Piracy… the downside of e-books.
There is a great commentary on the evils of becoming e-book published on c-net 
One would like to think that no one would be as dishonest as this implies, but there are always some.
And it wouldn’t be hard to forward a title downloaded onto a computer to your nearest friends or loved ones, would it? I guess it’s pointless asking people to remember that every book has taken hours, even years of one person’s time to write, edit and then place in the public eye. Surely they deserve the financial rewards, big or small, for that. We can but hope!
I hope everything is ok. Did it happen to you? And what is Cnet?
I think I’m okay so far but it will happen for sure; that someone somewhere downloads the novel via their computer, iphone or whatever and shares it. Or worse downloads whole e-catalogues and pirates them. Unfortunately copyright stands for so little, as well as the banal warning that we writers place in the book underneath the title. Piracy is alive and rife in the arts world, and all artists in all media suffer.
C-net is effectively CBS Interactive (from what I understand, operating in the minefield of technological communication: twitter, blogs, apps… you name it) and this article was ref-ed by a former whizzbang agent I follow called Nathan Bransford, who was signed to publish a novel he’d written and gave up agenting for Curtis Brown NY to join C-net.
I’m having a Lucas North kind of day, if you get my drift. Nota glass half-full day. This article pretty well encapsulated it!
Making one’s way through the ins and outs of the 21st century publishing world seems more complicated and more fraught to me than trying to find the right path out of Sherwood Forest. At midnight!
I can only extend my sympathies to a writer who has given me so much pleasure, and wish I were at hand to fill up that half-empty glass, and set a brimming jug on your table for you.
Thanks Giselle. Whilst I can’t imagine I would be worth pirating, the ease with which it is reported the pirates go into e-book catalogues and lift whole swathes, is truly frightening. I confess I DID think about this when I took ‘The Stumpwork Robe’ to e-book, but also felt that the need to invest in the e-book industry was necessary with the way the market was shifting on its foundations.
I am actually of the opinion that it’s not that bad, the sky certainly isn’t falling. Not for indie authors, anyway.
There are types of people who will pirate and those types of people would never have paid for your books anyway. But they might know people who are not that type of people or might talk about your books where non-pirate types are. Ultimately, what they’ll be doing is passing on word of mouth info and there’s no better marketing than that. As long as you make your books extremely accessible and quite affordable most people won’t have a problem buying them.
No, I’m pretty sure piracy is only a threat to the big publishing companies. Especially the ones who price their ebooks at ridiculously high numbers that far fewer people are willing to pay. And people are far more likely to justify pirating to themselves if they’re doing it from a big company.
Indie authors are going to be just fine.
I agree with you on every point, Subcreator. BUT I have friends who are mainstream published and have worked as hard as myself to make it. I feel huge disgust for the people that pirate those titles with no conscience. I can’t justify it at all, because I work on the principle that if I couldn’t afford the RRP on the title, I would wait for sales or borrow it from the library! How hard’s that?
My book (s) is accessible and readily available and heaven’s knows its affordable, but I feel a twinge when I know one person could buy it, download it to phone or computer and then email that file on… and on… and on…
It is stunning to me how easy it is to steal something online. I’ve had to literally preach to my kids about this since “everyone is doing it” doncha know? NO! everyone is not doing it, and I think they understand that now. It also helps that they have friends and relatives who produce digital products. They’ve witnessed the toil that goes into it and now don’t have the heart to merely lift something from someone just because they can. Therein lies the key — this has become personal. When people know a real person is behind the books, and not some fat cat who is sticking it to people, then I think it makes some who are on the fence about this stop and reconsider.
Whatever is happening now, at some point how intellectual property is licensed will have to be completely rethought — with the keyword being completely. Oh, certainly, the influential are thinking about it, but I’m not sure they’re thinking about it broadly enough. I read an article today about Harper Collins limiting ebook loans from libraries to 26 loans. The librarians are pitching a fit, and I wonder if it is reasonable to limit to 26, but then I wonder if the librarians realize what an ebook spawns that a printed book could not even come near doing. We have got to enter a whole ‘nother dimension on how we think of information. I literally pray for how I should be thinking about such things, and I believe there is a solution
Our son, now adult, had a lesson very early on about i-tunes and pays for every tune he wants. The fact that his mum is now e-booked and could potentially be as ripped off as musicians is a nice lesson and one he spreads to his friends.
Piracy shook the music industry hard and I think the ‘book industry’, as you say, will have to do a whole re-think and understand that intellectual copyright is not just a set of large words that fit nicely in the OED.
Meanwhile I just keep writing and hoping for the best turn-out!
A flip side to this is something I read this morning in an FAQ on an E-book site:
“How big of a threat is piracy?
We believe obscurity is a bigger threat to authors than piracy. There are many who argue that illegal piracy of your work actually benefits your overall sales. A fascinating video of author Neil Gaiman speaks about his own evolving views on piracy. I know of other best-selling authors who deliberately encourage illegal piracy of their works for the same reasons cited by Neil Gaiman – they believe it spurs sales. We don’t advise authors to encourage piracy (we’re not that ballsy yet), though we do encourage authors to never let the fear of piracy paralyze their efforts to reach authors. Never not publish because you fear piracy.”
I tend to agree that obscurity is a bigger threat to indie writers than theft, but theft feels like such a violation. Of course the flip side is what a potentially heady thing to have your book stolen by a lot of people. LOL! Gives new meaning to a left handed compliment.