Does the lack of ebooks encourage piracy?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column020701.htm">http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column020701.htm</a><br /><br />Jeff Kirvin has written an article this week called "The Truth About Piracy." If you are interested in ebooks at all I encourage you to read it. The crux of the article, for me anyway, is near the end. "Let's face it, most people are just lazy enough to prefer buying a professionally formatted, easily available ebook to tracking down a pirate edition filled with OCR errors." For me, this is a big "DUH!" Apparently the publishers don't get it though.<br /><br />What do you think? I have a friend that has seen all sorts of pirated <i>paper</i> books in alt.binaries.ebooks and the like, but never one available as an ebook purchase. Why are publishers so paranoid about this and costing themselves customers?

[Foo Fighter]

I was under the impression that Microsoft's Reader project was pretty much dead. You don't hear anything lately about Reader ebook partnerships or updates to the application.

Is Microsoft leaving the field? :?

[Brian K]

If every book I ever wanted was available on-line for a reasonable price, I would never hit alt.binaries.e-books again.

Having said that, I will NOT pay MORE for an e-book than I would for the paperback version of that same book. That's just ridiculous. I bet the majority of books today are type-set by computer, anyway, so somewhere there's a big .rtf file (or some other format) that could probably be converted to e-book format with little additional work.

Or I could just be wrong. Someone out there know anything about modern bookmaking?

Brian K

[Ed Hansberry]

I was under the impression that Microsoft's Reader project was pretty much dead. You don't hear anything lately about Reader ebook partnerships or updates to the application.

Is Microsoft leaving the field? :?
You seem to think that anything that is not currently undergoing a big media blitz is dead. Didn't you ask if the Pocket PC had been left for dead just a few weeks ago?

And Foo - read that non sequitur link I sent? ;-)

[Tom Eichers]

Nice read, Very true. The eBooks I have are from very old books that are not in print anymore (but I do have them in paperback in my library), and I know there is no way they will ever be done by the publisher. But I would buy the publishers version (if reasonably priced) of current or upto 3 years old Sci-Fi books. Would love to have some Sci-Fi series in legal format :D

Sometimes (most times) the quality of the eBooks that you find on the Usenet groups are not that great.

[GC4062]

It seems that no matter how much of something is produced, there will always be theft of some kind unfortunately. The thing I find interesting, is after almost 20 years in the IT industry, usually the desktop and network guys have the most "free" (ahem) software.

I found the comment on Microsoft Reader interesting... I purchased my Jornada 568 during the Winter Olympics when one of the retailers had a special... after being a Palm user for over 3 years, I was amazed at how much more functionality I suddenly had in my hand! I tried out a few free e-books when I registered my software and one that stands out was World War II In The Balance... the MS Reader version was so loaded with typographical errors, spelling errors, and weird page formatting that I managed to struggle through to the end and read the whole book. Now I hesitate to purchase any books for MS Reader, wondering if the few freebies that I tried from the MS Reader site are indicative of other titles for MS Reader.

I have Palm Reader Pro on my Pocket PC and am thoroughly pleased with it. I've purchased about 10 e-books to date and can be found reading or browsing news channels on AvantGo usually when I'm on the train.

Never been much of one for the newsgroups (alt.anything at all) as I find it takes too long to sort through the spam and porn to find actual topic discussions. That's why I prefer sites like this to get my current information on what's up in the industry.

I think it's more profit greed that keeps the price of e-books high... if it's more about moving product than moving stock price, I'd expect to see prices come down and volumes go up. Would be interesting to see sales figures from sites such as Peanut Press or Amazon or Barnes&Noble for the e-book industry. Of course, at 38, I remember when you bought paperback books for $1 or less 8O

And for publishing from RTF files, in my previous job, I was a course leader for an education company. One of the courses I was about to start leading had course manuals that took up three 3" binders. I asked for and received the acrobat reader versions of the manuals, loaded them on my m505 (at that time my PDA of choice) and carried one small unit instead of tearing my arms off with two briefcases of paper. If it can be done in companies, surely the publishers can do the same?

