ebook piracy and the future of the professional writer

What about the fact that, on the Kindle, you can read the first few pages of a book for free?

Surely that defeats the whole "we pirate to see if we like your writing" argument?

 

Well, it doesn't actually defeat the argument. Many of those previews are inadequate to get a good feel for the book. Some of the previews only let you see the table of contents or the introduction and none of the actual content, which makes it hard to get a feel for the writing and the book as a whole. It's not the same as being able to look at the whole book.

For me, this is where the book store comes in handy. If I'm interested in an ebook but the preview doesn't give me enough of a sample to be sure about buying, I go to the book store and look at the actual book so I can see the whole thing. If I like it, I buy the ebook and sometimes the paper version as well. I don't steal a pirated copy.

For someone who's going to steal a copy, the argument is just an excuse and defeating it won't make a difference. They're still going to steal.

 

Agree with the above - all of the arguments boil down to excuses to steal from someone.

The writer owns his or her work. If she wants to distribute free samples electronically, that is rightfully her decision, not the decision of the thief who steals her work.

 

I don't think anyone with a shred of common sense would suggest that pirating books is a legitimate way to "get a feel" for whether you like the writer. I'm unaware of any studies of the effects e-book piracy has on sales, but if what happened in the music industry is any indication of how things will go down with e-books, then there's a chance that piracy could actually increase the sales of writers who are less popular. Here's how the argument goes:

(1) Pirates download the book. These pirates would not have been exposed to the book if they had not downloaded it.
(2) After the pirates read the book, they talk to all of their friends about the book. If the book was good, then they tell their friends how awesome it was.
(3) Some of those friends prefer to spend 2.99 on Kindle instead of downloading the book illegally. Therefore, if you're an underexposed author who has a good product, piracy actually increases your sales.

This is the 75/25 argument that you may have heard in the music industry and that I mentioned earlier in this thread. The bottom 75% of artists sell slightly more as a result of piracy. The added exposure that piracy creates for them is actually a benefit. The top 25% of artists don't need the added exposure, and their products are much more available for piracy as a result of their popularity. Therefore the decrease in their sales is more drastic than the increase in sales for less popular artists. The loss in sales to the music industry is because the cash cows are producing less cash.

The rich get less rich and the poor get less poor. How is this a bad thing? I hope that the rise in e-book popularity has a similar effect on the publishing world. That would be sweet!

 

That is all irrelevant, Sidewinder. The point is, the author owns the work and has the right to decide how it is sold, marketed, etc. If the author wants to make something freely available so that distribution over the net, etc. in the way pirated items are distributed give them more exposure, then they can certainly go that route.

No amount of justification makes it legitimate for the book pirate to decide that for the author.

 

Ummm, you're right. Let's all hope your post on this forum has now changed the minds of millions who pirate copyrighted works!

Oh, wait, it's going to happen whether it's right or wrong. And most people who partake in piracy don't try to claim it's right. They know it's wrong otherwise they wouldn't call it pirating.

For this thread, and in general, the irrelevant argument is to say it's wrong, end of story. Why? Because nobody on either side really disagrees on whether it's right or wrong. Nobody really even cares or talks about that, because it's not the driving force behind such piracy.

BUT IT'S WRONG!

Yeah, and is still going to exist. So what's your point? Better to get over an irrelevant argument (unless you honestly think the problem is people don't know stealing is wrong and that's why they're doing it, and educating them to the fact will curb piracy). Better to accept the situation, accept the losses, and move on.

Right or wrong is completely irrelevant, unfortunately. There are more important things to consider.

 

I never said it was going to change minds or actions. Sorry you misread my post.

Sidewinder was making a justification, and because he was posting a justification, then the issue of right or wrong is on point.

 

Sorry, Bright Shadow, but I tend to agree with popsicledeath here. Your arguments have become attempts to draw similitudes between ebook piracy and communism. I'm not really sure I see where you're going with any of this, anymore. I get that it can be frustrating to think that piracy might well affect your and all of our potential careers as writers. Maybe you just needed to vent - that's fine, but now it seems like you're definitely just arguing for argument's sake.

There is nothing you can do about piracy. Nothing. The same way there was nothing anyone could do about film or music piracy; this is no different. Whatever the results, you're just going to have to live with them. If the outcome is a negative one, then yes, measures can be taken to mitigate this (such as some of the suggestions made already). I, for one, don't think ebooks are established enough yet to make a judgement on what their effect has been/will be. I continue to write regardless, simply because I have stories to tell.

 

Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention, like driving on the right side of the road, or deciding that the defendant and the plaintiff both pay their own legal costs in a lawsuit.

