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Old 03-31-2008, 11:42 AM   #61
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Originally Posted by Nate the great View Post
All of these points are obviously refuted by the example of Baen Books. Baen has demonstrated that readily available free content does encourage sales.

P.S. If you are going to nitpick because the content isn't illicit (and thus it isn't piracy), you will need to provide a creditable argument as to why a pirate would behave different from Baen's customer base. Most any argument you do provide cannot be applied to all pirates.
Actually, I do make a distinction between free and pirated works. A work given away is not the same as a work stolen. However, I don't know enough about Baen and their customer base to comment on it, so I won't try. Besides, as you pointed out, any statement I made could not be applied to everyone in Baen's customer base.

But I'd still like to see a demonstrated correlation between pirated works and increased sales/author popularity, and especially one that demonstrated greater sales/popularity than legitimate advertising/promotion. The Grateful Dead mention is interesting, though, since the artists told their fans to record and share their work, that might be the same as free promotion provided by the author (though I imagine their record company didn't see it that way... in effect, that could mean the band was going against their own copyright laws).
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Old 03-31-2008, 11:51 AM   #62
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I would love to have a "failure" that netted me over $400k!

That's not a good example. It failed because it was poorly designed. If I remember correctly, he required payment from a certain percentage of downloads. Any halfway decent script-kiddie could screw with the download count by downloading a few million copies.
Does anybody have any evidence that this, in fact, happened? Even a link to a blog where the script-kiddie says, "Yep, that was me, and here's what I did. Ha-Ha!" Because, if not, it's just conjecture. I've heard this mentioned as a possibility many times, but so far I've heard of no information to back it up.

At any rate, the actual amount of money King made isn't the issue... it's the amount of money he planned to make on the project, compared against what he did make, that counts. If he expected to make 4 million on that project, $400k would be a pretty poor showing.
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Old 03-31-2008, 12:37 PM   #63
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan View Post
Does anybody have any evidence that this, in fact, happened? Even a link to a blog where the script-kiddie says, "Yep, that was me, and here's what I did. Ha-Ha!" Because, if not, it's just conjecture. I've heard this mentioned as a possibility many times, but so far I've heard of no information to back it up.

At any rate, the actual amount of money King made isn't the issue... it's the amount of money he planned to make on the project, compared against what he did make, that counts. If he expected to make 4 million on that project, $400k would be a pretty poor showing.
IMHO, the best way to do it would have been to do it was it was started and the future installments, make them pay only to get them. That might have worked.
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Old 03-31-2008, 01:56 PM   #64
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Does anybody have any evidence that this, in fact, happened? Even a link to a blog where the script-kiddie says, "Yep, that was me, and here's what I did. Ha-Ha!" Because, if not, it's just conjecture. I've heard this mentioned as a possibility many times, but so far I've heard of no information to back it up.

At any rate, the actual amount of money King made isn't the issue... it's the amount of money he planned to make on the project, compared against what he did make, that counts. If he expected to make 4 million on that project, $400k would be a pretty poor showing.
Where is your informatione to backup that this exemple is relevant. The exemple have a lot of problems that have been pointed out so as a scientific example it is useless. Still you seem to keep saying that the example show something which I find strange.

So if I have a bad idea but expect to make $100 million and then I only make $1000 or nothing at all than it must be somebody else fault. My bad idea or my bad execution cannot be the cause of my lost income. Of course everything is somebody else fault!
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Old 03-31-2008, 02:53 PM   #65
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At any rate, the actual amount of money King made isn't the issue... it's the amount of money he planned to make on the project, compared against what he did make, that counts. If he expected to make 4 million on that project, $400k would be a pretty poor showing.
He didn't cancel it based on the amount he didn't earn; he canceled the project because less than 75% of the downloaders were willing to pay for the sixth installment. This was a bad business model for several reasons. Very few novels have 75% sell-through ( means only 25% destroyed and covers returned). Plus, how many of the downloaders are willing to pay more than the price of a paperback? I wouldn't.

The error I see in his viewpoint is he apparently equated one download with one sale. In the digital era, this is simply not true. At best, one download is the equivalent of a person flipping through a paper copy while browsing in a bookstore.
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:17 PM   #66
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True, King's model needed work, and I agree the price was too high. However, when faced with something whose price is too high, you have two choices: One, to leave it, since you don't want to pay for it; and Two, to take it anyway. King's bulk of online fans picked Two.

It would have been one thing if King got fewer downloaders, but everyone paid... he might have lost money on the deal, but finished the project anyway. Instead, he got a lot of downloaders, and not enough would pay, and based on the established agreement, he canned the project.

If all those people who'd said "I'm not going to pay for that!" had just walked away without downloading, it would have made a good case for human nature and honesty (even if not for a good business plan). But they didn't, and what we got was an example of the downside of piracy and the inherent selfishness of human nature.
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:21 PM   #67
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I'll cite Stephen King's "The Plant" project as a case where unpaid downloads resulted in the financial ruination of the work, causing it to be unfinished and shelved.
Leaving aside the 400k netted, I still do not understand what this example has to do with piracy? Were the unpaid downloads piracy? It seems to me that those unpaid downloads were just that: LEGAL unpaid downloads.

