Stealing Trek Literature

[Therin of Andor]

Why shouldn't we ask that publishers join the 21st century?

Every publisher I know is busily investigating how to best incorporate the many wonders of digital artforms, Web 2.0 and information communication technologies (ICT) into the old status quo.

It's like trying to hold back the tide... They're only shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm an artist, customiser and model maker in my spare time. Every so often, I get emails from people demanding that I make them a duplicate of something I created, or sell them the one I already have. Sure, I guess I'm shooting myself in the foot for refusing, but it's my right to maintain control over my creations if I so choose. And they don't have a right to take my work and copy it. They might have the means, but they don't have the right.

Supply and demand, and if they won't supply it someone else always does.

In several previous posts I've already talked about supply and demand. I know how it works.

One reason books are cheap and eBooks are not as cheap (as you might think they should be) is that demand for eBooks is not yet terribly high. Just as VHS machines were $800 before they dropped to $400, $200 and $50. Just as pre-recordered VHS and Beta tapes were $70 each before they were $30 and then $10. Supply and demand.

 

[ST-One]

Hi James! I didn't know you were a TrekBBSer. I loved 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' and am about to start reading 'Nemesis'. Both, I feel I should declare, legally purchased, from a bookstore, in print form (I like reading in the bath, see).

Ah, thanks. You're the kind of reader we authors appreciate...

No love for ebooks?

 

[Therin of Andor]

No love for ebooks?

Not in the bath.

 

[ST-One]

No love for ebooks?

Not in the bath.

I use my Nook (and lately my Kindle again) all the time while in the tub.

 

[James Swallow]

Hi James! I didn't know you were a TrekBBSer. I loved 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' and am about to start reading 'Nemesis'. Both, I feel I should declare, legally purchased, from a bookstore, in print form (I like reading in the bath, see).

Ah, thanks. You're the kind of reader we authors appreciate...

No love for ebooks?

I think it's clear I was referring to the "legally purchased" bit...

I'm not a format snob; I'm all for ebooks of my stuff, as long as they're not some poorly-OCR'd bootlegs and I get paid for the job of work I've done. After all, every piece of Trek fiction I've ever written is available in shiny photonic form.

 

[Deano2099]

I'm an artist, customiser and model maker in my spare time. Every so often, I get emails from people demanding that I make them a duplicate of something I created, or sell them the one I already have. Sure, I guess I'm shooting myself in the foot for refusing, but it's my right to maintain control over my creations if I so choose. And they don't have a right to take my work and copy it. They might have the means, but they don't have the right.

That's a bit different as it actually takes you effort to make a reproduction. Do you not think that in general art should be spread as widely as possible to as many people as possible (while of course, also making sure that the artist can eat and pay rent)?

In several previous posts I've already talked about supply and demand. I know how it works.

One reason books are cheap and eBooks are not as cheap (as you might think they should be) is that demand for eBooks is not yet terribly high. Just as VHS machines were $800 before they dropped to $400, $200 and $50. Just as pre-recordered VHS and Beta tapes were $70 each before they were $30 and then $10. Supply and demand.

Well it's not really supply and demand is it? It's just demand. Supply is infinite. It costs as much to manufactuer one ebook as it does one million ebooks. So traditional supply and demand doesn't apply. Which makes things awkward. It's all about price elasticity instead and that should apply equally regardless of demand...

To explain:
The supplier has a single cost for making ebooks, call it C. C never changes. Let's assume for now we're making an exclusive ebook only thing, so C is all the cost for authors, editors, typesetters and so on.

Now let's say the potential audience is 1000 people with ebook readers. The publisher figures that at $10, 10% of them will buy it, making $1000.

Now let's say loads more people have ebook readers. 10,000 this time. It's (almost) a fair assumption that, if you sell the book for $10, it'll still be 10% of the people buying it (the reality is early adoptors of technology are more likely to pay a little more for stuff), but then you make $10,000 instead.

Why would you reduce the price?