The purpose of copyright is to stimulate the creation and publishing of creative works. If it does a good job at fulfilling that purpose, we should keep it, and if it doesn't, we should trash it (or change the duration of it).

 

A good issue for debate. But until it is trashed, it remains in place and should be treated as such by honest people. Further, I believe in an author's moral rights, which is in some ways a later addition to copyright, and something that is really separate from it in my mind.

 

So, you prefer a world in which only the wealthy become popular authors while the rest of us have no chance? That is a world without the publishing industry.

In self publishing, the author has to pay for all the marketing themselves, as well as the editing, the design, etc. Now, plenty if not most authors started off without the kind of money it would take to promote a book but it didn't matter because the publishing house had the money to promote their new author. If the publishing house vanished, than the authors have to self publish and hence only the rich will be writing successful books.

There are plenty of good novels out there that I know nothing about because the information isn't getting to me. Marketing is the information getting to the audience. It is an expensive process that requires a lot of capital.

I personally believe that a world in which a lower income person will never see their book become popular because they don't have the personal, disposable income to market it as being far from something that "rocks."

 

That's a reasonable position - it's similar to Aristotle's argument that we need to follow the laws whether they are just or not, since respect for the law is the only thing which keeps society from falling into chaos.

I also think the author's moral rights should be respected, at least the right to attribution.

 

The morality of thievery is beside the point. Even if it were possible to stamp out thievery, the trend would be in the same direction, give or take 30% or so. My point isn't "go thieves!" -- it's that the thieves are not as big of a problem as everyone seems to suggest. And that yes, paradoxically, thievery of intellectual property does seem to help the poor. So in that case -- go thieves, I guess.

The moral thing for a pirate to do would be only to illegally download up and coming artists and tell all of his friends about the ones he likes. Sure, the artists might be unhappy if they knew that he had downloaded their songs. But then they're reaping the benefits of his immoral behaviour -- so at the very least it's a complicated issue.

Then when a moral pirate wants the new Jay-Z album, he should go get it at HMV and pay full price. But that's only if he feels guilty about the fact that Jay-Z might only be able to afford 2 yachts next year instead of 3.

But actually what it means is that the entertainment industry isn't paying attention to the facts. The surprising fact that piracy actually helps artists gain recognition could be put to use by intelligent marketers, but few are actually going that route.

In fact if we stopped facilitating anti-piracy it would just force the industry to change more quickly and things would get a lot better for everyone except the guys who own the big record companies and publishing houses. The more popular artists would start to realize that they earn more money by cutting out the middle man, and that there are thousands of people out there willing to do the same job for a fraction of the cost. There are a lot of leeches out there. I'm pretty sure that the most popular artists are already starting to catch on to the fact that industry is standing in between them and the money.

 

I put in bold the part I agree with the most. Like I keep saying, if an ebook reader pirates an ebook and puts in on his or her Kindle, than they have the ebook, what else is there to buy?

I have heard THE SAME LAME ARGUMENT over and over about the "big bad publishing companies" or "the big bad record company" as some BS Robin Hood justification for stealing and it is so annoying.

I personally love it when people defend music piracy because they are "sticking it to the man" and support and artist by seeing them live, because they believe that that's where they get most of their money from. Well, when that happens I stop and ask the pirate why they don't want to give money to the record companies, but have no problem giving their money to the evil empire, i.e., that MASSIVE monopoly called "Ticketmaster"? Majority of the price of tickets goes write to the CEO of Ticketmaster, and only a small portion actually goes to the band.

I ask them why they don't "stick it to the man", in this case Ticketmaster, by pirating a live show, i.e., SNEAKING PAST THE VERY MASSIVE LOOKING BOUNCER AND TRYING TO GET IN FOR FREE, and I just get stutters and excuses.

Why? Because pirates are cowards. Any 90lb acne covered loser can play "Robin Hood" in his mind while in front of a monitor, but in real life they would never grow the testicles required to steal an album or sneak past a steroid enhanced security guard at a concert.

 

The industry has to adapt. Reality is what's still there when you stop believing in it. I'm sure the industry will find a way to adapt, but it would happen a lot faster if they stopped trying to go the anti-piracy route.

 

This has got to be the most absurd argument I have ever heard. So, let me ask the obvious: if someone is too poor to afford a nine dollar album on Amazon or a eight dollar ebook, THAN HOW THE HELL DID THEY MANAGE TO AFFORD A COMPUTER AND A IPOD AND A KINDLE AND A HIGH SPEED INTERNET PROVIDER?

