Book Piracy BAD

[ThrillhoBaggins]

Quite impressive. You really seem to have thought it out rather nicely.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

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]

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.

 

[ThrillhoBaggins]

You could always just take down any copy of your book online period and go for a solely paperback/hardcover release.

 

[pmmg]

You could always just take down any copy of your book online period and go for a solely paperback/hardcover release.

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]

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]

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.

 

[pmmg]

You are unhappy with amazon because they have given you every dollar you have made with writing?


I would suspect, that if you give an electronic copy of your book away for free, it will show up on amazon by someone else.

 

[casval]

You are unhappy with amazon because they have given you every dollar you have made with writing?


I would suspect, that if you give an electronic copy of your book away for free, it will show up on amazon by someone else.

I don't need to derail the thread, but Criticisms of Amazon are plentiful enough to have earned their own Wiki page so I'll leave it at that.

But you're not wrong that someone could resell the book on Amazon. That's true if I don't offer it for free, though, so I wouldn't let it dictate my decisions.

 

[pmmg]

Those are a lot of reasons, but giving you money was not one of them. I was just wondering how those fit together.

 

[ThrillhoBaggins]

Not to devalue it, but if there is one thing people love to do it is complain. So, naturally, there will be hate pages on wikipedia. I would be very surprised if Amazon turns out to be the only one that has one.

 

[casval]

Those are a lot of reasons, but giving you money was not one of them. I was just wondering how those fit together.

The "And every dollar I have ever made on my writing has come from Amazon," was an aside to say that even though I have only ever made money through Amazon, I would prefer not to in future even if it meant I never made any more money on my writing - not as a criticism of Amazon in and of itself.

Not to devalue it, but if there is one thing people love to do it is complain. So, naturally, there will be hate pages on wikipedia. I would be very surprised if Amazon turns out to be the only one that has one.

Of course, but Palantir or whoever don't distribute fantasy novels so the criticisms of those companies are not pertinent to my field, haha.

 

[ThrillhoBaggins]

Understandable, just saying that the bigger you are the more people are going to complain about you, that's all.

 

[Mad Swede]

What's being missed in this discussion is perceived value. By that I mean the readers perceptions of how good a given book is. Something which only costs 99c or is given away for free often becomes something you read and discard, without giving the work much thought. You don't expect much of it at all.That perception is encouraged by the poor quality of so many self-published books out there, where the authors of those books have to price them low to get any readers at all. In many ways, when you price your book low or give it away you're implying that it isn't really that good.

But readers expect far more from a book which costs $15, and if the book is good enough to match the price they won't discard it very easily. More than that, those readers will tell others about the book. This is why my publishers don't offer free books to customers, and why they don't encourage book sellers to discount the retail price. As a published author I encourage that view. I'm proud of my books, and I think they're worth the 240 SEK my publishers charge for them.

I don't like piracy. As far as I'm concerned, you either buy a copy of my book(s) or you borrow them from the library.

 

[casval]

Haha, I feel like we must hang out in entirely different circles of readers, because the perception for years among my readings groups has been "if a book is full market price, it's probably just overmarketed booktok slop." I think the only books I've paid more than $15 for in the past twenty years are just nice editions of books I've already read (like from Folio). But it's interesting to hear that there's a whole other world out there doing the opposite!

 

[Mad Swede]

Haha, I feel like we must hang out in entirely different circles of readers, because the perception for years among my readings groups has been "if a book is full market price, it's probably just overmarketed booktok slop." I think the only books I've paid more than $15 for in the past twenty years are just nice editions of books I've already read (like from Folio). But it's interesting to hear that there's a whole other world out there doing the opposite!

And you and your book readings friends don't consider it disrepespectful to the authors when you say that a book being sold at full retail price is overmarketed? You've said you're a writer so you must know how much work goes into writing a good novel. Don't you think your time and effort is worth a little more respect than you guys show with an attitude like that?

 

[pmmg]

30 years of creating, and thousands spent on production deserves more than 'gimme for cheap or I will pirate', but...thats not the world we live in.

I dont know the right balance or the magic bullet. If offering at zero was a path to future gains, than I would allow it, but... People getting stuff or free rarely value it.

 

[casval]

And you and your book readings friends don't consider it disrepespectful to the authors when you say that a book being sold at full retail price is overmarketed? You've said you're a writer so you must know how much work goes into writing a good novel. Don't you think your time and effort is worth a little more respect than you guys show with an attitude like that?

I can't speak for an entire community of readers and writers, of course, but I think the time and effort is worth respect but that respect does not need come in the form of sales. A lot of publishers price ebooks the same price as a paperback, and many also don't publish paperbacks until a year or two after the hardcovers are release; I've published enough work to know how much of the money spent on a book goes to the publisher and to the distributor and do not really respect the industry, even if I respect the work itself.

I don't use either of these myself, but I know a fair few authors who have taken to Patreon and Ko-Fi as their preferred monetary compensation. I like distributors like itch, as well, because buyers can choose to tip for work if they wish to support the author further. I don't think these platforms or payment models are intrinsically better than any other, but it's certainly interesting to see different ways of supporting the work you love crop up.

 

[Mad Swede]

I can't speak for an entire community of readers and writers, of course, but I think the time and effort is worth respect but that respect does not need come in the form of sales.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. The only way you get respect for your written work is if people read it, and that only happens if they (or a library) buy copies. In that sense sales over a longer period of time are a measure of how good you are as a writer and how much interest (and hence respect) there is for you.

I don't buy the argument that piracy is OK if it gets you readers. Because what you're saying when you pirate a book (or a film or a CD) is that you don't think the creators time and effort is worth paying for - and that is an indication of how much respect you really have for the creator and their time and effort (i.e. none at all).

A lot of publishers price ebooks the same price as a paperback, and many also don't publish paperbacks until a year or two after the hardcovers are release; I've published enough work to know how much of the money spent on a book goes to the publisher and to the distributor and do not really respect the industry, even if I respect the work itself.

Hardback copies are always released first, and that has been the case for most of the last century. Most books by debut authors never come out in paperback. The first print run for the first Harry Potter book was 500 copies, all hardback, of which 300 hundred went to libraries. That is typical for debut novels.

Publishers need to make money on books by established and/or successful authors and they need to make quite a lot of it, because otherwise there is no cash to invest in a debut author. No good publisher makes money on a first print run of 500 copies, not when you take into account editing, printing and distribution costs. And if there is no reprint then the publisher has lost a lot of money on that author and that book.

I don't use either of these myself, but I know a fair few authors who have taken to Patreon and Ko-Fi as their preferred monetary compensation. I like distributors like itch, as well, because buyers can choose to tip for work if they wish to support the author further. I don't think these platforms or payment models are intrinsically better than any other, but it's certainly interesting to see different ways of supporting the work you love crop up.

Sites like itch and Bandcamp are no different from self-publishing via Amazon. You, the creator, create your work, upload it and set the price. You also agree to the terms and conditions for using the site. You're still wanting to be paid, and you're still hoping that sufficient people will notice your work and but it, and then talk about it.

 

[casval]

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. The only way you get respect for your written work is if people read it, and that only happens if they (or a library) buy copies. In that sense sales over a longer period of time are a measure of how good you are as a writer and how much interest (and hence respect) there is for you.

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.

Sites like itch and Bandcamp are no different from self-publishing via Amazon. You, the creator, create your work, upload it and set the price. You also agree to the terms and conditions for using the site. You're still wanting to be paid, and you're still hoping that sufficient people will notice your work and but it, and then talk about it.

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.