Comments on: Neil Gaiman on Web Piracy

By: Malcowitz

Malcowitz — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:06:21 +0000

I have been nicking books from anonibooks since, oh, 2001 now.
Through it, I found, for instance, Neil here, as well as tons of other Science Fiction and fantasy writers I would never have found about from mainstream authors, as well as reading alot of out of print books.
My copy of American Gods, which I keep besides Anansi Boys began as image of a lolcat and ended as hardcover (Aquired through some difficulty I might add) on my shelf.

The thing is, ebooks aren’t a big thing and the overwhelming majority of people I’ve spoken to find it incomprehensible. Maybe that will change but I doubt it will in this decade, if not even the next.

I still pirate books. My country has a single specialty bookstore that has to handle all forays into my areas of interest for the entire nation. I have also picked up alot of stuff that’s out of print and impossible to find. Old books from TSR or Del Ray, for series older than I am.
Through it I’ve discovered authors like Zahn and shit.

The view of piracy as loss of sale I find silly. I just go to the library. I’ve read every Pratchett book on my computer before I bought it as well as every Harry Potter book.
So there’s that.
(Incidently, pardon my lacklustre english, it is my third language.)

By: Mike Briggs

Mike Briggs — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:29:00 +0000

I’d like to second what Shawn said. There is this strange perception (especially among pirates) that publishers are these useless middlemen who contribute nothing and should be eliminated by any means fair or foul. Nothing could be further from the truth. My wife is an author, and supports our family with her writing. She writes a good book, but there’s a night and day difference between what she sends her editor and what hits the final pages. The publisher also handles cover art, cover layout, interior layout, marketing, distribution and returns. MAYBE we could learn all of those skills (though probably not a professional level), but if were spending countless hours doing those things the book production would slow to a crawl.

The bottom line is that publisher and authors split the work fairly evenly, and when it’s all said and done, the profits are pretty evenly divided as well. Take the publishers out of the equation, and expect to see a noticeable decline in quality.

P.S. While the cost of selling/distributing ebooks is lower than paper, it’s nowhere near zero. Amazon and most retailers charge 30% of the cover price. In paper, that’s usually closer to 40% or 50% of the cover price. So it’s cheaper, but still significant.

By: Shawn Speakman

Shawn Speakman — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:18:14 +0000

You are right, Joselu. I’m not implying the ebooks should be the same price as hardcover books. The problem lies in that the price that people want is far below what the actual price is, minus distribution, paper, ink, glue, etc. Take away those things, a $28.95 hardcover should be around $12 – $14 as an ebook. That’s removing distribution and physical costs from the price. Yet when publishers ask that to be the price that ebook distributors sell it at, people balk at it because it’s not closer to $7-$10.

As for authors selling it on their own websites, have you ever seen a manuscript from a bestselling author before it is edited? I have. Dozens of them. Authors need editors. They need copy editors. They need someone to produce the cover art for them and lay out the book correctly. Books don’t come fully edited and realized with a first draft or even a third draft by the writer. Professionals at those “intermediaries” are responsible for aiding the author in polishing their vision and giving the best possible reading experience to the reader. So in my opinion they are needed — whether at a publishing house or whether an author hires them on spec and must include those prices in their overall self-publishing price.

By: Shawn Speakman

Shawn Speakman — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:16:36 +0000

By: joselu

joselu — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 12:25:34 +0000

Shawn, it’s not only the paper & the ink… you also reduce the distribution and storaging cost (and remember that we’re talking about worldwide distribution posibilitys, not local one as in physical world!). Yes, you have to pay the servers and so, but they’re much lower.

I don’t see the point in paying the same money for a physical book than por a electronic one… their cost is much lower.

