Oh the irony...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think that Neil will find out that, as ebooks become the most desired format, people won’t buy his books after having pirated them. It was the same thing with the Baen Free Library. Plenty of testimonials that people would buy a book after having read it for free.

I read most of the books in the Baen Free Library (even before the great purge when other booksellers started selling Baen ebooks). I'd say that over 50% of the authors whose books I read from there are authors that I purchased one or more of their other books. For some, I ended up buying multiple series.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I read most of the books in the Baen Free Library (even before the great purge when other booksellers started selling Baen ebooks). I'd say that over 50% of the authors whose books I read from there are authors that I purchased one or more of their other books. For some, I ended up buying multiple series.

I'm sure some people bought the albums or later albums of artists they pirated via Napster. The cumulative effect of super easy piracy and "same as the real thing" music was devastating to music sales

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think that Neil will find out that, as ebooks become the most desired format, people won’t buy his books after having pirated them.

I think it's safe to say that Neil and his publishers already have far more info on this than you do.

Originally Posted by leebase

I'm sure some people bought the albums or later albums of artists they pirated via Napster. The cumulative effect of super easy piracy and "same as the real thing" music was devastating to music sales

Books and movies have the benefit of Napster already having happened. The music industry had to find a whole new way of doing business.

eBooks only came on as a mainstream thing with the Kindle in 2007. Pirated "same as the real thing" ebooks have been available since day one. Piracy hasn't shut the industry down nor kept Andy Weir from becoming a bestselling author (I chose him as his book was digital first and his career started after the rise of ebooks).

Movie piracy is rampant. More so than books or music. I know people that pirate movies without being aware they're doing it due to things like Popcorn Time. Yet billion dollar blockbusters are a more and more common thing.

Piracy will always exist. But I don't think there will be another Napster-like event.

[crane3]

Piracy? I believe that I had bought all of David Weber's Honor Harrington books, not all were hard backs. Now, the hardbacks have a cd-rom that had the books in various ebook formats. I did copy the epub books from the cd-rom onto my tablets. Is this "piracy" if I got rid of the printed books to save shelf space? The epub books included the paperback copies.

Then if someone did not buy all the printed books but just the last ones & transferred the epub books to their library, would they be considered pirates?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by crane3

Piracy? I believe that I had bought all of David Weber's Honor Harrington books, not all were hard backs. Now, the hardbacks have a cd-rom that had the books in various ebook formats. I did copy the epub books from the cd-rom onto my tablets. Is this "piracy" if I got rid of the printed books to save shelf space? The epub books included the paperback copies.

Then if someone did not buy all the printed books but just the last ones & transferred the epub books to their library, would they be considered pirates?

The CDs were not bound into all the Baen hardcovers. As to what you could do with the files, I'll quote from David Drake's orientation on one:

The files on this CD are not encrypted. Jim doesn't understand the logic of making his books hard for people to read. Neither do I, though we seem to be in the minority among publishers and authors. Read them. Copy them. Give them to your friends. Dive into them like a porpoise, throw them up in the air and let them fall down on your—no, that was something different.

You're not supposed to sell the files. "Who'd be stupid enough to buy something they could have for free?" you may well ask yourself. If you do sell them, you are a Bad Person and may later exhibit signs of wanting to run for political office; but between you and me, I'm not going to come hunt you down. — David Drake

And yes, I still have my copies of the all the CDs from my hardcovers. This includes the one from Cryoburn that Lois McMaster Bujold wanted removed because she did not understand that Baen was going to put a good chunk of her novels plus the Vorkosigan Companion on the CD. Always read the not so fine print...

[leebase]

What we don’t have is Napster for ebooks. A widely known, easy available source of pirated ebooks with easy software for locating and downloading the material. I know....there are sites...but they are constantly shifting, bing shut down, coming back up. Finding what you want is not Napster friendly.

Were such a site allowed to exist....ebook sales would crater. Book sales would crater. And authors can’t go on the road performing concerts to make money.

You’ll notice that Gaimon hasn’t followed up and made all of his books available for free

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by leebase

What we don’t have is Napster for ebooks. A widely known, easy available source of pirated ebooks with easy software for locating and downloading the material. I know....there are sites...but they are constantly shifting, bing shut down, coming back up. Finding what you want is not Napster friendly.

Sure it is. There are sites that have been up for years and years. I'd prove it by giving examples, but that would break site rules.

At any rate, your argument seems to be drifting from 'piracy is a problem for books, or will become one when ebooks are the primary format' to 'piracy isn't a problem because it isn't as easy as Napster.'

I don't think piracy simply free advertising. It isn't a good thing. It's just not the industry destroyer you think it is.

