ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
Quite impressive. You really seem to have thought it out rather nicely.
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Book Piracy BAD
- Thread starter A. E. Lowan
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #42
We do free book events every so often, but they're infrequent and by now I think we've hit market saturation. Which is fine. My current plan is for us to hold steady until we release the duology we're CURENTLY DRAFTING!!! Uh... might be a bit excitable about that. I've got hopes for how we'll swing the release, but it all just depends on the actual process and how smoothly things go.
Prince of Spires
Istar
I just don't buy the Piracy = exposure so it isn't all bad argument.
I'm fine with exposure and even willing to pay for it, but only when I chose to do so. I can't buy groceries or pay my cover designer with exposure, which makes it pretty worthless as a concept.
I've also come across research which found that word of mouth doesn't get you very far until you get over 10k people telling other people. 1 person pirating a book and telling 1 person who pirates the book doesn't move any needed. Their reach is just too small until you get a group of people talking about something. Just think to yourself, how often do you pay for something on a single person's recommendation? Except when that's a very trusted person, it take several people telling you about the same thing before you actually make the purchase. Which again means that just 1 person pirating a book isn't going to get you anywhere.
And 10k people pirating my book would be between $20.000 and $40.000 in missed income depending on the price point. I can do a lot of things with that kind of money.
Note that this is different from actively giving your book away for free. Reaching a content creator in your niche can be golden, as can doing free days on Amazon or give-aways. But that's a concious decision, not piracy.
I'm fine with exposure and even willing to pay for it, but only when I chose to do so. I can't buy groceries or pay my cover designer with exposure, which makes it pretty worthless as a concept.
I've also come across research which found that word of mouth doesn't get you very far until you get over 10k people telling other people. 1 person pirating a book and telling 1 person who pirates the book doesn't move any needed. Their reach is just too small until you get a group of people talking about something. Just think to yourself, how often do you pay for something on a single person's recommendation? Except when that's a very trusted person, it take several people telling you about the same thing before you actually make the purchase. Which again means that just 1 person pirating a book isn't going to get you anywhere.
And 10k people pirating my book would be between $20.000 and $40.000 in missed income depending on the price point. I can do a lot of things with that kind of money.
Note that this is different from actively giving your book away for free. Reaching a content creator in your niche can be golden, as can doing free days on Amazon or give-aways. But that's a concious decision, not piracy.
ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
You could always just take down any copy of your book online period and go for a solely paperback/hardcover release.
pmmg
Myth Weaver
I am not sure that would stop piracy once your book is already out there. But, it is an option.
I like the route of self-pirating and flooding the free sites with copies that make it too hard for a reader to know which one is complete. Kind of create a confusopoly of it. But...that would take energy, and I suppose I don't care enough to really do it.
ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
I think, as someone already mentioned, stopping piracy entirely may be a rather lofty goal. We may have to settle for simple curbing the adverse effects of piracy.
casval
Dreamer
I've only ever published work on contract, so I have little say over its distribution, but personally I would much rather people were pirating my books than purchasing them through Amazon. And every dollar I have ever made on my writing has come from Amazon.
Given the state of the industry, I imagine my first fantasy novel will be self-published and I intend to either offer the ebook on my website for free or offer community copies through a seller like itch.io. I'm more interested in having readers than customers.
Given the state of the industry, I imagine my first fantasy novel will be self-published and I intend to either offer the ebook on my website for free or offer community copies through a seller like itch.io. I'm more interested in having readers than customers.
