The UK’s Guardian site is running a story with the title “Authors demand drive to raise readers’ awareness of book piracy’s cost“. It’s basically a lot of authors and publishers whining about ebook piracy. They are demanding “someone” do “something” about it and let readers know that it’s bad – maybe via a publicity drive. From the story:
Crime writer David Hewson, author of the Italy-set Nic Costa novels, said a campaign along the lines of “People Who Love Books Don’t Steal Books” was urgently required – because readers who consider themselves his fans are downloading pirated copies of his ebooks and audiobooks.
Novelist Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand and Little Bee, agreed. “I don’t blame anyone. They don’t do it [download books illegally] because they are evil but because they don’t understand,” he said. “In the music industry, when the price of music went down to zero – as it arguably now is because of filesharing – artists didn’t mind that much.
Whatthefu…? Let’s leave the minor details of the current health of the music industry, who would pay for the ebook campaign, and with what money, not to mention who would pay the slightest heed to it.
Some people clearly are not getting it, so I’m going to spell it out in terms that even those from the “old school” of publishing can understand.
1. Generally speaking, people will do what is easiest.
Sure there are exceptions to this rule, there are people who will pirate nomatter what, and people who will go to the ends of the earth to pay – but generally the more roadblocks to legitimate purchase, the more piracy. Ask Apple. People are busy, and lazy, and they want stuff to be easy. We are talking about the vast, “general public” here, not the fringes.
2. Price is the biggest ebook roadblock
Again, with the same caveats as above, the higher the price of ebooks and more DRM, the more piracy. If it’s hard, they’re not interested. If they have to convert a format, they will rarely bother. Many people just aren’t going to bother to pirate a $0.99 ebook. If you want an ebook, a “One-Click” purchase of $0.99 is just less painful than the hassle of going to find a reliable torrent of it and downloading.
3. People buy more ebooks if the price is lower
This has been proved time and again. Yes, yes, there may be exceptions – and you may or may not want to go all the way down to a Konrath-esq $0.99, but there’s a big difference between $1-3 and the good old “agency” $7.99, $9.99 or worse. And that big difference is sales.
4. The “Agency Model” is promoting piracy, hurting sales
See all of the above. Oh settle down, all those who are squealing about how I can’t prove that statement. You’re right, no-one can. But I can use my consumer eyes (“agency” is almost always more expensive), logic, experience in the ebook market and personal observation.
Publishers, you can talk around it, “make your case” for agency, hand-wring about “giving back to authors” (honestly – don’t make me laugh) or just get over yourselves and grow your businesses.
Or, as I’ve said before, you can make it easier for the rest of us.
As Gabe Newell (Valve Software) said in regards to video games: “Piracy is the result of bad service”.
He also went on to say in this interview with ABC: “We don’t really worry about piracy … piracy is the result of bad service.”
And also some parallels with DRM:
“Copy protection schemes go in exactly the wrong direction. They’re actually negative services … there’s anecdotal evidence that copy protection actually increases not decreases the piracy of games.”
Bear in mind that Valve is a pioneer in this industry in much the same way Apple is with computers and tablets. Their critically acclaimed “Half-Life 2″ is widely considered the European arthouse answer to the Hollywood bluster of Halo and Call of Duty. PC World magazine readers voted it as “the best game of all time”.
You can watch the full ABC interview with Gabe Newell here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87pevh2Q0hg
Piracy comes up at 3:31.
If publishers want to eliminate piracy, they need to stop following in the footsteps of the music industry and start taking a leaf from Valve’s book. Valve didn’t sell 12 million copies by accident.
Why is it so hard for publishers to realise this, Nathan?
I write books, and sell more ecopies than paper copies. When on of my $% books is sold on Amazon, I get about $1.25. When it is loaded via an illegal connection, I get nothing. At the moment, legitimate sales still make it worhwhile tolerating the thieves.
Were that last statement to change, why would I bother? That is the root of the argument. Most books do not sell in the hundreds of thousands. many sell only in hundreds. Allow a culture of stealing to develop and – guess what – the supply of books will shrink drastically. Does that benefit anyone?
Yes, the major publishing houses over-price their most popular authors. I suspect that will change (vis the music industry), but in the meantime, amuse yourself by reading mine. Legally purchased, of course.
But the question is: WHY does a culture of stealing develop? It’s not because we allow it. Almost everyone knows that stealing is wrong – and we can’t stop piracy anyway, or we would have by now. We have to make paying less painful than pirating. Alliteration Alley was brought to you by …