There are no manufacturing costs to worry about, the only reason you would drop the price is to increase the amount of people willing to buy it. If you can drop it to $5 and sell it to 30% of people then you're making $15,000 instead. But you could have done that even when the audience was small and make $1,500 instead of $1,000.

That search for the sweet spot remains the same at any level. There's no physical object where you have to sell it for a certain price to break even on manufacturing costs, as your manufacturing costs are a set figure, not based on how many you sell.

There's never a case in ebooks where selling an extra copy loses you money. If I sell one copy for $1 to someone who was never going to pay anymore for it, I'm $1 better off. With a paperback, that $1 may or may not cover the ink and paper cost.

 

[JoeZhang]

It's interesting how everything thinks about e-publishing when they think of piracy, in some countries, piracy of paper books is open and rampant, Peru has a particularly interesting problem:

The award*winning novelist Alonso Cueto told me he receives unsolicited sales reports from the man who sells pirate novels in his neighbourhood .At first it made him angry, but by now Cueto has learned to tolerate it. Less tolerable is that the same vendor feels authorized to give the writer advice on potential subject matter that might be more commercially successful.

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/Granta-109-Work/Life-Among-the-Pirates/2

 

[JWolf]

I just want to say right now, I really give a crap about DRM or Agency 5 or whatever. Personally, I'm perfectly happy paying more for an ebook than a paperbook. For me the convenience makes up for any price difference, as long as it's not totally outrageous (I'm happy paying anything under $10 for a paperback, or $25 for a hardcover). Sure the stuff might be annoying, but this is still a fairly new technology, just now going mainstream, and there are always problems with any new tech when it goes mainstream. If we're patient I'm sure they'll work out a better system in time.

JWolf, have you sent any of the stuff you've been posting on here to any of the publishers? Because just posting it on here anytime someone mentions ebooks isn't going to do you any good.

EDIT: And besides, I just checked the prices of both formats of Rough Beasts of Empire on Amazon and B&N, and the only difference between the four was a $0.16 difference between the two formats on B&N. Which is really not even a difference at all.
EDIT2: I just checked more of the non-Trek books on my wishlist and the majority of them are actually cheaper as ebooks.
Here some of them are:
Valis: EB$9.29/BP$11.39
Snow: EB$9.66/BP$10.26
Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief: EB$5.00/BP$7.19
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment: EB$7.99/BP$8.09
The Princess Bride: $5.12/$8.77
The Stand: $8.09/$8.90
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish: $6.15/$7.83
The Otherworld: Bitten: $6.99/$9.79
Artemis Fowler: $5.69/$7.19
Mercy Thompson: Moon Called: $7.99/$7.83 I don't know about anyone else but I have no problem with an extra $0.17 for the paperback.
Ok I think you get my point, which is that overpricing the ebooks is obviously (at least to me) nowhere near as big of a problem as you're making it out to be. And I have even more examples of this on my list if you want to see them.

Take all your prices for the paper editions and take off 33% or even 10% and then see that you are paying more for the eBook. These are discounts you can get from Borders when they send you discount coupons via email. Also, you can purchase discount plans so if you buy enough paper books, you again save money. So yes, this is a problem.

 

[JWolf]

...nor should they be demanding that their publishers make such material available.

Why shouldn't we ask that publishers join the 21st century? Also, if they won't supply what people want then the copyright infringers will. It's like trying to hold back the tide. Supply and demand, and if they won't supply it someone else always does. They're only shooting themselves in the foot.

And then complaining about the blood stains on the carpet.

 

[James Swallow]

Here's another author talking very candidly about her work and the piracy thereof: http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html

 

[Technobuilder]

And as you can see in my post, it's cheaper in ebook form.

I wonder if that's because it's generally considered to be a children's book? (IE, kids don't use E-Readers predominately yet?)

The Harry Potter Series isn't available in digital? Seriously? (Why the hell not?)

