Maggie Stiefvater writes of her experience with piracy

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by haertig

After all, they hurt the authors and publishers who'd certainly rather sell their books for profit than lend then for free.

Some authors feel that way. But libraries buy a lot of books. And when it comes to eBooks, libraries pay a lot more for each copy (compensated for by paying less for rent, utilities, staff, etc.).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Philippe D.

Not sure iTunes is priced at whatever the market price should be

Music sold by Apple is too expensive given that it's lossy. You don't even get CD quality. You get music that's less than it should be. Would you like to buy an eBook to find it's not all there?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Blossom

You have to look at the target of her audience. I find young people of today do not care about piracy.

I think you are right. That's why recorded music has experienced a big revenue decline in the last twenty years. Some people here say they can fight back with lower prices and ease of purchasing. They have. I can, and do, download, or buy the CD, for a new Broadway musical, for, after inflation, less money than I could 20 years ago. But this caused Broadway to shift how it gets revenue. So we can no longer afford to go to the show. How some people here can't see a piracy problem is beyond me.

Originally Posted by Blossom

I think her experiment was a failure personally

I believe it. I love it. And -- I think it can be replicated!

Here's my unsolicited advice to authors and publishers. For an author's first book, don't worry about piracy. But to reduce piracy against a publisher's successful authors, hire a few white hat hackers to deliberately upload damaged copies. Sometimes they can repeat chapters. Sometimes, skip pages. Randomly change the names of secondary characters. Some things, like adding insults into the faked books, should be off limits. But generally let a small anti-piracy staff use their imaginations to make the pirate reader's experience one of risked frustration.

Will pirates fight back by posting notices identifying genuine copies? Yes, so post notices misidentifying the genuine copies.

Nasty? Nasty is arresting people. Nasty is raiding a family's college fund by fining it for piracy. I hate that stuff. My proposal would radically cut piracy without breaking up families or threatening anyone's future.

What about music and movies? Ethical hacking to combat piracy won't work well with them because people listen to a song a great many times, and, generally, watch movies multiple times. So the relative cost of listening or watching once, to see if the download is genuine, is small. Flooding pirate sites with fakes should be uniquely effective with books because re-reading is so much less common than re-listening.

[Deskisamess]

I think you are right. That's why recorded music has experienced a big revenue decline in the last twenty years.

There is less demand to purchase music if I can find and stream what I want to hear via one of the free streaming services or a paid version.

[haertig]

Price does make a difference in whether I will buy or forego something. For movies, I can't think of the last time I stepped into a horribly overpriced movie theater. Decades. I used to buy the DVD's, but after a while I realized that for something that I only watch once (99% of movies), even the cost of a DVD is too high. So now I wait for them to appear on Netflix, or even cable TV and watch them then. Books, since I'm not a fast reader, my purchases probably don't make any difference to anybody. I don't read fast enough to matter. And since I read a book only once, I search out used paperbacks or inexpensive eBooks. Music is kind of the same thing, but for different reasons.

I rarely buy audio these days, but I used to when I was younger. This is not because it is too expensive though. I think MP3's are priced reasonably. I just don't like the majority of them. For a while I was a holdout from the old rock-n-roll days, and would buy MP3's for music I listened to back in the 70's. But once Disco started, music took a nosedive for me. Now we have Rap and other such trash that I wouldn't listen to if you paid ME. I now much prefer the classics. Even with this, I don't go out buying a lot of Debussy, Schubert, etc. MP3's. I buy the piano sheet music and learn to perform it myself. Now THIS is bang for your buck. A few dollars for some sheet music that keeps me happy and entertained for many months. It takes that long for me to get a difficult Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, etc. piece up to performance level. [ EDIT - I guess when you add in the up-front cost to buy a good piano, then the bang for your buck of performing your own classical music goes out the window. But hey, it was a nice train of thought before it derailed! ]

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

I agree with much of what you say here, so will focus on where we disagree. If book publishers were aiming at setting up Apple as competition for Amazon, they certainly have a funny idea of competition. Certainly there would be no price competition at a retail level nor of course at a non-existent wholesale level. Even competition on other things than price would be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant. What form do you think this competition would have taken? What benefits would it have had for the public?