You as an author choose the tip bowl, I guess you gotta take the results; if you are not happy with the donations as Mr. King seemed not to have been, that's how it is, but what this has to do with piracy still eludes my mind...

My issue with all this shrill piracy pronouncements and draconian remedies - without any evidence for anything - and leaving aside the sometimes insulting assumptions behind them - is that already e-books have huge hurdles ahead, and adding imaginary ones, especially when you claim you want to promote e-books, well...
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:24 PM   #68
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I know this has probably been said over and over, but do we have any sort of evidence that a download eBook from the darknet would have been purchased if it was not downloaded?
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:31 PM   #69
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***Please excuse my ridiculously long post. It's just my general view of the whole file-sharing/copyright issue ***

In a way, the future of the internet and file sharing (call it piracy if you must but that just makes me think of johnny depp as a swaggering pirate) will be the most dangerous for the authors of books.
In the past the music industry was the first to get hit by the problem of people sharing copyrighted works through the internet. The moment the music industry steered towards making its product digital (and thus something that can exist on the internet) was the beginning of it's troubles. Music is relatively easy to share, with a typical cd only being about 70mb of mp3s, which can be downloaded by most modern connections in less than 15 minutes.
Because of the relatively big size of movies, movie sharing took longer to become a problem for the movie industry. A typical movie taking about 1400 mb (two cd's) in divx format, and thus the time needed to download a movie is significantly longer, and with limited storage capacity is much harder to share large amount of movies.
Since the books-industry was very slow in adapting to the internet and in steering towards digital content, it is the last industry to get hit by the problem of file sharing.

But, here's the catch. The music industry, especially the musicians themselves, has other forms of revenue next to the actual sale of music. Concerts already are a bigger form of income for most bands than their cd sales.
The movie industry still has it's movie theatres. Although I myself have started to hate going there, because of the fact that other people's activities usually greatly diminish my enjoyment of movies in the theatre, the movie industry still has this form of revenue. People are willing to see a new movie in the theatre and pay a lot of money for it, even if they have the option to download the movie for free off the internet.
The book industry doesn't really have a clear second line of income. Book readings perhaps. Or other activities by literary authors, but mostly these are dependent on the idea that they boost the sale of the book, and are less of a dependent second source of revenue.
Add to that that books will be much much easier to share. Their limited size means that people can send each other a whole library in a matter of a couple hours, and in the future it wont even take hours.

There are only a couple things saving the industry at this point in time. First the limited availability of content. Not everything has been digitised yet, not like music of movies. And secondly, most people do not have a good way to read digitised content and printing out is a hassle and hardly worth it economically.
But imagine a world where almost everybody has an ebook reader. A world where everybody has ebooks on their computer. A world where everybody is connected to the internet.
And I believe that in the future the internet should be seen as even more connected. Connected in the sense that people will have different computers in different locations, with easy access to each of those computers. Also ereader will be directly connected to the internet. My ereader would be able to directly connect to a friends ebook reader in Japan, while one of us is at home and the other is travelling with the train.
In such a world the technology itself won't even distinguish between what is my hard drive and what is someone else's. Everybody I trust would be allowed to use my computer through the internet, as i would be trusted to access theirs.
Imagine a computer where hard drive C:\,D:\ are mine, E: would be my girlfriends a couple blocks away from my house, F: and G: would be the computers at work, and H: to R: would be friends of mine.
At this point it will be harder NOT to share an ebook than it is to share it.
Musicians can still do concerts and make money. Movies-makers can still offer that movie theatre thrill, and make money that way (considerably less mind you, but still). But book writers...
This is also apparent from how we generally perceive music, movies and books. The perfect consumption of music is by visiting the concert and actually seeing the band perform it. The perfect consumption of movies is generally still perceived as seeing a movie in a grande theatre at opening night, with the lights dimming and the superior quality of most theatres impressing our senses. The perfect consumption of a book? Just me and the book on my couch at home. No sounds but the turning of the pages.

All in all, my point being that even though this problem hits the book industry the last, it will hit it the hardest.

As with movies and music the problem is that it is almost impossible to stop it. There is a logical problem that technology can't solve: if one person can see or hear something, it's almost impossible to stop the copying of what that one person can see or hear. It has to leave the computer at some point. A microphone can record anything a person can hear. A camera can record anything a person can see. And a photocamera can record any page that a person can read.

So if the copying itself can't be stopped (and up till now both the copying of music and of movies has proven this to be the case) maybe we can stop the sharing?
We could stop all sharing of information, or at least limit the sharing of all information. Just shut the internet down, because thats what it does: share information.
Or we could try and distinguish between copyrighted information and non-copyrighted information. That would mean ALL information would have to monitored. To distinguish between a copyrighted tale or a email to a spouse everything would have to be analysed and monitored.
Of course for this to be possible all information needs to be readable to all for it to be monitored, and encryption would have to be out-lawed.
I believe China is going this way, as well as certain other countries in the middle east.