[Venturello]

I pirate books. I -LOVE- reading books on my PocketPC, have been doing so since the Palm Pro. Now, the books I want are not available online, in a flexible format, in a way that I can pay the author due tribute. Within 5 minutes or less on IRC I can get almost any book I want.

Now, yes, I know its not the most ethical thing to do, but I am out of options. I want to read books in my PocketPC, it is VERY convenient for me, but there is just no availability.

I hate warez, I am a software developer, and I guess I would feel the same way I do toward illegal software if I where a writer. But then, I dont blame a kid (and mostly one in the third world or in developing countries) to pirate a program like 3DStudio (over a grand), AutoCAD, or even Office, so he can learn and get skills that, on the enterprise, will pay him a good salaries. In the end, I think big software companies benefit somewhat from piracy, in this way they get the software on more people, and thus more people will have the skills to use that software in the businessplace, where most software is paid for.

Just my thoughts, IMHO the extreme case is the software industry. They got what they deserve if you ask me, ripping off the public and the musicians with outragous, unjustifiable prices.

Whatever, best wishes to all, as usual, kuddos to the guys fot the GREATEST pocketpc site out there.

[dunneldeen]

I agree with the article. I have read pirated e-books (most of which I also own in paperback, because my wife still prefers paper books). I have also read a few e-books and e-magazines bought from on-line sources. If I could get the books I want to read on-line for the same price as a paperback copy, I would probably never read another pirated copy again.

I have fallen in love with e-books, and may never read another paperback book again, so piracy or ligitmate e-books are my only options. I refuse to stop reading.

[pt]

I was under the impression that Microsoft's Reader project was pretty much dead. You don't hear anything lately about Reader ebook partnerships or updates to the application. Is Microsoft leaving the field? :?

well consider this a somewhat formal offical announcement (but don't quote me). i've been part of 3-4 printed books so far in my life, and i'm now going 100% ebook, and only launching in microsoft reader (.lit). i can't talk about too much more than that, but stay tuned. it's going to be great for everyone.

i wouldn't be doing this unless i had 100% confidence in the format and the company.

if it doesn't work out, i'll quickly change my mind tho :-]

cheers,
pt

[dochall]

I have read one solitary ebook purchased from Palmpress (Up Country Nelson De Mille) and it quickly became my preferred reading method. It's the only one as it is the only one I could find that I actually wanted to buy. I have not read any pirated ebooks

If publishers could take their heads out of the bottoms they would see the potential of the medium. I would prefer to read ebooks (I'm have a siginificant shelf shortage problem) and bizarrely am happy to pay for same price as a paperback (or potenitally hardback if the author was somebody I normally buy hardbacks of and it came out at the same time).

I bizarrely as they don't have the same costs of production, distribution, retailer costs (I don't see how palmpress for example could expect the same markup without the overhead of warehousing, bricks and mortar stores, staff) etc.), No stock to remainder, no second hand book stalls taking away potential revenue. Publishers should be able to increase their margin and increase their profits.

Palmpress's use of a credit card number as key means that they are not going to get me handing out books to friends (which I will do with a paperback)

By refusing to embrace the ebook market people will be inclined to product pirated books and therefore the publisher pushes the market to one in which one book gets bought and 5000 copies are produced. They really need to wake up and smell the coffee.

[tzirbel]

I've been reading ebooks for quite a while now. Enjoy the freedom of having a sizable library at my disposal anywhere I want to read. I don't use MS Reader due to the low quantity of ebooks that I enjoy to read. A while a go my favorite author (Charles De lint) did something that threw me off balance. He made almost all his book available on peanut press. (Yes I know, Palm Digital media) His publisher didn't do it. His agent didn't do it. He did.
I have been lurking on the pirate sites a while. Downloaded a few. Read even fewer. One author that I search on but rarely get a hit for is my favorite. I think that to really make this work authors need to get involved and strive to get their works in e-format. However recently even that will be more difficult. Publishers are now covering electronic publishing in their contracts with authors giving them even less of a voice on how their creative work can be distributed to the masses.
I believe publishers are not going to take the initiative unless there is a huge profit to be made. Right now with the low ebook sales (compared to tree bound books) and the scare of piracy, they are not that interested. I think we are in a circular argument here. Publishers do not want to publish in ebook format for fear of piracy and look at news groups and other sites to justify that. We use piracy to get books which we cannot get in ebook format and blame the publishers.