You’ll notice that Gaimon hasn’t followed up and made all of his books available for free

Don't be disingenuous. Making American Gods a freebie wasn't some sort of mission statement. He wasn't saying all ebooks should be available free all the time. It was an experiment and he clearly said so.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

What we don’t have is Napster for ebooks. A widely known, easy available source of pirated ebooks with easy software for locating and downloading the material. I know....there are sites...but they are constantly shifting, bing shut down, coming back up. Finding what you want is not Napster friendly.

Were such a site allowed to exist....ebook sales would crater. Book sales would crater. And authors can’t go on the road performing concerts to make money.

You’ll notice that Gaimon hasn’t followed up and made all of his books available for free

The big difference between music and books is that people have always been use to free music via the radio. Way back when I was a teen, before CD's, people use to record their favorite songs off the radio. People use to bootleg recordings from concerts. It was very, very common to record cassettes of your favorite album since records were fairly fragile. Giving copies to your friends seemed a logical next step.

When Napster came around, most teens saw it as an extension of that.

Frankly, a Napster for ebooks has the same issue that 3rd party ebook stores have. Getting the books onto the reading devices. Side loading books is the exception rather than the rule. It may be common for people here, but most are use to buying a book and having it automagically show up on their reading device. That's why all the major ebook stores are associate with either physical devices (Kindle, Kobo, Nook) or have apps that run on a tablet (Apple, Amazon, Kobo and B&N).

While there are likely thousands of people who use Calibre, or side load books, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the over all ebook market.

Of course, we talk of Napster, but Napster didn't really last long and didn't have nearly the impact on Music that you attribute to it. Napster was launched in June of 1999, was shut down in 2001 and went bankrupt in 2002. Piracy isn't what changed the Music industry. What changed the music industry was iTunes and the shift to digital music. People stopped buying albums and started buying songs. You didn't have to buy the album to get the one or two good songs any more. Books and Movies have a very different dynamic.

Actually, if I were to point to a two major changes in the books industry, I would point to the demise of fiction magazines and the rise of audiobooks. The demise of fiction magazines (many of which still exists, but are a shadow of their former self) has come close to gutting the market for short stories. The rise of audiobooks has opened up a new revenue stream for authors and publishers.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The demise of fiction magazines (many of which still exists, but are a shadow of their former self) has come close to gutting the market for short stories.

I've long thought it would be neat if Amazon were to launch a line of monthly/quarterly digital pulp magazines for the Kindle. A couple of magazines in different genres (straight fiction, horror, sci-fi, romance, etc) with a mix of short stories by established big name authors and lesser known indies.

There's scads of Kindle short story collections available. But it would help to have the clout of Amazon to ensure some level of quality. And they have the pockets to license famous names like Astounding or Weird Tales if they thought it was worth it.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I've long thought it would be neat if Amazon were to launch a line of monthly/quarterly digital pulp magazines for the Kindle. A couple of magazines in different genres (straight fiction, horror, sci-fi, romance, etc) with a mix of short stories by established big name authors and lesser known indies.

There's scads of Kindle short story collections available. But it would help to have the clout of Amazon to ensure some level of quality. And they have the pockets to license famous names like Astounding or Weird Tales if they thought it was worth it.

That might be one way that magazines make a come back. It's kind of funny since I was a teenager right at the tail end of the magazine/short story run. For decades they were the primary revenue source for many authors. Authors would sell their novels to magazines to publish as serials. That's how I first read Roger Zelazny. I read Asimov's SF magazine for a number of years from when it started in the late 70's through the mid 80's.

I would tend to say that the rise of the mall bookstores increased the sales of books, which shifted authors focus from magazine sales to book sales.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The big difference between music and books is...

Not to mention that there are vastly more people who consume music than there are people who read books. And there are still vastly more people reading paper books rather than ebooks, while the opposite is true in music industry (digital music vs CDs and other physical media). So I really doubt the book piracy has much influence on book industry in general, except perhaps for the indies who don't publish their books in paper at all.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Not to mention that there are vastly more people who consume music than there are people who read books. And there are still vastly more people reading paper books rather than ebooks, while the opposite is true in music industry (digital music vs CDs and other physical media). So I really doubt the book piracy has much influence on book industry in general, except perhaps for the indies who don't publish their books in paper at all.

I don't have any hard data, no one does, but I also doubt that piracy has much impact on the book industry, at least the book industry in Europe, the US and the former Commonwealth. From what I hear, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it has a major impact in Russia, China and India. I kind of doubt that piracy has a big impact on Indies. Custom probably has a much bigger impact on if there is wide spread piracy than laws or marginal cost. I suppose that high priced items are more likely to be pirated than low cost items.