Comments on: Piracy Can Boost Book Sales Tremendously

By: J Michael Antoniewicz II

J Michael Antoniewicz II — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 23:56:00 +0000

Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, Jim Baen and Eric Flint’s reasoning for opening the Baen Free Library, putting CD’s full of ebooks into Hardbacks, handing out said CD’s of at cons, having the first 4-9+ chapters of a book online so a reader can ‘sample’ it before laying out cash for the rising prices of deadtree editions, allowing Joe Buckley to host copies of the CD’s for download….

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:37:00 +0000

If you want an example of this try looking at
http://www.baen.com
http://baencd.freedoors.org
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com
You may like the result.

By: Wanderer

Wanderer — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:37:00 +0000

If you want an example of this try looking at
http://www.baen.com
http://baencd.freedoors.org
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com
You may like the result.

By: tp

tp — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:58:52 +0000

@jason: ma ma! ma ma! I want my ma ma!

By: Episódio 11 – para os Fanboys | Patrulha.TV

Episódio 11 – para os Fanboys | Patrulha.TV — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 23:23:37 +0000

[...] da Apple – Outubro 2010 MacBook Air Mac OS X Lion Mac App Store Windows 8 sai em 2012 Pirataria aumenta vendas de livro topsyWidgetPreload({ "url": "http%3A%2F%2Fpatrulha.tv%2Fepisodio-11-para-os-fanboys%2F", [...]

By: Online Global Week in Review 29 October 2010 from IP Think Tank

Online Global Week in Review 29 October 2010 from IP Think Tank — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:40:06 +0000

[...] Piracy can boost book sales tremendously (TorrentFreak) [...]

By: R

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:15:16 +0000

It doesn’t surprise me. Think about it, if you read something you like, having a paper copy of it is appealing, you’ll be able to read it again anywhere you go. Kindle may be convenient, but not everyone has or wants one. I’d certainly like a paper copy of a book I like. There’s just something appealing about having it in print in your hands and turning the pages yourself.

I’ve purchased a number of books that I had pirated. I can’t say the same for as many TV shows, movies, or CDs.

But there’s a reason for that. As long as you know what you’re doing, you can burn either from a pirated file well enough. Not everyone loves the extra-features enough to make the purchase. Also, even if you do, an occasional person will post the ripped DVD data online, so there’s no real difference except for the picture on the DVD. Music is pretty much the same for most people. A home-burned CD is close enough to being as good as a store bought one. Plus mp3 players make CDs less appealing.

Maybe after e-readers become more common, book piracy will become a bigger issue, but that day is not today.