Even more, the authors can publish their books in their own websites, so they don’t need intermediaries rising prices to take their share

By: joselu

joselu — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 12:09:40 +0000

@David Redding, as Shawn Speakman says, there’s no need of cracking the readers. The readers just protect the books you’ve bought with DRM, but if there’s no DRM, you can read whatever you whish. And tutorials to crack, for example, Kindle’s DRM are widely spread over the net. Even more, you don’t need to crack anything, is really easy to find over torrent/emule networks thousands of books without DRM, much more books than you (or me) will have time to read in our lives. As all DRM does, DRM only burdens people who “legally” buys “DRMed” things, ie: if I buy a dvd, I have to watch all the legal stuff, some trailers, etc. If I donwload through torrent, with 99% of probability, I’ll be able to skip all that crap and watch my movie without any more messing.

And affordable ebook readers is just a matter of time. Same as was with mp3 readers. Firsts of them cost hundreds of euros/dollars. Now, they’re almost given for free when you subscribe to a magazine or can be bought for less than 20 € (sorry, I don’t know current US prices for them, I assume they’re similar to western europe’s).

By: Shawn Speakman

Shawn Speakman — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:51:36 +0000

Therein lies the problem though, H. “Fair price.” For some reason — mostly I think attributed to Amazon — people think ebooks should be $9.99 or lower. They believe this because Amazon loss-leads, losing money on every ebook sale that is at that price as part of their marketing for people to buy their Kindle and become life-long customers.

If people believe “fair price” is below $10, there is going to be a problem. I already see it on numerous Amazon boards where people are angry at publishers for demanding a book be sold for how much it costs to create. Kindle owners seem to have this belief that if you take away the pages and ink, a book costs next to nothing to produce. Unfortunately they forget the words on those pages and the amount of money it takes to get those pages to the consumer. Ignorance might lead to piracy turning ugly, unfortunately.

By: H. Blanchard

H. Blanchard — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:46:57 +0000

It all depends upon your model of people: Are most people honest? Of course there will always be some percentage of opportunists. But, remember? — music piracy was ubiquitous when iTunes came on the scene, with the result that a huge percentage of consumers were just as happy to become honest a pay a bit of money for their songs.

I tend to think business people tend to believe the worst of consumers (perhaps because the dog eat dog world of business encourages this view). (And I work in the corporate world.)

Hows this for an allegory? Where I live, a private company was contracted to automate highway toll booths, and their business model was they would get a percentage of the fines for catching people who didn’t pay. I guess they thought they would make out big, because who would stop and pay a toll if there was no gate and no person (a camera was used to catch people). The result: they went bankrupt and the government took over. Yeah, that’s right, people paid their 35 cents even if it was terribly easy to run the toll.

I think that if you offer a fair price and an easy to use route to honestly buy something, then we’ll discover that most people are quite willing to be honest and support the people who provide their books. Of course, if you try to gouge customers, all bets are off.

By: Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:02:30 +0000

Gaiman makes perfect sense, for the moment, but with the advent and popularity of ereaders will what he said still apply in the future? The majority of people don’t want to read an entire book on their computer in pdf format; it is simply not comfortable to do so, so it makes sense that they would go out and purchase his books after being exposed to them online. But as ebooks and ereaders become more popular and mainstream I can easily see someone downloading a pirated book, transferring it to their ereader and feeling perfectly content having a copy that way. Hardbacks will continue to live on for those who are still used to reading bound pieces of paper and those who still like to own and collect actual tangible copies of the books they read and really liked, but there’s no question piracy is going to take a huge bite in the future, especially out of the paperback market. Think of it this way, If libraries were giving away brand new books every time the newest one came out, would you ever bothering going to the bookstore to purchase one at $15-25 a pop?

By: Shawn Speakman

Shawn Speakman — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 01:25:06 +0000

To play Devil’s Advocate, David, if what you say is true and piracy is a “small” issue, then why did Neil see such a large jump in his sales?

You are certainly right about people not knowing how to crack ebooks. But from what I can tell, most people don’t do it themselves. Someone else out there — a complete stranger — does it, puts it up on Torrent or some other file sharing system, and that average person moves over the file to their eReader. I have to admit I have no idea what file extension people download from file sharing systems, so maybe it is more complicated than that? Would love to learn more if you’ll share.