[disconnected]

When I bought my first Pocket PC two years ago, I thought its main use was going to be mobile internet access; I didn't think I'd like virtual books.

As it turns out, the internet experience wasn't quite what I'd hoped for, but I am totally hooked on ebooks.

I visit ebook sites daily (Peanut Press, Amazon, W H Smith UK, Powells, Fictionwise, and anywhere else I can find), and have bought close to a hundred books, at least a third of them at hardcover prices.

I never buy hardcover books anymore, because they aren't portable enough. If a new book I want is released as an ebook I'll buy it; otherwise, I'll wait for the paperback. You would think that publishers would love my buying habits, but by not releasing new books as ebooks, instead of getting around fifteen dollars from me now (for an ebook that should be relatively inexpensive to produce), they choose to wait for a year and then sell me the paperback for six or seven dollars. I don't know much (anything, actually) about the economics of publishing, but surely the process of creating a hardcover book is sufficiently automated that it would be cost-effective to create an ebook at the same time.

As far as piracy goes, I don't believe a very large percentage of the people that download pirated books would actually go buy the books if that were the only way to get them, so I should think that ebook profits would more than outweigh the losses, even if publishers are annoyed at the thought of anyone getting something for nothing.

[Dave Beauvais]

... the MS Reader version was so loaded with typographical errors, spelling errors, and weird page formatting ...
Slightly off-topic, but a book I'm reading now in Palm Reader had a few minor errors that kept recurring. For example, the year "1967" appeared as "l967" (lower-case letter "L" instead of a number "one"). There were also a few other mistakes that I'd made a note of using the annotations feature in Palm Reader.

I reported those problems to Palm Digital Media support, the errors were corrected, and I was able to download the corrected version within just a couple of days. The fact that I pointed those mistakes out and they were corrected allows future purchasers (or anyone who re-downloads a past purchase) to enjoy the book virtually error-free.

Dave

[CoffeeKid]

Hey Ed, I don't always agree with you, but I'm with you (and Kirvin) 100% on this one.

I admit that I freely download books off of various sources online. 90% of what I download are books I already own. For example, I own all of the Tom Clancy / Ryan books, many of them in hardcover (at premium costco prices, no less :) ), but I also now "own" ebook versions of most of them. I like reading them again a few years after the original reading... his books are so detailed it can stand two or three go arounds.

If Clancy's books were available in professionally formatted versions for say $3 or less (or roughly half the discount price of a paperback version), I would happily shell out the dough, even though I already own a print copy.

My hope is this:

There may be a 180 in the offing by the greedy music labels - serious press recently about how they might just move to the "buck a download" model for good quality mp3 or mp3pro or wma versions of all songs, not just the back alleys of the catalogs.

I think the (greedy) music industry will (unfortunately) reap many profits from this, and just like how they initially feared other new technological advances ("CD playing on the radio, we'll never sell a record again!!! the quality is so much better, everyone will tape it!!!"), they will soon realise the winfall they will get from this medium, when priced right.

And my hope? My hope is that the stodgy, backwards, "old school" publishing mentality out there will also see this, and start selling eversions of every new book coming out for a reasonable price as well (I would say maybe 65% of a discounted paperback price is reasonable).

In fact, this model would work well:

Hard cover, 3 to 6 months run, then...
Paperback, 2 to 4 months' run, then
eBook becomes available (and paperback is still sold traditionally).

This way they reap their big profits from the hardcover, reap big profits from the pulp, then continue to reap in more mega profits from the ebook and pulp sales.

Just a thought. Not like they're listening.... yet.

Mark

[Ken Mattern]

I bizarrely as they don't have the same costs of production, distribution, retailer costs (I don't see how palmpress for example could expect the same markup without the overhead of warehousing, bricks and mortar stores, staff) etc.), No stock to remainder, no second hand book stalls taking away potential revenue. Publishers should be able to increase their margin and increase their profits.