I remember the day I found some obscure vinyl KISS records that my brother didn't have in his LP collection. One of them was memorably called "KISS My Ax" - and it turned out to be an infamous bootleg record, made from fan recordings of a live KISS concert. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what a "bootlegger" did. Had KISS wanted to sell fans permanent audio recordings of every live concert they did, I'm sure they could have done so, but they'd also have been worried that the sound mix was right and that new consumers of such recordings weren't getting less-than-professional experiences. Now, my brother was thrilled to finally hear a KISS concert he'd had no opportunity to attend but, years later, I was horrified that this practice was so widespread in the music community, and that KISS itself made no money from bootleg sales.

Maybe JK Rowling enjoys the book/reading experience so much she just couldn't imagine her words in a digital format? Certainly, she's also restricted the use of her characters on certain merchandise. I'm also reminded of "Calvin and Hobbes". The only greeting cards, T-shirts and figurines you'll ever see of Calvin the boy and Hobbes the tiger are bootlegs, because Bill Watterson, the cartoonist, refused to have his cute little images licensed for tie-in merchandise.

As artists, these people rightly demand certain controls over their work. Whether the public likes it or not.

You're kinda arguing at the wind here. I never said an artist didn't have the right to do what they want to with their work, I asked why she chose to do what she did...

I may not like a particular decision, but I sure as hell can (and should) question the reasoning behind it.

Now, I'm guessing you don't know yourself, since you postulated her motivations in your post, so no harm done.

Oh well, guess I'll hit up Google, some journalist has to of picked up on this by now.

 

[Deano2099]

Here's another author talking very candidly about her work and the piracy thereof: http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html

I don't agree with the implication that every download is a lost sale, or even a large proportion - I'd be surprised if more than 10% of them even read the book. And less that would have potential paid for it. Remember pirates can get any book they want for free, they'll often download something that looks vaguely interesting, but you're competing with every book ever for their reading time.

It's most obvious in iPhone app piracy. The piracy rate is supposedly huge, like 90%, but only 10% of iPhones have been hacked. Which is because the pirates download ten times as many apps as legit users. A pirate might download 4000 apps in a year. No-one is going to be spending 4 grand on apps legitimately.

Still, this struck me as very true

Because that’s what it boils down to is convenience. People who illegally download books are more interested in their convenience than in supporting the authors they want to read. It’s not hard to go to the library, it just takes time. It’s not hard to buy a physical copy and convert it to a personal digital copy if you’re willing to make the time and effort. It’s not hard to buy a legal digital copy and convert it to the format you want. Dear Author has tutorials. It’s not hard to ask someone in the $region to post you a copy.

I do have a question, obviously Trek and licensed properties are one thing, but if your agent can't get you a deal to make your book available outside of one country, could you get the ebook done yourself and sell it on your own website?

 

[label]

You see, that's where your argument falls apart for me. Every publisher I've met see themselves very much a part of the creative process.

My argument only falls apart if you know every single publisher. Your experience with the publishers you happen to know is great, and I hope more publishers would operate with the integrity you describe. However, I look at some of what Penguin and a few of the other big name publishers have done and it's clear, they are not acting as a responsible partner in the artistic process and are very much where my argument is focused on.

 

[label]

I never said an artist didn't have the right to do what they want to with their work, I asked why she chose to do what she did...

As for the Harry Potter eBooks, I know they exist and someone's taken the time to make them look very nice. I personally don't have any interest in them as I have each book's hardback version and I prefer hardbacks to eBooks, but they are out there. Wish I knew what her reasoning was for not releasing them in eBook format as well....until this discussion, I didn't even realize she was opposed to it and there were no legal copies. Still, in this case, it's the artist herself placing the restriction so I would completely support any decision to restrict her art to certain formats.

 

[Technobuilder]

As I just checked around Google, I noticed a few things...

Apparently Rowling never got into E-Books, because she was afraid of promoting (or facilitating) E-Book Piracy.

Here's an OP Blog on what this actually accomplished.
http://www.bradsreader.com/2009/01/jk-rowling-harry-potter-ebooks-and-the-definition-of-irony/

Interestingly enough, I found that her agency is now in "active mode" in regard to e-books, where before they were just "monitoring" the situation.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/119581-rowling-opens-door-to-digital-harry-potter-books.html

Who's to know? That article was published more than 7 months ago, so I guess we'll see what the eventual outcome will be.