I also find it surprising that you look at successful litigation by the Dept of Justice in a very straight forward price fixing cartel case, and say that Amazon had to use "their contacts in the US government" to have its valid and obvious complaint investigated. I'm sure both Apple and Amazon, like most large corporates, have their contacts in the US government, but I am not aware of any evidence that Amazon or any officials behaved improperly. Nor why Amazon's mysterious contacts were so much more effective than Apple's in this instance. I would be interested in the basis of this particular assertion. Likewise for the assertion that the publishers got their agency model pricing from Amazon?

I totally agree with you so far as the statements in your last paragraph are concerned.

You do know that the US government's case against Apple and the publishers was based on work done by Amazon lawyers don't you? That came out about a year after Cote's ruling.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-...ent-1410217281

So yes, it was very much a case using Amazon's contacts with the US government. Bezos has been much more heavily involved with government lobbying that Jobs was. I suspect it's one of the major driving forces behind him buying the Washington Post rather than say a newspaper on the West Coast where Amazon is based.

You are not aware that the contracts with amazon for the big 5 includes agency pricing? It's been that way since 2014/2015 when first Hachette and then the other 4 renegotiated the deals under court order.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...ublishing.html


As is pointed out in a number of more recent articles, it's a big winner for Amazon since they don't have to worry about cutting profit margins to get market share, they get a steady 30%.

[darryl]

@pwalker8. I may have seen the WSJ article at the time, though I can't recall doing so. Unfortunately it is now behind a paywall. However, I did find this one by Kirsten Reach, then an editor at Melville House. https://www.mhpbooks.com/wsj-editori...es-government/ There was a further link to the original article in this piece which was to a site down for maintenance. But even from this I see why the WSJ article would not be memorable to me even if I had read it. We both have our prejudices on this topic, and in the case of this article I think yours have lead you to unwarranted conclusions. If a company like Amazon, or Apple for that matter, want the DOJ to take action, they have their lawyers prepare a detailed brief on why they should. The article, at least the extract I was able to read, shows nothing more that that Amazon's lawyers did a good job at convincing them. There is absolutely nothing to indicate special treatment for Amazon.

The WSJ article does claim that:

The irony is that over the same 2009-10 period Amazon was also exploring a conversion to agency contracts.

This does not of course justify your assertion that the Publishers got their agency pricing model from Amazon? Is it in part of the article I could not access? Though I must confess that based on the little I was able to read it seems to be little more than a biased hit piece. The first phrase extracted in the article that I could read was

In February 2010 Amazon posed as the victim.

Hardly a shining example of unbiased journalism.

And yes, of course I'm aware that Amazon now has agency contracts with the Big 5. The Court order prohibited this for a time. Once re-negotiation could take place without the constraints of the Court Order all publishers sought and were allowed agency contracts. And yes, this was wonderful for Amazon, and I'm sure Amazon realised it at the time, even if few of the rest of us did. Amazon has been a big winner from agency. The Slate article you linked to was quite good, unlike the WSJ one. I loved this quote, which I had not seen before.

Amazon argues that cheaper e-books are actually better for everyone; it claims a 33 percent decrease in e-book prices translates to 1.74 times as many sales, prompting a 16 percent increase in overall revenue.

The fact that Amazon has benefited from agency shines little light on the negotiations.

I remain interested in the questions I raised about the argument that Apple's entry into the market would be good for competition. That is, what form do you think this competition would have taken? What benefits would it have had for the public?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

@pwalker8. I may have seen the WSJ article at the time, though I can't recall doing so. Unfortunately it is now behind a paywall. However, I did find this one by Kirsten Reach, then an editor at Melville House. https://www.mhpbooks.com/wsj-editori...es-government/ There was a further link to the original article in this piece which was to a site down for maintenance. But even from this I see why the WSJ article would not be memorable to me even if I had read it. We both have our prejudices on this topic, and in the case of this article I think yours have lead you to unwarranted conclusions. If a company like Amazon, or Apple for that matter, want the DOJ to take action, they have their lawyers prepare a detailed brief on why they should. The article, at least the extract I was able to read, shows nothing more that that Amazon's lawyers did a good job at convincing them. There is absolutely nothing to indicate special treatment for Amazon.