Speaking only for myself I have to say that it takes me 15 to 20 hours every week to publish 5 eBooks. It takes that much time because I have to be sure that the book is edited and the text is properly formatted, that the cover graphics are attractive, that they synopsis is accurate, that the database is updated as is the web site.

Then I give the book away for free!

However I still have to take into account all of the above plus the cost of maintaining my infrastructure. That's the server, the internet connection, the two workstations, air conditioning, power, etc..

My problem is how can I maintain all of that, sell an eBook for a reasonable price and still pay the author a fair royalty.

My goal is to sell no eBook for more than the price of the average paperback. That, I think, is a fair price. So I have set a limit to $6.95 max. I figure that at that rate I will not break even for at least a year.

So it is true that the cost of an eBook should be lower than a paper counterpart. But the paper counterpart doesn't have the overhead cost to shelf the book the way a web distribution system does.

Ken

[EllenBeeman]

My publisher, Baen Books (www.baen.com) receives manuscripts from his authors in electronic format, and they typeset from that. I think there are very few professional authors who aren't using computers to write at this point, so why typeset off printed drafts?

Baen also has set up the Webscriptions.net service, where you can download new books in HTML, Reader, and other format. The prices are reasonable, IMO, and the quality is excellent.

There are a number of free ebooks at the Baen site (including my own "Bedlam Boyz", which I requested be added), which I think is a great idea as well, and I hope is encouraging more people to try ebooks.

I agree that the pricing of ebooks is very frustrating...too many of them are priced at hardcover rates, and I think that's hurting the ebook industry.

---Ell
Ellen Beeman

[BugDude10]

Q: Does the lack of e-books encourage piracy?
A: In my opinion, yes.

I think reading on my Pocket PC is fabulous. I get my news from AvantGo and the Slate "all our articles" e-book, and read in bed, in the dark, before I go to sleep. During the day, when I'm waiting for appointments, I can do the same. I very much like the idea of taking numerous volumes of various types (fiction, current events, reference) with me wherever I go. I haven't sought out or obtained pirated books, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that many others have, just to fulfill their craving for more books to read on their PDAs.

That being said, however, I will not pay hard- or paperback prices for an e-book. I assume that a significant part of the cost of publishing is in the manufacture and distribution of the book itself. Once the e-book has been created, most of the expense (except for site hosting, download bandwith, etc.) has already been incurred, so the e-publishers need charge only a minor, although not inconsequential, sum to make money. I'm sure publishers must charge $7 to cover the cost, plus some profit, for a paperback book; the same book in e-book format should cost half that or less. Yes, I'm getting the same content, but I'm not getting a *thing* to put on my bookshelf. (And if I want to "store" it in a library, *I'm* the one providing the disk space, CD-ROM, whatever.)

I also support an author's and a publisher's right to protect their interests in their works, so I don't oppose some form of copyright protection *that doesn't interfere with my ability to use or to store the product I've bought and paid for in any way I see fit*, such as being able to read *my* book on any PC or device I choose. (Perhaps they can embed the purchaser's name in the book itself, so that a pirated copy will identify the pirate.)

With MP3s, I expect that people will always prefer to have the original CD themselves (*if* it's worth buying) rather than the lesser-quality MP3. Likewise, I expect that people will prefer to buy their own, legitimate e-books rather than pirating them. At $1 or so per song or $3 or so for e-book, piracy is just not worth it.

FWIW, I assume that the current quagmire in the e-book industry is that purchasers of stand-alone e-book readers are waiting for reasonable prices and a wide selection of works, and the publishers are waiting for stand-alone device sales to justify them learning a new methodology of publishing. IMHO, the publishers need to break the stalemate by making the works available first; I think it'd be cheaper overall for them to invest in delivering the goods to encourage consumers to buy rather than expecting consumers to spend a couple hundred dollars on the *hope* that books will eventually appear (and in the right format). I think the publishers would be surprised to see how many e-book consumers are already out there, with Palms (ack!) and Pocket PCs in hand, just waiting for the goods.

