ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
Quite impressive. You really seem to have thought it out rather nicely.
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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.
pmmg
Myth Weaver
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 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
Dreamer
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.
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pmmg
Myth Weaver
Those are a lot of reasons, but giving you money was not one of them. I was just wondering how those fit together.
ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
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
Dreamer
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.
Of course, but Palantir or whoever don't distribute fantasy novels so the criticisms of those companies are not pertinent to my field, haha.
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ThrillhoBaggins
Troubadour
Understandable, just saying that the bigger you are the more people are going to complain about you, that's all.
Mad Swede
Auror
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.
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
Dreamer
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!