This is why if I found out some kid stole my book from a bookstore, I might actually give him a copy. At least he has the balls to steal the real thing and actually put himself in harms way, and he obviously doesn't have the money to buy it. The guy who uses his $150 Kindle and his $600 computer and uses his $50 a month high speed internet connection to pirate a book that cost $12.00 on Amazon because "he's poor" doesn't get a shred of sympathy from me.

 

I think that argument is generally true. Although I do not think a person is obligated to follow immoral laws. So of course things get murkier

 

Hi Sidewinder,

I don't disagree at all that the same technology that makes it possible for me and countless others to write and publish and make a little money at it, is the same technology that allows our work to be pirated. What of it? I'm grateful that the e-book scene exists, I'm not grateful that people will steal from me, and the former does not justify the latter.

My points in my last post were that probably most of us if we dedicate ourselves to the craft, can infact thanks to e-books, expect to make a little money at it and that a little money adds up over time, and that therefore piracy is stealing from us, not from some shadowy big bad brother publisher, us.

Now this thread is about the future of the professional writer,and my thought is that if you gat paid for writing, no matter how much or how little, you are a professional. Certainly that's the taxman's view.

If the ebook scene did not exist then true I would not be published and I would not make any money, but I would still write. That's because I write for me, and sometimes have hope that an agent would pick up my work. What I would not do is publish, because I publish to sell. I suspect this is true of most of us.

Now writing requires a lot of time and work. The same as going out to my normal work does. Now a lot of the time I enjoy my work, but I would probably not put in forty or fifty hours a week at my desk if I wasn't paid for it. The same with writing, I like it, I like what I write, but if there was no chance of being published and getting some payment, money or reviews or whatever, I'd probably do less of it and play more computer games.

Piracy like any other form of theft undermines my returns, the value I get back for my work. If I discovered it was becoming a significant problem it would annoy me just as finding my wallet had been emptied occasionally by some light fingered ne'er do well. It wouldn't stop me writing, or working, but it would impact on whether I was so dedicated to publishing or doing overtime at my normal job etc. Why do more work, more publishing if you're not going to see the return?

Piracy is not particularly good for writers in my opinion, and it can't be justified.

Cheers.

 

@BrightShadow.

You're missing the whole argument.

Sticking it to the man has nothing to do with it, however awesome and fun that may be. Piracy has the interesting side-effect of generating more interest in unknown artists.

Thievery of intellectual property paradoxically helps the poor by boosting the popularity of poor people. Not by helping poor people who can't afford books. I'm sure that is helpful as well, but then again they could always just go to the library.

The effect of piracy is minimal in comparison to the effect of the technology. Even if we put enough big scary bouncers out there on the interwebs to stop the immorality from going on, the same thing would happen but at a slower rate. I guess this would create jobs for a bunch of big scary bouncers, but if you ask me it's a waste of resources. The industry needs to adapt.

However much you object to the pip-squeaky nature of internet piracy, the facts remain the same. Its effect on the market is small in comparison to the changing nature of the media. Mostly the new technology just means that the industry is going to have to change. It doesn't mean that writers are going to make less money. If anything it's empowering for people who are less wealthy. It means they will get a bigger cut of the profits. I think the trend will be towards smaller, leaner publishing companies -- not exclusively towards self-publishing. If the trend were towards self-publishing it wouldn't take long before some wealthy individual took notice of the untapped talent in the lower classes and took advantage.

 

It might be bad for you and it might not be. That remains to be seen. As I have already mentioned, in the music industry the OPPOSITE appears to be true. If you sit back and let people steal your music, it actually helps you in the long run because it gives you more exposure. I think the same might happen with e-books.

There are two ways of interpreting this data. You can say -- oh I guess piracy doesn't matter all that much. I should forget about it. OR you can take the next logical step and say that policing against piracy is only worthwhile if it your work becomes very popular. THEN you can take it a step further and say, "hm. looks like if I give a bit of my work away for free, it makes me more popular . . ."

 

Here's a question for you all:

If zebras revolt and assassinate all writers and are then the only writers and all books are in Zebraese then how will I buy a car if I want to be a writer?!?!?

But hey, at least with all creative writing done by zebras the issues would be more black and white and more understandable for those that enjoy specific-to-the-point-of-eliminating-all-context black and white sort of 'if, then' scenarios.


Also, I'll point out the greatest counter to piracy is quality of work. When something stolen is worth paying for is the only time anyone I've known to pirate music, movies or books ever felt guilty about it and then not only became a fan, but actively wanted to pay for that which they enjoyed.

It's funny how the best defense to almost every 'OH NOES' dilemma or sky-is-falling argument/opinion/perspective related to writing (or any art-based business) is to produce high quality work. Sometimes I wonder if this isn't what scares many writers, though.

