Book piracy is nothing new. In the mid 500s, so the story goes, St. Columba copied by hand a manuscript St. Finnian had lent to him. The king was invited to call on the legality of the act; his judgement, "To every cow belongs her calf, to every book belongs its copy," would certainly please publishers (and dairy farmers) today.
Yet the rulings of kings and judges do little to stop people trying to get hold of information. A few years ago, the main reason for piracy was because publishers were not keeping up with the needs of their readers; the Harry Potter books are only now appearing in a digital format via the Pottermore website, but back in 2005, people made their own digital versions instead.
Today, most major titles are available in digital editions as well as print. However, many people question why e-books are so expensive. They are often the same price, or close enough, as the print editions, despite the lack of paper, printing, warehousing, physical distribution and retail sales costs involved in their creation.
As more people start to use e-readers, the issue of piracy is only going to become more pressing for the industry. It is becoming a serious legal and professional concern, as the BBC recently pointed out in a radio documentary. Will illegal downloading lead to the collapse of publishing as we know it?
In an interview last year on the website The Millions, a book pirate going by the name The Real Caterpillar suggested a simple solution:
"I guess if every book was available in electronic format with no DRM [Digital Rights Management; the ability to choose on which devices you can read and share a book -- Books Editor] for reasonable prices ($10 max for new/bestseller/omnibus, scaling downwards for popularity and value) it just wouldn't be worth the time, effort and risk to find, download, convert and load the book when the same thing could be accomplished with a single click on your Kindle."
That's probably only true to a point. More likely is that, as it gets easier to create and find pirated books, the publishing industry, like the record and movie industries before it, will have to accept that many of the people who download pirate copies would never have bought the books anyway. To measure these as "lost sales" seems a little dishonest itself, and to focus their energies on prosecuting those who download pirated books is perhaps not the best of use of a publisher's increasingly scarce resources.
Instead of trying to scare people away from downloading pirated copies, it would be better for the publishing industry to focus on what it does best: packaging and sharing stories that people want to read, in formats that they want to read them, without what people might view as unreasonable restrictions. (Imagine how you'd feel if you were arrested for trying to lend a book to a friend.)
Previously, publishing has been about creating engaging, affordable physical storytelling experiences that fill our bookshelves and share our lives. The challenge today is to create similarly immersive and affordable digital storytelling experiences that people see as great value for money.
If the industry fails the challenge, then the pirates will win -- not because people inherently want to break the law, but because only the pirates will be giving most people what they want.
And if publishers can't do that, then there's nothing that even kings or courts can do to save them.
Witness the printing press, the steam engine, the flying shuttle, the locomotive, the typewriter, the telephone, the aeroplane.
All brought with them huge changes in the organisation of society which must have seemed like immense upheaval to the established industries living through those changes, as we are now.
It's called running a company well and smartly.
Piracy always shows something that needs adjusting. Anyone who creates a fair (I can 'loan' it) and affordable answer wins. I used to download pirated music. Now that iTunes is there and affordable, I no longer do. They have made it easier to share, and affordable to get, and fast and ready. They win.
Isn't this the type of change that good American business ingenuity is claimed to be the champ. Let's go.
$29.95 . . . really? There is no theft as detestable as petty theft.
Honestly, it would take longer downloading legit copies.
That's a really wordy way of saying I don't think publishers necessarily need to change their pricing or formatting to discourage piracy, but rather allow eBook readers the same legal ways to read books for free that are available for their print counterparts.
that said I'm not much of a useful exemplar for either model, as I buy nearly all of my books used, or from thrift stores. And how long used books stores will be around is a good (sad) question. Charity thrift stores will be selling old books for a long toime. After all, if you want an out of current standards piece of electronic equipment you can sure have a chance of finding that daisy wheel printer for $6.75 at SA.
If you want a free book, go to a library. That's what they are there for. If you want to keep it forever, dig deep and pay for it like a (moral) adult.
That's what our capitalist society has taught us. Work and be rewarded with money at the other end. Use that money to pay others for their work. I despise people who do nothing but download pirated versions of books, tv shows and music just because they can.
And before I get attacked for my despising, yes I have downloaded things I shouldn't have. But I learned my lesson and changed my ways and don't anymore. I purposely go out of my way to go out and pay for what I consume.
as for the writing process itself, there are a lot of costs not acknowledged in this article Copying the "word" version into the big printer is still done by typists. Editing is a multi layer process with many people reading line by painstaking line looking for discrepancies in grammar and spelling or wording. By the time the book comes to print many people have spent many hours on the project not counting the printing and housing of phycial books. Therefore digital books cannot be "cheap" because the whole infrastructure of publishing still has to be supported.
that having been said, books that are digital and priced at near print prices are too expensive.
Until the publishers do that, I'm sorry to say I'm all for the pirates.
If ebook prices more accurately reflected what it takes to distribute them, myself and others would be much more likely to (stupidly) buy books we won't read.
DO NOT try to sell your customers what you want them to buy - the music industry tried that before.
Also, stop with the games. If you want people to think of eBooks as "books" treat them as such.
Yes, you're buying a book..but it's actually software
You can do whatever you want with it ..but not really since it legally falls under the software category
We'll be saving you money...but the cost for printing/shipping books is very small
etc. etc. etc.
For example: the consumers wanted to buy MP3s but the music industry wanted to sell CDs.