The WSJ article does claim that:



This does not of course justify your assertion that the Publishers got their agency pricing model from Amazon? Is it in part of the article I could not access? Though I must confess that based on the little I was able to read it seems to be little more than a biased hit piece. The first phrase extracted in the article that I could read was Hardly a shining example of unbiased journalism.

And yes, of course I'm aware that Amazon now has agency contracts with the Big 5. The Court order prohibited this for a time. Once re-negotiation could take place without the constraints of the Court Order all publishers sought and were allowed agency contracts. And yes, this was wonderful for Amazon, and I'm sure Amazon realised it at the time, even if few of the rest of us did. Amazon has been a big winner from agency. The Slate article you linked to was quite good, unlike the WSJ one. I loved this quote, which I had not seen before. The fact that Amazon has benefited from agency shines little light on the negotiations.

I remain interested in the questions I raised about the argument that Apple's entry into the market would be good for competition. That is, what form do you think this competition would have taken? What benefits would it have had for the public?

Here is the specific quote

" ...
So in February 2010 Amazon posed as the victim, and associate general counsel David Zapolsky submitted a confidential white paper to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice's antitrust division on "the collective nature of the publishers' action to take control of digital book pricing."

DoJ then picked up Amazon's legal argument and used it to sue Apple. DoJ claims that the iPad and the publishers' acceptance of Apple's new arrangement "forced" Amazon to flip to the agency model and thus higher (albeit temporary) consumer prices.
... "

No ambiguity or personal prejudices here. They name the specific person at Amazon who submitted the white paper to the Fed. Government and explicitly said that the Federal Government used the white paper as the basis of their case. This is not how such things normally work. Normally, a company will file a complaint, not submit a white paper. The article is, of course, an op-ed, i.e. opinion/editorial, but that doesn't change the facts they are talking about.

If the situation was as you describe, then Amazon would have been named as part the suit. Instead, all this was hidden until after the judgement was made.

Why would Apple's entry be good for competition? Well, for one thing, Amazon controlled 90% of the market at the time. Any entry into the market would have been good for competition and someone with deep pockets who could withstand Amazon using loss leaders would have been even better. In addition Apple had many of the same advantages that Amazon had with regards to ease of use, purchasing and downloading.

Would Apple have been effective competition? We have no real way of knowing. Amazon didn't turn out to be particularly effective competition for Apple's music store, so size isn't everything.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Here is the specific quote

" ...
So in February 2010 Amazon posed as the victim, and associate general counsel David Zapolsky submitted a confidential white paper to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice's antitrust division on "the collective nature of the publishers' action to take control of digital book pricing."

DoJ then picked up Amazon's legal argument and used it to sue Apple. DoJ claims that the iPad and the publishers' acceptance of Apple's new arrangement "forced" Amazon to flip to the agency model and thus higher (albeit temporary) consumer prices.
... "

No ambiguity or personal prejudices here. They name the specific person at Amazon who submitted the white paper to the Fed. Government and explicitly said that the Federal Government used the white paper as the basis of their case. This is not how such things normally work. Normally, a company will file a complaint, not submit a white paper. The article is, of course, an op-ed, i.e. opinion/editorial, but that doesn't change the facts they are talking about.

If the situation was as you describe, then Amazon would have been named as part the suit. Instead, all this was hidden until after the judgement was made.

Why would Apple's entry be good for competition? Well, for one thing, Amazon controlled 90% of the market at the time. Any entry into the market would have been good for competition and someone with deep pockets who could withstand Amazon using loss leaders would have been even better. In addition Apple had many of the same advantages that Amazon had with regards to ease of use, purchasing and downloading.

Would Apple have been effective competition? We have no real way of knowing. Amazon didn't turn out to be particularly effective competition for Apple's music store, so size isn't everything.

Apple ipod Amazon ereader. Who has the best device for which medium?
I haven't seen an Amazon based music player or an Apple based ereader.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Apple ipod Amazon ereader. Who has the best device for which medium?
I haven't seen an Amazon based music player or an Apple based ereader.

I think Apple is pushing their Ipads for reading these days.

I don't think Amazon ever had its own MP3 player, but when the market was getting started and there were lots of MP3 players available Amazon carried nearly all of the brands, so they still made plenty of money.

