Kindle=E-Books=Piracy...Is this the beginning of the end for books?

I'll add this problem to my list of things I'll never need to worry about.

caw

Kindle -- as in kindle wood, kindle the fire -- a metaphor for Bradbury's classic?

MagicMan said:

Make a book electronic and theft is simple, fast, and profitable. Keep it paper, theft is just too much effort.


I just found the new Koontz novel (not even in MM paperback...still HC) free...the whole book on the internet.

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Eh - people are still going to buy books, just like they still buy music and videos (and yes, even still go to movies). Yes, DRM is going to be an issue. Yes, some people are still going to pirate them all.

I can't spend too much time worrying about this.

The trick is, WRITE GOOD BOOKS!


Seriously. There are a percentage of people who will always steal if they can. This has been shown by the gaming industry. PEople who slap more DRM on their games just end up pissing customers off, losing business, and creating more piracy. The people who have light or non-existent DRM sell just as well as those who don't, and in some cases better. And people LIKE them a LOT more cause they don't have to fucking jump through goddamn hoops to get their games!

So, boo! No DRM on our books!

I'll buy them, cause I'll want to see more of them. Some people will steal. Those people are called assholes for a reason.

Few people will bother stealing books by authors they don't know. If no one knows you, they're not likely to steal your works. And not very likely to buy it.

Also, if ebooks are so dangerous, why are many published authors (with support of their publishers) giving ebooks away for FREE? There was a whole slew of them recently.

Ebooks being stolen is as great a threat to writer's profits as library rentals are. If you're selling so few books that you're counting pennies and individual readers, you're already in bad shape as an author. Most authors just want to get their books into as many people's hands as possible. This includes giveaways (which is sometimes done with real books too-- like contests that give away books-- oh no a lost sale!!) because that can build word of mouth.

If I like the book, I'll tell my friends. They may go buy the books. If three of them do and each tells three people who buy the book... that's now 12 people who bought the book because I read a free copy and loved it so much I was free marketing for the author. Word of mouth is one of the best things a writer can have.

So, I hope someday that I am popular enough that people want to steal my stories. Someday!

In my opinion, many of the people who pirate are probably not people who would have bought the book in the first place.

And I do agree to an extent with Zoombie on the DRM issue. In some cases, they have made it bloody hard to use things you legally pay for. Before I got my iPod, I used Napster. My iPod won't play a single track that I downloaded from Napster.

MagicMan said:

The long and short...writing will no longer be a career path, since you can't really make a living from writing today, and in five years you might be able to fill your gas tank once a month from book revenues. Electronics and piracy will make writing a hobbyist activity. The quality will suffer and the future contributions will gradually fade. I guess we always have what has already been written.

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You know, part of me wishes people would quit saying what MagicMan says in his first sentence about nobody being able to make a living writing today.

I have made a very, very nice living writing for more than twenty years. I have many friends who also support themselves and various numbers of family members with their writing. We work hard, we sell to traditional publishers, and we make good money. Most of us have been at this a long time.

So part of me, as I said, wants to deny this "truth" I see so often written that it's impossible to make a living at this.

Another part of me figures if you haven't done the research to show you writing can, in fact, provide a nice living, then ... okay.

As for the latter bit about technology and piracy making writing a hobbyist activity in which nothing of quality will ever be published again ... if you really feel this way then, hey, don't quit your day job.

I happen to believe my life's work is worth a living wage, and though I have a decidedly cynical view of the "business" end of publishing, I do not subscribe to all this doom and gloom about the future of writing.

Storytelling has always been a part of humanity. It always will be. The forms and venues may change, but the ability to tell a story, and tell it well, will always be valued.

And best of luck to those of you starting your careers now.

I can write fast, I'll just pick up the pace a bit. Five years? lotsa time, lotsa time ....

In my travels over the past two years I have met many authors who write for a living and do very well, and not all of them are 'big names'.

And thanks for the good luck wishes, CeCe!

You know people steal books from book shops don't you?

E-books - cheaper to sell yes, but I'll make almost exactly the same amount per book print and e-book. There is a big piracy problem currently, true. There probably always will be and it'll be factored in - in exactly the same way my local library has a set amount in their budget to replace stolen books. The only difference being - the print author makes money off the replacement, so the theft might earn them something!

People say that about music... digital music will be the death of the industry. And for a while, they really believed that was true.

Well, the industry is still thriving. People are still buying. People are still making music. In fact, more and more people are making music and using the digital media as a viable distribution channel.

I mean, we can have free books now -- just go to the library. And people do steal books from the library or stores.

Theft has existed since the beginning of time. Still, by and large, people are going to want to buy and keep the music they love. They will do the same with books.

In fact, the advancement of technologies would make it easier to acquire content, and that means reaching a much wider audience and become more convenient to shop (oooh, now they don't have to go to damn store 50 miles away to buy the book -- just order it online and have instant access to it on your reader), and that means more $$$ and wider distribution... That's the whole idea behind mass market paperbacks anyway -- large volume, cheap production (and people do steal them at the Kroger), cheaper prices and wider availability. Digital distribution is going to be even larger, cheaper and wider.


I've heard this talk forever... digital music is going to kill the industry... TV is going to kill movies... P2P is going to kill the software industry... etc. etc. etc. Well, they seem to all be doing very well, still.

Write a good book. Provide great content. And people will gladly open their wallets for it. Those who want to steal would not buy anyway, so they're not your potential buyers to begin with.

I'm not that old, but I can remember when the VCR was going to put home video out of business because everyone would just copy their movies. Yeah, there are more bootleggers out there, but I still paid $14.95 for Barbie Dum-belina last week. The home video market seems to be doing just fine, and I don't think Dean Koontz is chewing his nails at night because his latest is floating around cyberspace.