By: Simone

Simone — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:29:29 +0000

c. And to respond to the case of if you COULD (and did) prove this. Fine, book leaks have helped some authors, but have they helped ALL authors? What about other people involved or affected? No, What I don’t think you people get is that some authors (gasp) don’t want their books to be up on these sites like this. (I know, they really are greedy bastards) But whether you think that’s wrong or selfish or whatever you want to call it, what right do YOU have to ignore this and do it anyway? Who are you? Getting a book published is hard. Authors spend months or years writing and writing, tuning, editing, trying to get the plot perfect, the characters write, feeling like they’re brilliant, feeling like they’re crap, and finally it’s written. Then they have to find an agent, which again will take months, involve putting your pride on the line to strangers, mean tons of rejections, again feeling like crap, being depressed, still hoping and trying, until they get an agent. Then the round of getting a publishing contract, which includes more of the same, then there are editors, proofs, galleys, legal things and so much more. If an already contracted author is writing a book they have to make deadlines with the publishers, while going to work (most author’s have day jobs, they can’t support themselves on just their books, maybe you could help them reach that goal), having a family, eating, maintaining some semblance of a social life. They must do write their book and make that deadline all around these other things. All of this before the book hits the shelves. Why do you think they put themselves through that hellhole? It would be so much easier just to put the book online when it’s done, they wouldn’t have to deal with deadlines and hassle, rejection or all of that stress, they could just write in at their leisure. So why don’t they do that? They wanted to get published. Publishing their book means something to them (there are many reasons). And they don’t have to tell YOU jack squat about them do they? The point is they as the creator worked hard to get this book out there in the way THEY, the creator, wanted it to be. It might not agree with you but it’s their way and since they made it shouldn’t they have some say in how people get it? If an author is ok with putting their book on these sites then go with it, but when you post a book up when the author doesn’t want it to be there then you ARE SHITTING ON THAT AUTHOR. YOU ARE SHITTING ON THEIR TIME, BLOOD, SWEAT, TEARS, EFFORT AND EVERYTHING THAT WENT INTO GETTING THAT BOOK PUBLISHED. Everything they worked now means squat because you don’t care enough about what THEY WANT OR FEEL to buy the book they made. What about those that support themselves entirely through writing? They aren’t Stephanie Meyer level people and what about if pirating their books is hurting them? I know an author that calculated how much money she would have gotten if all of her books that were pirated on a few sites were bought and guess what she found? If you bought her book SHE WOULDN’T HAVE HAD TO TAKE OUT LOANS TO PAY FOR HER DAUGHTER’S COLLEGE TUITION. As you can imagine she’s pretty damn upset about that, and rightly so. Another author found 800 downloads of her books on another site and guess what? She could have fed her kids for 8-12 MONTHS on that money. So why shouldn’t they be angry or upset? Why should you be upset that they aren’t “sharing” more? Who are you to call them greedy or selfish when they are trying to live? This id Duh: Life 101, money makes the world go round and they lost a lot thanks to you. Why do you get to force others to comply to your views, especially when it hurts them? It’s like censorship. You might find the book offensive, others might find it offensive, but not everyone finds it offensive. So why do you think that it’s all right to make it so no one can read it? That’s wrong. People should make their own choices about what to read. If you’re a parent then you can tell your kid not to read it but if you told my child (if I had a child) that they couldn’t read it I would bitch slap you. You can’t tell people to become a vegan or make them only eat grapefruit. You can’t say enforce a universal dress code or uniform. So why do you think you can say what to read? If a book is appropriate then work to have warnings or a system of rating books like movies have. But don’t just say that no one can read. And if you think censorship is wrong why isn’t piracy? Because again you’re forcing someone to follow your principles (and you even have this audacity when you didn’t even make the damn thing) How about this: I make jewelry (I do), sometimes I sell my pieces but I don’t have a store or website. One necklace can take me around 8 hours to complete. One day I found that someone decided that I shouldn’t be charging money for my pieces (never mind material cost) for some reason (like that since I don’t have a website I’m not a real jewelry seller or too expensive, they should be shared with all, another jeweler doesn’t charge, whatever you want) so he took them, made copies, cheaply and with little effort, and distributed them to people or people just took them. What do you think I’m going to do? Well I certainly won’t roll over and take it. I would find these people and BEAT THE SEVEN SHADES OF HELL OUT OF THEM. Who the fuck do they think they are to take something that I made, I planned, worked on, put time and energy into and then decide that they should be free and steal them? Hell no. It’s my right (this applies to an author as well) to decide what happens to MY CREATIONS. If I want to sell them, donate them, give them away, auction them, or use them as hockey pucks that my prerogative. Some might be fine with it but, many creators don’t really appreciate it when that right is taken from them. So if you really did support authors and were fans then you would follow their wishes.

By: Simone

Simone — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:23:49 +0000

You can say that being noticed is good, I believe that. And you can claim that posting the book on pirate sites helped boost sales but you can’t prove it statistically. Improvement of sales after posting books COULD mean that they’re connected but if could not. There are lurking variables that you haven’t considered like what if after first rise attention spread really quickly by other means and more people buy the books. It could be that the piracy helped or it could be that it didn’t, but can’t say yet that it did. There could be other factors and things that effect sales at play that you haven’t noticed, considered or even know about. You THINK it’s true but, unless you poll every person who bought the book after the illegal scans were up or a polled statistically unbiased sample of sufficient size in relation to the number of people that bought the book there is no way in hell that you can make this claim. In other words, it might LOOK like piracy helped sales but you haven’t proven it and so can’t state that it did. Give me STATISTICALLY SOUND evidence that it did. If you’re going to make claims like these you had better back them up explicitly so that no one can counter them.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:39:56 +0000

My theory as a bibliophile is that I hate reading eBooks on a computer. I also hate paying full price for an author I’m not sure has any talent so I’ll read the first few chapters online and if I like it, I’ll buy a hard copy.

I also get happy in the pants over multi-media literary campaigns. Examples would be Rizzoli & Isles the TV show linked with the Tess Gerritsen books with ‘special online features.’ Castle, Bones (Kathy Reichs), and Dexter are all literary works that run alongside a TV and internet campaign.