Even before Amazon was selling MP3s they had a few that they were making available for free to test the waters (or prime the pump).

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by cromag

I think Apple is pushing their Ipads for reading these days.

I don't think Amazon ever had its own MP3 player, but when the market was getting started and there were lots of MP3 players available Amazon carried nearly all of the brands, so they still made plenty of money.

Even before Amazon was selling MP3s they had a few that they were making available for free to test the waters (or prime the pump).

I was thinking the average consumer knows ipod (Apple) for music and Kindle (Amazon) for books or maybe the Nook, but might not think to look elsewhere for their choice.

*The bunch here does not count as average because we know to look everywhere for everything.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Here is the specific quote

" ...
So in February 2010 Amazon posed as the victim, and associate general counsel David Zapolsky submitted a confidential white paper to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice's antitrust division on "the collective nature of the publishers' action to take control of digital book pricing."

DoJ then picked up Amazon's legal argument and used it to sue Apple. DoJ claims that the iPad and the publishers' acceptance of Apple's new arrangement "forced" Amazon to flip to the agency model and thus higher (albeit temporary) consumer prices.
... "

No ambiguity or personal prejudices here. They name the specific person at Amazon who submitted the white paper to the Fed. Government and explicitly said that the Federal Government used the white paper as the basis of their case. This is not how such things normally work. Normally, a company will file a complaint, not submit a white paper. The article is, of course, an op-ed, i.e. opinion/editorial, but that doesn't change the facts they are talking about.

If the situation was as you describe, then Amazon would have been named as part the suit. Instead, all this was hidden until after the judgement was made.

I'm afraid that the additional quotation adds absolutely nothing. Even Author's United put their arguments, albeit truly appalling ones, to the DOJ when they sought to have action taken against Amazon. Complainant's don't just fill in a complaint form, they put their submissions as to why they believe action should be taken. One does not own a legal argument. Someone puts it, someone considers it and it either has merit or it does not.
The legal arguments were the obvious ones in this case, and any competent lawyer in the field would have made them. The DOJ obviously found merit in Amazon's submissions, and took the matter further. They found none in AU's submissions and did not.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Why would Apple's entry be good for competition? Well, for one thing, Amazon controlled 90% of the market at the time. Any entry into the market would have been good for competition and someone with deep pockets who could withstand Amazon using loss leaders would have been even better. In addition Apple had many of the same advantages that Amazon had with regards to ease of use, purchasing and downloading.

Would Apple have been effective competition? We have no real way of knowing. Amazon didn't turn out to be particularly effective competition for Apple's music store, so size isn't everything.

Your argument here is essentially that a player like Apple brings more competition to the market just by entering it. Your loss leader example is quite ironic, since the whole purpose of the conspiracy from Apple's point of view was to avoid competing on price. Under agency, Amazon of course could not offer loss leaders even if it wanted to, at least on Big 5 books. This is a powerful indictment of Apple's motives. Because if Apple had really wanted to compete against Amazon in this market it did (and still does) have the deep pockets to do so. And it would have needed them. Though I suggest to you that they would not have received any support from the Publishers, who were of course already upset at $9.99.

And yes, Apple do indeed have many of the same advantages as Amazon which you mention. But these count for nothing when Apple had absolutely no intention of competing. What Apple's entry to the market in fact did overnight was reduce competition by raising ebook prices substantially. Apple had the potential to increase competition by competing with Amazon, but made it very clear they would not do so. In fact, their condition on entering the market was there would be no price competition. And, during agency, there was none.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that the price fix 6 got together to set agency pricing because they wanted to punish Amazon. But what they totally screwed up on was the fact that Amazon sold eBooks for Kindles and most other eBook stores did not. Also, if you had a Reader that was using RMSDK (ADE) then you were not buying from Amazon. So by going Agency, it did not suddenly get Kindle users to shop at other stores. They couldn't because Kindles don't do ePub. All they did was screw up eBook pricing for everyone and they didn't do a damn thing to Amazon.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is that the price fix 6 got together to set agency pricing because they wanted to punish Amazon. But what they totally screwed up on was the fact that Amazon sold eBooks for Kindles and most other eBook stores did not. Also, if you had a Reader that was using RMSDK (ADE) then you were not buying from Amazon. So by going Agency, it did not suddenly get Kindle users to shop at other stores. They couldn't because Kindles don't do ePub. All they did was screw up eBook pricing for everyone and they didn't do a damn thing to Amazon.