 

[Keptin J D Reed]

Here's another author talking very candidly about her work and the piracy thereof: http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html

I say Bravo to this author. A well written piece and at least she recognises the issues that can lead to piracy. Format, DRM, geo etc.

And she's saying screw all that, as long as you actually buy a copy she doesn't care if you get it from another country, or strip out the DRM or convert it to another. Just make sure you pay for it somehow. Hear hear.
This is where all the people on here arguing against the publishers have been coming from I feel.

Hers is an argument that I can take on board. The only bugbear I had with the piece, and it was more from the comments than the article, was the talk about using libraries and buying or loaning physical books, not ebooks. A largish chunk of the market only want it in digital form. We are never going back, We don't have to. If you try to force us we will download from other sources. It can't be stopped.

But again this was more from the comments than the article.
And some of those comments were in response to the poor people argument who say they can't afford to buy books legally. But if these "poor" people want it in a digital format, they are going to read it on an ereader or a computer. So they are obviously not that poor. They aren't poor, they are just thieves. If they are poor they should be reading physical books loaned from the library.

The only problem with that is here in the UK they are shutting all the libraries down. But hey, if more people used em I guess they wouldn't be.

 

[ST-One]

Ah, thanks. You're the kind of reader we authors appreciate...

No love for ebooks?

I think it's clear I was referring to the "legally purchased" bit...

It's not so clear... hence the question

I'm not a format snob; I'm all for ebooks of my stuff, as long as they're not some poorly-OCR'd bootlegs and I get paid for the job of work I've done. After all, every piece of Trek fiction I've ever written is available in shiny photonic form.

 

[BillJ]

They are doing it because they are greedy and trying to manipulate the market so they can maximize their shares. Period.

I think most of us are aware how corporations work...

But most corporations are publicly held and those in charge are expected to do everything possible to drive up the price of shares to maximize shareholder value. Or they won't be in charge for very long. Capitalism, like anything else, has its good points and bad.

I've just learned to roll with it.

 

[Keptin J D Reed]

I never said an artist didn't have the right to do what they want to with their work, I asked why she chose to do what she did...

As for the Harry Potter eBooks, I know they exist and someone's taken the time to make them look very nice. I personally don't have any interest in them as I have each book's hardback version and I prefer hardbacks to eBooks, but they are out there. Wish I knew what her reasoning was for not releasing them in eBook format as well....until this discussion, I didn't even realize she was opposed to it and there were no legal copies. Still, in this case, it's the artist herself placing the restriction so I would completely support any decision to restrict her art to certain formats.

I think she also believes Ebooks are evil. Sent from the future to destroy the world of literature

I suppose I can get on board with the idea that it's the artists right to place restrictions on their art. But I can still argue against their reasons for doing so. In this case she's either been poorly advised, or she's a fruit loop who falls in the same category as the nutters who believe the earths only 4000 years old and everything written in genesis is the way it is and should be taught in schools. You know the ones. Those very "special" people that you have to laugh at otherwise you would cry.

 

[ST-One]

I never said an artist didn't have the right to do what they want to with their work, I asked why she chose to do what she did...

As for the Harry Potter eBooks, I know they exist and someone's taken the time to make them look very nice. I personally don't have any interest in them as I have each book's hardback version and I prefer hardbacks to eBooks, but they are out there. Wish I knew what her reasoning was for not releasing them in eBook format as well....until this discussion, I didn't even realize she was opposed to it and there were no legal copies. Still, in this case, it's the artist herself placing the restriction so I would completely support any decision to restrict her art to certain formats.

I think she also believes Ebooks are evil. Sent from the future to destroy the world of literature

I guess some people really think ebooks are the end of literature.
ebooks have made me read a lot more in the last year - hell, I've spent nearly 1000 € for ebooks in 2010 (not to talk of the money I spent for a KindleDXi, a Nook and a NookColor).