Another option would be to out-law digital versions of books, as their inherent ease of making a copy of it should be stopped. Even with the internet all secure, people would still easily copy an ebook and swap from one ereader to another. Or the complete works of Murakami could be put on a cd and given to everybody. Going back to the paper age seems the best option.

There are always options, but I think the main problem are the people. We just can not trust people with copyable content. Give them a chance and they'll start sharing like they own something. The majority of people just don't see that what they do is wrong, it seems. That brings us to the core of the problem. Give these people have a chance and they'll start to act and, maybe even more dangerous, vote according to their own wishes...
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:43 PM   #70
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If all those people who'd said "I'm not going to pay for that!" had just walked away without downloading, it would have made a good case for human nature and honesty (even if not for a good business plan). But they didn't, and what we got was an example of the downside of piracy and the inherent selfishness of human nature.
That, Steve, is wishful thinking.
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:44 PM   #71
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My issue with all this shrill piracy pronouncements and draconian remedies - without any evidence for anything - and leaving aside the sometimes insulting assumptions behind them - is that already e-books have huge hurdles ahead, and adding imaginary ones, especially when you claim you want to promote e-books, well...
Well, we're clearly going nowhere fast on the subject. We could just give it up while we're way, way behind...

On the other hand, imaginary or not, piracy is still a perceived issue with publishers and authors, an an issue that is holding them back from releasing old and new works to the consumer. Clearly the amount of discussion indicates that something is going on, but that no one can agree on exactly what that something is. If that something is not determined, how will it be dealt with (or, if it turns out to be nothing, how will we know we don't have to deal with it)?

So even these arguments/rantings/suppositions/threats/posturing/disagreeing, while divisive, should amount to an eventual understanding at some point. At heart, we all want to work this out, so we can have e-books and enjoy them. And after all, the best things are worth working for, aren't they?

In the meantime, I agree that these piracy arguments can be downright painful. Even so, they are worth having, because it's the only way we're going to come to an understanding, and only through understanding can we take positive steps and move on.
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Old 03-31-2008, 03:51 PM   #72
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That, Steve, is wishful thinking.
You're right: I wish I could depend on people to download something that I ask them to pay for, and actually see them pay for it. This is why stores place their cashiers before the exit... they know how much they'll lose if they put them out in the parking lot, and give their customers the choice of paying or not...
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Old 03-31-2008, 05:24 PM   #73
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All in all, my point being that even though this problem hits the book industry the last, it will hit it the hardest.
This is an interesting post and well done - I do not mind long posts - however it is based on unwarranted assumptions. The most important one in my opinion is that e-books are going to become mainstream.
Eric Flint posted some good counterarguments to that - and remember that this a guy that is an editor, publisher and writer that promotes e-books and e-magazines big time - so I am not going to repeat them. They are here:

Paper books are not going to be joining the dodo any time soon. If ever.

http://www.baens-universe.com/articl...ing_the_dodo_a

A Matter of Symbiosis

http://www.baens-universe.com/articl...r_of_Symbiosis
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Old 03-31-2008, 05:33 PM   #74
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I don't think there is any system that will combat piracy. For every smart anti-piracy DRM or encryption that is invented there are a team of pirates who will break it either for profit or just for the hell of it (bragging rights).

As far as I know there are only 2 ways to effectively combat piracy.

1) lock the file with more and more encryption and DRM and make it impossible to copy. (Short of quantum encryption I don't see this working)

2) Make the item either easy to reach, desirable (Added extras etc) or cheap enough that piracy isn't an issue. The I-Tunes model makes songs an impulse buy 79p or whatever so that yes you probably can get it free somewhere else, but hell it's cheap and this is a reliable source. The Kindle is winning in this as it has a huge recognisable store and sells the books relatively cheap compared to Sony. I still think they need to be cheaper than p-books to be a viable option and an impulse buy.

Neither option will completely eradicate piracy, but might minimise the effect and increase sales. Option 2 would be the desirable model.

Unfortunatly publishers want to go down route 1) which will just peeve off the userbase who have to jump through 150 hoops to prove you have bought something legally.
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Old 03-31-2008, 07:32 PM   #75
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Option 2 is not only the more effective of the two, but as you pointed out, it is proven. My business model was my attempt at Option 2 (with mixed success, it may still stand some tweaking), and I'd recommend it over Option 1 every time.

The thing is, Option 2 means more work and lower profits per sale for the author/publisher, which makes it a harder sell to them, unless you can demonstrate that the method makes them more overall sales to make up for the lower margins. Until e-books really take off, that's also a hard sell.

That's why the Kindle system could succeed over all others: With Amazon doing the heavy lifting to create the system and the hardware, it's easier for a publisher to get on board. In fact, if they ever build a better Kindle (more attractive, and color), I'll get one, too.
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Newbie question: can we discuss pirates? RCR Introduce Yourself 3 12-03-2007 11:45 AM


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