Book Piracy BAD

[Mad Swede]

I guess if that's how you view respect and readership, I can see how you came to the rest of your conclusions. I think we maybe just have fundamentally different world views? I can't imagine a less valuable metric than sales in terms of how good a writer is, personally. No hate, you're free to feel how you feel of course.

All said and done, piracy and used book stores have the same effect on sales for the writer, but relatively few people are against used bookstores. I think it's this difference in values that says 'paying for something = respecting/valuing it more' that is drawing this line? (Correct me if I'm wrong vis a vis how you view used bookstores, though!) It's hard to imagine looking at the world that way, but diverse viewpoints are what make the world go round, so it's fascinating to learn about them.


Of course, but you can also give away copies through itch in a way that Amazon's (or bookstores') don't allow and I think that appeals to writers with an ethos similar to mine. Community copies sustain the itch community in a lot of ways, and I think it fosters that different perspective.

Wait one. When you give your book away (or set the price to zero) on a site like itch or Bandcamp or Amazon you are still in control of who gets a copy (or reads it in terms of a community copy), and so you can see how many wanted to read a copy and therefore how much interest there is in your work. The same is true if you (or your publisher) set the price to $15 and track the number of sales through book stores and/or on Amazon - you can see how many people wanted a copy to read. You can even track how many times your book was borrowed from a library, because you get a small fee each time the book is lent. In all these cases it's the same metric (the number of people who want to read the book), you're just not counting money when you give the book away.

This is also true when someone buys a book second hand, the level of interest in the book can be judged by how fast a second hand copy sells (and sometimes for how much) and indirectly by how hard it is to find a second hand copy for sale. Popular books either never make it into a second hand book shop (because people keep hold of their copies) or sell as soon as they turn up.

Piracy is different, because it is theft of someone elses property. Even when it applies to books.

 

[casval]

Wait one. When you give your book away (or set the price to zero) on a site like itch or Bandcamp or Amazon you are still in control of who gets a copy (or reads it in terms of a community copy), and so you can see how many wanted to read a copy and therefore how much interest there is in your work. The same is true if you (or your publisher) set the price to $15 and track the number of sales through book stores and/or on Amazon - you can see how many people wanted a copy to read. You can even track how many times your book was borrowed from a library, because you get a small fee each time the book is lent. In all these cases it's the same metric (the number of people who want to read the book), you're just not counting money when you give the book away.

This is also true when someone buys a book second hand, the level of interest in the book can be judged by how fast a second hand copy sells (and sometimes for how much) and indirectly by how hard it is to find a second hand copy for sale. Popular books either never make it into a second hand book shop (because people keep hold of their copies) or sell as soon as they turn up.

Piracy is different, because it is theft of someone elses property. Even when it applies to books.

Sure, yeah, I don't think I ever said I was against having any metrics - hence why my original post to this thread said if I self-publish, I plan to offer community copies or a free ebook through my website. It is a means of reducing piracy by offering free copies in a legitimate way, so to speak. I just don't see the monetary element as necessary; I don't really begrudge people for not paying for books, most people I know can barely afford groceries.

I don't know if there's a way to really track sales through used book stores, though, if they don't have a website or some other means of self-reporting to publishers about interest... but I guess in a certain timeframe the 'popular books won't be in used stores' metric is true, at least for the first couple of years after it was published.

I prefer physical books so I don't have much reason to pirate them myself, but I'll admit I have pirated comics in the past and many of those websites have download numbers and more popular series have more seeders - and 'sort by popularity/most downloaded' is a feature of most websites, legitimate or otherwise. So it might not be impossible to track potential readers through those means, if you still wanted the metrics.

 

[pmmg]

Sure, yeah, I don't think I ever said I was against having any metrics

But you also have not said piracy was bad. If you are defending piracy all the rest of this is a smokescreen. You may wish to give your books away for free, but that is not the same as deciding for others that they should do so as well. If I am not on that path, and you pirate my book, or put it somewhere to be pirated, it is theft. I don't need to go any further.

Piracy is theft.

I am not sure what I can do about it, but it is still theft.

 

[casval]

But you also have not said piracy was bad. If you are defending piracy all the rest of this is a smokescreen. You may wish to give your books away for free, but that is not the same as deciding for others that they should do so as well. If I am not on that path, and you pirate my book, or put it somewhere to be pirated, it is theft. I don't need to go any further.

Piracy is theft.

I am not sure what I can do about it, but it is still theft.

Well, I haven't said piracy is bad because I don't think piracy is bad, obviously. It's the natural result of bad service and, perhaps, a bad economy. I think offering your book for free via a website, community copies, or any other means is a good way to combat piracy because it offers a legitimate means to acquire the book for free - but if all you want is for people to pay for your book, then yeah, I guess there's not really much you can do about it at the end of the day.

 

[Mad Swede]

Well, I haven't said piracy is bad because I don't think piracy is bad, obviously. It's the natural result of bad service and, perhaps, a bad economy. I think offering your book for free via a website, community copies, or any other means is a good way to combat piracy because it offers a legitimate means to acquire the book for free - but if all you want is for people to pay for your book, then yeah, I guess there's not really much you can do about it at the end of the day.

To put this much more harshly, what you are saying is that it is OK to steal. You may think that you're only talking about books, but the reality is that you have accepted the principle that it is OK to steal provided you feel that you can justify it to yourself. It's like taking bribes. Once someone has taken a backhander to do something the only question to be discussed next time is how much more they have to be paid to do something even worse, simply because they've shown they can be bought.

That's the start of a very slippery slope, one I've seen far too many times on the various UN peacekeeping and peace enforcement oerations I served on. The argument that "it's OK to do this because..." rapidly escalates and what results is all too often an unpleasant and bitter conflict.