Judging by the number of, illegal copies of ebooks are being shared around the internet in even greater volumes than. Even I, a lowly indie author who’s never tickled the upper reaches of the Amazon best-seller lists for long, have, in recent weeks, had a couple of folks point out that my ebooks are out there in places that I didn’t put them.So, for those of you in the same boat (with sleek yachts bearing down on you, waving their skull-and-crossbones flags), what do you do?
I’m Lindsay Buroker, I write science fiction and fantasy, and I write LOTS of it. Because dragons and spaceships? You can’t have too many of them. When I’m rolling, I’ll write a novel a month, most under my name, but some under my pen name, Ruby Lionsdrake. Don’t tell anyone, but.
I figure we have two options:Option 1Grab your pitchfork and crossbow and hunt down those pirates. Send cease-and-desist emails to the sites housing your illegal ebooks. Climb up on the highest soapbox you can find and pontificate on the evils of fans stealing your work.Of course, you must bow to the idea of living with your panties in a permanent twist, because none of this will change anything in the long run. You may even turn some fans into non-fans because nobody likes to be lectured to.
Thank you for not whining about piracy. You’re right that it’s going to happen no matter what and it’s a lot less stressful to go with the flow.The ideas sound plausible. I used to run a membership site for a teaching program and you can make a lot of money doing that if you charge a recurring monthly fee like Netflix. I don’t know how many people would pay monthly for access to an author’s stories (maybe if the fee was fairly low like the cost of a latte) but even a one-time payment could add up if you got a couple hundred people into it. I love the term “authorpreneur”!
П™‚ I’ve read so many articles and blogs about how authors need to market themselves, no matter their publishing format–but this blog entry not only makes it clearer than most, but adds in the little-discussed concept of what to do about piracy. And you have some great ideas about what to do for marketing, too.Even though I don’t have anything published yet (unless you count the blog I just started), the idea of basically ignoring piracy and/or making it work for me instead of trying to fight it totally makes sense. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and if someone someday likes my stuff enough to put my ebook on some pirate site, then someone else will like it enough to pay a few bucks for it. I feel like with the low cost of e-books, piracy just isn’t going to be a huge deal. I’ve noticed that when I do free coupons for my book on Smashwords, I see an uptick in purchased copies on Amazon. My theory is that people follow the link, decide they want to get the book, and think, “Well, do I want to go to the trouble of registering on this site and side-loading the file?
Or do I want to pay the whopping $3 she’s asking for on Amazon and get it on all my Kindle-enabled devices with one click?” Then they decide that the convenience is worth a couple of bucks.I mean, at first I thought it was crazy, because here I am trying to give them the book for free! No theft or piracy involved! But you know, it’s their time. And if you think about the dollar value of the time it takes to actually read a full-length novel (I figured that, with my book, it costs the average wage-earner/reader roughly $150), the $3 savings from a free coupon is pretty insignificant.I don’t see marketing to pirate sites though, only because it seems like a lot of those people aren’t actual readers–they just like to collect pirated stuff because it makes them feel clever. This is an interesting approach to tackle piracy.
The big publishing houses tend to favor the “Army of Lawyers” approach and DRM, but they should take note of Lindsay’s post. Of course they’re not particularly innovative, so they probably won’t. DRM also hampers improvements in eBook technology, since geeks are hampered trying to support the requirements from the Big 6 (cf. Baldur Bjarnason).I think that the indie community will be the ones to provide alternatives to piracy, which is a problem (especially in my area of the world – Southeast Asia). This post has real legs. Thanks, Lindsay. I was in China for 3.5 years, and it’s harder to find a legit copy than a ripped one.
There’s a BIG difference in how IP rights are enforced, but it all comes back to pricing again. Foreign corps usually ask people in these countries to pay a pretty high price for their product. 20 RMB in China has roughly the purchasing power of 20 USD in America, but the median income for Chinese people is a lot lower.
It would be more like asking the average person here to pay $40-50 for a DVD.What government is going to spend time chasing people who don’t have any money just because they wanted to watch a movie they couldn’t afford and so pirated it? It’s illegal, but not time or cost effective. I agree that chasing down pirates is a waste of precious time and energy. It wasn’t until I’d started giving some of my books away for free that I started to see serious sales, and even before that, I was always careful to opt out of DRM wherever possible. It was always more important to me that my books be easy to read than hard to steal. Have I been pirated?
I’ve seen my full trilogy show up on torrent sites, and hilariously, the comment threads associated were some of the most active and interesting discussions of the books I’ve seen. As a reader (I’m not an author, just a fan), I would say that to avoid the mistakes of the music industry (when going electronic) the following three is important:1) Pricing: Charge less than for a “physical” copy. First-book-for-free schemes, or discounts, are also good (as you already discussed).2) Availability: Make sure the ebook is available in as many ebook stores as possible. And don’t forget Europe!
Don’t only stick to American stores. П˜‰3) Compatibility: Try to sell the book in many different (file) formats, to suit all devices. It’s a bugger when an ebook you want is only available in some format locked to a device sold by one company, which you don’t have. That could turn people to piracy.Note; Lindsay I think you are already succeeding with these, and I shouldn’t worry too much about piracy affecting sales rates.For 3) I am not entirely sure though, since I “turned Kindle” after struggling with finding ebook stores for my old Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen. П™‚Keep up the good work, ebooks are the future 🙂//You most newborn fan.
I just had to reply to your comment, Sara. This blog post has been one of the most interesting and insightful I’ve read in a while, and I love all of the comments.Sara, your 3-point list of pricing, availability, and compatibility deserve a blog post of their own! This is so true, for music, ebooks, movies, or any other digital medium.I, for one, must confess to having downloaded the occasional pirated song, primarily because I couldn’t find a legitimate copy anywhere else. I love European folk music, and many of the European sites I find the music on aren’t compatible with English/US dollars/shipping to North America, etc. I want to buy their music, but if their site won’t take a Visa card drawn on a US bank and won’t convert the dollars into Euros, then what am I supposed to do?
Just sayin’.Oh, yeah. And put your stuff somewhere besides just iTunes.
Some of us are those snarky anti-Mac people who use only Amazon or Google Play. П˜›Pricing, Availability, Compatibility.
What wonderful tips to keep in mind as I get ready to launch my book into the print and digital world.Thanks for this blog post, Lindsay, and thanks for your comment, Sara! Piracy will always exist as long as the internet is free, which hopefully it always will be.Joe Konrath makes a good point when he says that price is a big factor in piracy. People started pirating music because the only format they were allowed to pay for was $15+ for a 10-15 track album on CD, even when they only wanted one or two of those tracks for their digital library. I do think book piracy will grow as ereading does, but the main victims will be publishing houses that charge $15 (there’s that number again creepy) for the electronic form of a book. Anything from $2.99-$5.99 is coffee money in the eyes of likely customers.As for fighting piracy, I agree with Lexi that a polite letter is the best you can do.
It won’t work, most likely, but lawsuits are already proven failures.
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Children Audiobooks. Book DescriptionImperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is good at her job: she can deter thieves and pacify thugs, if not with a blade, then by toppling an eight-foot pile of coffee canisters onto their heads. But when ravaged bodies show up on the waterfront, an arson covers up human sacrifices, and a powerful business coalition plot to kill the emperor, she feels a tad overwhelmed.Worse, Sicarius, the empire's most notorious assassin is in town. He's tied in with the chaos somehow, but Amaranthe would be a fool to cross his path.
Unfortunately, her superiors order her to hunt him down. Either they have an unprecedented belief in her skills. Or someone wants her dead.