Interestingly put, but not without a great deal of truth. Though I must disagree that they didn't do a damn thing to Amazon. They helped Amazon a great deal whilst hurting only themselves. In many cases they had enjoyed all the benefits of a sales volume appropriate to $9.99 at a much higher price point, with Amazon making up the difference. Their naive price fixing plan fell foul of the law, and they lost agency for a time and had to pay out compensation. When the court imposed restrictions expired they again demanded agency, and Amazon obliged. Then, with control of their own prices, they retarded their ebook sales. Some of these sales were lost to Indie ebooks. Guess who sold most of these Indie ebooks? Some of these lost sales did indeed go to print books, as they wished. Guess who sold most of the print books? Even discounted them, sometimes resulting in the price of a hard cover being less than the price of the ebook?

They were never going to damage Amazon. Amazon still sells their ebooks and print books, and they cannot withhold supply. In the meantime, Amazon has created a huge market which even Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster acknowledges, as summarised from Mike Shatzkin's blog:

Two observations from Reidy seemed extremely important to take on board. One is that self-publishing is taking a growing share of the market. She characterized the self-publishing share in America as “huge, no matter what statistics you use.”

The second observation referred to, from the same source, is:

“The romance market, which used to be huge in mass market, has pretty much dried up and gone to digital original. [And] it has put pressure on pricing of all ebooks…. Those are consumers who, if they wanted a book, they used to come to us, and now they go elsewhere."

Despite these words, I see no evidence in the Big Five's actions even now that they have the first clue about how to deal with this. They started off by thinking of Indie/Self Publishing as some sort of vanity press, with their own books of such superior quality that they are in effect a separate market which need not compete. That may even have been largely true then, but not now. Many readers who tried Indie when the conspiracy ebook pricing prevailed never came back, myself included. Attempted differentiation on quality grounds has clearly failed to a significant extent, and continues to lose ground. In my view this is Amazon's greatest victory, in which they have been assisted greatly by the Big 5's strategy and tactics. Amazon is no longer dependent on the Big 5 for supply. It now controls a large and growing sector of the market in which the Big 5 do not share at all. At the same time it continues to take the lion's share of sales of Big 5 books, both ebook and physical. The lack of vision and the determination to protect the old business model at all costs has lead to the situation where Amazon is having its cake and eating it too. Any effective opposition is I think doomed if it relies only on Big 5 books. I see no evidence of any effective counter-strategy at this stage. It may well already be too late.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I think you are right. That's why recorded music has experienced a big revenue decline in the last twenty years. Some people here say they can fight back with lower prices and ease of purchasing. They have... How some people here can't see a piracy problem is beyond me.

To be clear, you are mixing two things here.

1: The recording industry is in decline because times and the market have changed. People don't buy full albums like they used to.

I remember during the boom period of CDs that there were complaints that CDs were just too expensive. A new release at that point averaged around +/-$16.00. The fact that nearly twenty years later a new digital album runs between $10-12 dollars tells me that CDs likely were overpriced. When digital music was first catching on, you had to buy the entire album, the cost was the same as CDs and the process was cumbersome.

Napster revolutionized that and people realized that they didn't always want a full album. They just wanted a few choice songs. Illegally downloading music was huge. Aside from the fact it was free, it was also easy. Everyone did it. It was all over the news. Piracy became a big issue.

2: Eventually, Apple developed iTunes and sold individual songs at $0.99 a piece. Amazon joined in and the files were (eventually) sold without DRM and legal MP3s took off. There's still piracy, to be sure. It just isn't what it was. It's hard to argue with a buck a song and in general, it's probably easier to find a legal version of a song on iTunes or Amazon than to look for the file elsewhere.

Eliminating all music piracy won't make people go back to forking over $17 for an album when they only want two or three songs. That ship has sailed.

That's my memory of what happened to the music industry in the last twenty years. Fair warning: I wrote this in my tablet and it's fairly late. Research and spell checking were minimal.