Actually, if it weren't for bootlegs, I wouldn't have spent hundreds of dollars on anime. Fans subbed it and passed it around. When series I liked were eventually released in North America, I bought them (even at the scary price of $50/dvd).

There are always thieves, and digital media does make it easier to steal. But the question of the OP is based on the assumption that everyone is a thief, and we will steal whenever we can. That's a pretty grim view of the world. True, sometimes it's true, and human nature kicks in and people want their free lunch. But our economy and capitalism is based on the fact that if you make something people want, they will pay for it. This doesn't change whether you're selling a box of cereal or a book or a music file.

Besides, there are copy protection stuff that would make it more difficult for 90% of the population. But is it worth it? Apple doesn't seem to think so, and they're taking off the DRM stuff from their iTune catalog.

MagicMan said:

WOW...that's my problem...the people who should be concerned are advocates or apathetic.

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It's your assumption that people like us should be concerned. However, you have no basis for your concern except certain fear of what might happen because you assume everyone is a thief. We've given you prior examples -- TV didn't kill movies; digital movies didn't kill home video sales; and digital music didn't kill the music industry.

MagicMan said:

WOW...that's my problem...the people who should be concerned are advocates or apathetic.

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You believe we should be concerned. Obviously, not all of us feel the same way.

From a personal perspective, I think it sucks that people pirate. I myself purchase content legally (college anime days aside) but I don't think pirating is as dangerous as some people would like to believe. The assumption that all of these people would be purchasing the content if it were not available online just doesn't make sense to me.

It's a bit like the worry over the Kindle's text to speech feature. On paper, it can be made to look like a threat. Many people, Neil Gaiman included (and I'm just adding him in because he has books which could be impacted whereas I'm unpublished and easy to shrug off), think the worry over it was blown out of poportion.

People buy my books for their Kindle or their Mobipockets or their laptops all the time. Because I run daily Google searches for my titles, I can find--and report--pirates to the appropriate places and have their sites removed and/or shut down. Saying that e-reader technology will kill off the publishing industry is akin to saying that second-hand bookstores or book swapping groups or the people who sit in B&N drinking their lattes reading an unbought book will kill off the industry. Sure--there are plenty of thieves out there who pirate novels, movies, music and so forth. But as Maestro and the others have said, these aren't people who would be part of the buying public anyway.

I don't see this happening within the next five years. I think the folks on the world right now have been brought up with books, magazines, etc, tangible things they can hold in their hands and read.

It's that next generation that is the problem. Don't know what to call it, but it's the group that will be brought up with these inexpensive Kindles and other eBook readers. They may cause trouble for printed books because they'll be so used to seeing things on a screen, holding a book will feel alien to them.

Or it may not. Who knows?

I won't get started on DRM. I ripped a CD to one computer and it wouldn't let me move it to another computer. I bought the CD and both machines, but evidently DRM didn't believe me.

Ebooks being stolen is as great a threat to writer's profits as library rentals are.

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Quoted for truth. Just today I got an e-mail from a reader who said (I am paraphrasing), "I checked your book out of the library twice, and then I just had to buy my own copy." There was some EVERNIGHT piracy in Spanish more than in English -- but that was largely by Latin American readers who could not yet buy the book in stores. A couple of them wrote, apologetically, to explain -- and added that they bought the book once they could find it, because they had enjoyed it.

I'm sure some people pirated my novel and did not buy a copy afterward. I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled about that. But I also know it hasn't stopped the royalties from coming in, so I'm not doomsaying yet. As others have pointed out, piracy has yet to destroy Hollywood, and while it has changed the music industry, it certainly hasn't killed it. Why would books be different?

MagicMan said:

What alternate streams of revenue outside of television and movie (if your really lucky) revenues does the mid-list author have to draw upon?

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The mid-list author largely draws revenue from teaching and flipping burgers, even now. I draw revenue from scientific consulting and teaching, and I ain't even made the mid-list. I have never witnessed anybody sitting in a comfy chair, or at a picnic table, or on the beach, or at a cafe, reading from an e-reader. When I start seeing lots of those, I'll get concerned. Meantime, I have drinking to do.

caw

MagicMan said:

Maestroworks....

The music industry has alternate streams of income...tours, movie/TV appearances, radio play time payments. But still, look at the industry revenue totals, a decline of 20% over the last five years with experts pointing a finger directly at piracy.

The 2007 Academy awards got the big boo for pleading with the public to go to the movies. That indicates financial problems as well as a number of specialty production companies closing down in the last two years. Again the finger points to piracy. This industry has alternate streams of revenue with DVD sales and rentals, cable broadcasts, and television rights.

What alternate streams of revenue outside of television and movie (if your really lucky) revenues does the mid-list author have to draw upon? What happens if piracy causes the majority of publishers to go out of business? Do we publish ourselves on the internet with a hope and a prayer that it wont be pirated...good luck. Or do we sit on a street corner with a hat, a notepad and a sign "Help this starving author?"

Smiles
Bob

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E-piracy will not put Random House or Penguin or even a small independent e-publishing company out of business. Do you know anything about the e-publishing industry at all or are you basing this off your assumptions? Standard e-publishing contracts give authors from 35-40% royalties generally. Why is that? Because the overhead is substantially lower. The ease of the technology will appeal to some readers--hell, we do everything else on some sort of screen these days. True fans of literature--or of a specific author--are going to continue to buy their hard copies. The analogy you're drawing here is ridiculous.

mscelina said:

E-piracy will not put Random House or Penguin or even a small independent e-publishing company out of business. Do you know anything about the e-publishing industry at all or are you basing this off your assumptions? Standard e-publishing contracts give authors from 35-40% royalties generally. Why is that? Because the overhead is substantially lower.

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. . . and the sales are minuscule.

caw