, not mine.

I am SICK TO DEATH of people like YOU calling me a thief because I want the ability to use the items that I PAY FOR as I SEE FIT. If you are so concerned about the pirating, keep your damn manuscript in the damn drawer! I’ve lost thousands of dollars in .LIT books and I refuse to keep losing more. I don’t steal/pirate/whatever ebooks. I don’t need to. I have a damn good job and I can spend my money in whatever manner I please. And I please to spend my money with the companies who actually value me as a customer. If you had a publishing company, you’d never see a DIME of my money. And if I ever find out who you are and that you are part of a publishing company or an author I support – I would stop supporting whatever it is that YOU are attached to.

Er, WTF?? I've never called you names or responded to a single one of your posts. If I touched a nerve, I didn't intend to. If you feel that this incoherent rant helped you work out some of your frustrations, well OK.
I've lost all kinds of money when platforms shifted on me, but that's just the way of the techno world in my book.
I might add that none of this is personal to me . I felt that the rights of creators ought to strongly protected and that arts and the sciences will not flourish if their rights are pirated or "shared'' away. I felt that at least ONE person should advocate this view on a forum where the the IP rights of very authors you profess to care for seem to extend only to the boundaries of what is convenient. Obviously, this kind of dissent is something you can't bear to see expressed, even when you are not the focus of the discussion.
I think this is a good time for me to stop being outspoken on this issue, at least for the night.
Mission accomplished, Kommisar Ms. Joseph. Dissent has been crushed-at least for the evening.

[Cyberman tM]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Presumably, the same way you can run IOS programs on Android devices. Oh wait, you can't.
What about the way you can run Macinintosh programs on Windows machines. Hot damn, you can't do that either. And you can't run Playstation games on XBox.
Could it be that is a lot of device incompatability out there and its just not limited to ebooks? DING DING DING!

Wait a second.

Are you really comparing a BOOK to a PROGRAM?

Seriously? You're comparing a program, which is by it's very nature specifically created for a very limited range of possible hardware, with a BOOK, which is nothing more but a collection of TEXT and pictures and a few markings to enhance the text?

If you'd really wanted to make a fair comparison, you should have chosen file formats - because that's what an eBook is - a file. To be read by a program. Not a program in itself. Not even close.

But files can be exchanged cross-platform. With ease nowadays even. So should eBooks.



(Regarding Code limited to hardware: Yes, I know there is Java. And .Net and perhaps a few more. These are exeptions in that they aren't real programs anymore, but merely instructions for interpreter systems, not the actual CPU.
And yes, I know there are ARM processors who do understand Java Bytecode. But it's not really native. They still translate it.)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

They already are being passed around like popcorn.

Do not attempt to confuse us with facts.

They would be passed around like MORE popcorn. It would get EASIER to find them than typing [bestseller title][ebook] in a Google box. They would be, like, streamed to your Twitter watchlist in 140 character segments.

[Kenneth_irl]

Sorry I haven't had the time to read the whole thread

but,

Steven (Lyle Jordan) privacy is probably the last reason for you not making more money as an author. Let's say that the potential of income that you can make as an author is a vast sea and that the fish in this sea is all potential customers. It seems to me that you are blaming your few bitings on the lack of fish, which is just ridicules, in my opinion, as there is more potential customers than you could ever hope count.

So maybe you should stop blaming pirates on your lack of success, and actual look at the places where you can actual hope to improve your sales, ect. advertisement. Sales is very much about visibility. I only know about you because I saw this thread. So ask yourself this: if I haven't seen it would it even had mattered if I was indeed a pirate?

You're in a tough business Steven and many, many is fishing for the fish. You'll have to stand out to be successful.

Edit: Also on a side note, the fact that you seems to want a policed internet makes me angry, and that turned me off as a potential customer. That is just a scary, scary thought right there.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You take the risk that that your work will be endlessly copied and passed around. If you are just starting out, your intellectual property isn't worth much and you're not losing sales if that happens anyway .