 

Good question re: the zebras. Makes you stop and think. Bet none of you considered THAT angle -- hmmmmmmmm?

I know it seems counter-intuitive, and no one ever seems to go along with this suggestion, but I think that the greatest counter to piracy would actually be less anti-piracy. It would mean that the industry would have to reconfigure the way it works to the point that piracy is no longer an issue.

 

Interest amongst people who want to steal the work and not pay for it.

Again, if you are too poor to buy a work, than you are probably too poor to afford the hardware and internet service to pirate in the first place. "Poor" and "cheap" are too different things.

Who wants to become popular in circles who don't pay for things and instead steals?

There was about a three year delay I think between the rise of Napster and the birth of Itunes. When ebook readers became popular, services providing ebooks always appeared. There's Smashwords, Amazon, etc. The industry has already adapted. However, there is no way you can adapt to people who insist on not paying a dime for media.

Quite the opposite. Like I said, a self published book needs to be promoted and only people with big bucks can get their book promoted. If a little guy without much money struggles and works hard and gets a great novel written, with enough hard work he/she can probably get it published at which point the publishing company can pay for the marketing in ways that only a wealthy person could.

If the market shifts away from publishing companies and towards self published authors, the result would be that only wealthy people will have their books promoted.

Oh, wealthy institutions, i.e. publishing companies, already do take notice of someone's talent. Do you really think a publishing company is going to say "you know, this novel is really marketable, but because the author is poor I don't think we should give him a contract." The way it's set up now, anyone can, with enough hard work and talent and a little luck, get published if they are good at what they do.

There is a reason why we need editors and publishing companies: they objectively look at a novel and decide if it should get published and promoted. In a world without them the market would be saturated by crap made by wealthy people who can't write for their lives while folks like JK Rowling, who was a poor single mother when she started and SURE AS HELL didn't have the money to promote HP, would linger in obscurity.

My hope is that the government will just go ahead and crack down on piracy sites once and for all. If they arrested and charged the guys who run the top three piracy sites and put them in jail, there would be a chilling effect around the internet like nobody's business.

I mean, child pornography was cracked down on and they had some major success. Difference is there is big money to be made in child pornography, because they are proving people with a media they can't legally get anywhere else and hence can charge whatever they want to, so many people who sell CP are willing to take the risk for the cash. With piracy, people are not getting paid, so what's the point? And for sites in which people have to pay for pirated material, paying for an illegal version of something usually doesn't make sense.

If they cracked down on the people running the bit torrent sites as hard as they cracked down on the people who ran CP sites, piracy would be all but eradicated over night. But alas, I doubt the government will take the initiative to do so.

 

I think you give too much credit to pirates. Piracy has become so common that many people aren't even capable of this particular type of guilt you speak of. Hey the book's free on this site, why should I spend ten dollars at the kindle store? It's as simple as that. In an instant people will make the decision to illegally download a book that they wish to read. And this download benefits the author or publishers in no way.

It gives the writer exposure? Sure enough exposure so that the next book the author produces gets downloaded in the exact same way as the first. Piracy is a plague and it will spread. People seem to laud it as a sort of viral marketing device, but I feel they're missing the point. Don't pin the merits of piracy on the goodwill and guilt of the average internet user. You will be disappointed. MOST people who download illegally will not buy an ebook, mp3 or movie if they can obtain it for free. Piracy is marketing your product to a consumer that will never invest in you. They will download your ebook for free, enjoy your writing, and when the second book is released, some bright spark will post it on rapidshare so that the whole contingent of fans you've won over can download your book for free yet again. Publishers want a return on investment. There is no return here.

And piracy can never be of any advantage to the relatively unknown author. Pirates don't care about unknown authors. They will not illegally download a book that they've never heard of. It's only when the legitimate form of marketing captures a person's interest, does piracy come into play. That legitimate marketing could have easily persuaded the consumer to buy the book. But now the option of a free download is available, and a pirate is born. A non-contributing consumer.

All this silver lining for piracy does not sit well with me. Piracy attacks those writers who find success and diminishes that success by converting potential paying fans into parasites.

 

Let me ask you this

Someone sneaks in to the movie theater, are they going to pay for it if they liked the movie?
person steals a video game form a store are they going to pay for it if they liked the game?
how about a guitar, Tv, Pool, bike, laptop, amp, watch, ect

Obviously we can turn on the TV and see this is not true, so where on earth do you figure that its deferent online? There is no proof for what you say and even so just because someone feels guilty dose not mean they will pay for it ,pepole pirate stuff to get it with out paying for it, be it to test, or steal
one or the other there are some who go to test but why go buy another copy,will some? sure, yeah there are some, is it all of them? not even close.