DRM or not, eBook version or not [e.g. Harry Potter], all works are already being passed around. DRM [and in the past copy protection] has always failed to prevent those who want to steal books/software/etc from doing so. If it doesn't actually protect the content and harms the user, then why continue with it?

It's sold as "protection for the author's rights", but I see it as "keeping you in the appropriate walled garden"... you bought a Kindle? Then you're a captive customer for Amazon... bought a Nook? Barnes & Noble has you in their grip (less so, but still generally true)... Kobo... Borders/KoboBooks, etc...

[carld]

DRM won't keep someone the knowledgeable and determined from copying things (though a few DRM systems remain uncracked), but it will prevent the casual user from making copies, and for most publishers that seems to be reason enough to use it.

[bear4hunter]

World-known author Paulo Coelho has an interesting view on pirates
I started a thread here.

[Freeshadow]

(about books no longer d/l able after purchase)

Originally Posted by stonetools

didn't know that. Sounds like the rare case to me, though.

you should know , as you 've been already told in another thread(s). with buckets of examples from all fields of media.
And you come up with your imaginary rarity again

turning a blind eye on evidence gives you the credibility of a bunch of stoned fools coincidence or a typo?

apart from that: MrsJoseph

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Baen may be future: or he may just be an outlier.

Baen is a publisher that got bigger when other publishers got smaller. Whatever the reasons, other publishers should be falling over themselves to figure out how to apply its methods to their businesses.

It may just be that a publisher of speculative fiction, with an emphasis on military sf, who spends time cultivating a following in the techno-geek community, can get away with going DRM free.

Because techno-geeks are known for their devotion to copyright law.

Oh, wait. That's backwards: Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet. Why is it that the most-pirated genre is the one having the most commercial success with ebooks?

I note some of the passionate anti DRMists are also devoted followers of Baen.

And so are some of the avid pirates. Pretty much everyone who loves ebooks, looks to Baen as the company that's doing it right.

A big publishing company, with many lines of books, has different interests and must take a different approach.

Sure. Why aren't they figuring out which part of Baen's model *does* work for them--the non-DRM, the multiformat availability, the open forum to get feedback from customers, the bundled collection of ebooks for a discount, the e-arcs that cost twice as much as the finished book, the solid and growing backlist, the free sampler library, the CD-with-hardcover collections ... you seem to be saying that none of these would be any good for bigger publishing companies.

I didn't think a single one of Elfmark and Xenophon's choices were for general nonfiction or general fiction-the two biggest categories of books published out there.

How about "romance"--another huge category? There are more than a hundred DRM-free romance publishers, who all seem to be growing.

BeWrite is general fiction. So's BooksForABuck, and a couple of others on the lists. Double Dragon does general nonfic, and I've seen some others; I'll try to track some down. (They mostly have PDFs only.)

Publishers who offer nonfic w/o DRM:
Stenhouse Publishing: professional development books and videos by teachers and for teachers.
SynergEbooks nonfic & multi-genre fiction.
EReads.com, some of everything. The eBook Sale, similar. Clocktower Books. Hard Shell Word Factory. Lachesis Publishing. Whiskey Creek Press. Charles River Press.

There's no shortage of publishers who've decided they're better off without DRM. And strangely, they're not the ones issuing press releases that say they can't increase author royalties because fighting piracy costs too much.

[Sydney's Mom]

Oh, this is so unfair! i can't give Mrs. Joseph karma because I agreed with something else she said a couple days ago.

MRS. JOSEPH, YOU ROCK!!!!!!

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Oh, this is so unfair! i can't give Mrs. Joseph karma because I agreed with something else she said a couple days ago.

MRS. JOSEPH, YOU ROCK!!!!!!

As I understand it, you need to give at least 2 (or maybe 3) other people Karma before you will be able to give karma to Mrs. Joseph again.

[dreams]

Thread closed and under review by the Moderation Team.