My $0.02.

[jeremyet]

I've been reading this with a lot of interest, so here's the response from a big publisher of both print and ebook titles.

I work for a big UK publisher (www.penguin.co.uk/epenguin)
and we have been producing ebooks since October 2001. We have tried to produce a range of titles reflecting the breadth of our print publishing and produce new titles in ebook formats each month. Our
ebooks are priced at 20% cheaper than the current
equivalent print price. I think it possible, if not
likely, that ebook prices will come down as volume of
ebook sales increases and we are indeed experimenting with
prices to see what price point and discount package works
best.

But it is important to remember that, especially where
larger traditional publishers are concerned, the cost of
producing a book is not simply restricted to production
and printing costs. Authors must be paid for their
writing, editors must be paid for their skills in
selecting, developing and maximising the work of their
authors, books must be typeset (whether for print or ebook
publication) and copyedited - which happens at least twice
in the case of our ebooks.

It is also important to remember that books and words do
have a value, which must somehow be reflected in pricing.
Otherwise no-one will write them, no-one will edit them,
no-one will market them, design jackets for them, copyedit
them and publish them as enthusiastically as they deserve.

Piracy is an issue for publishers, yes, but I do not think
that fear of piracy is the prime factor in determining
pricing. It is more likely that publishers are taking
their first cautious steps into ebook publishing and, in
time and through trial and eror, will learn what prices, formats, DRM options and titles work best for their authors, their readers and themselves.

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks so much for adding a publishers perspective Jeremy - it's refreshing to hear both sides of an issue. And it's your first posting no less! :D

[Unreal32]

The argument that most pirated ebooks are out of print is false from the get-go. The fact is, MANY currently in print and yet-to-see-print books are readily available in txt, rtf, pdf and lit formats. All one has to do is go to the Undernet or any other IRC channel like #bookz, #ebookz, etc. to see that there are lots of "bestseller" titles and a ton of reference and nonfiction books available (as pirated versions). The argument that OCR scans and the like create a lot of "bad" copies of books is also a bit spurious... many of the raw .txt versions of books I've seen have been of quite high quality, with only a few errors... certainly nothing that would detract from the reader's experience.

As for converting ebooks, it's really pretty easy... there are several reader add-ins available for Microsoft Word.

Furthermore... I'm in the publishing industry, and we don't see many rtf files floating around. More often the documents -- at least for reference and technical books -- are in other formats like Quark XPress, PageMaker, or Publisher... or in a proprietary format.

[Jason Dunn]

So it is true that the cost of an eBook should be lower than a paper counterpart. But the paper counterpart doesn't have the overhead cost to shelf the book the way a web distribution system does.

To be fair, paper books have the retail shelving costs, and all that is associated with that - staffing, electricity for the lights, running the store that is selling them, etc.

[Jeff Kirvin]

The argument that most pirated ebooks are out of print is false from the get-go. The fact is, MANY currently in print and yet-to-see-print books are readily available in txt, rtf, pdf and lit formats. All one has to do is go to the Undernet or any other IRC channel like #bookz, #ebookz, etc. to see that there are lots of "bestseller" titles and a ton of reference and nonfiction books available (as pirated versions). The argument that OCR scans and the like create a lot of "bad" copies of books is also a bit spurious... many of the raw .txt versions of books I've seen have been of quite high quality, with only a few errors... certainly nothing that would detract from the reader's experience.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that all the pirate ebooks floating around out there were out of print. Most probably still are in print, and some, like King's From a Buick 8, aren't even in print yet.

That said, most of the pirate editions I've seen, in print or not, are not available legitimately as ebooks. If people want to read electronically, it doesn't matter if the book is available for sale on tree pulp or not. People that put a premium on the advantages that ebooks offer (portability, easy searches, dictionary lookup, etc.) will take ebooks any way they can get them. If publishers don't want to sell to the ebook market, then that market will find a way to get the product anyway.

Pirating a book is hard, tedious work. While I don't discount that there are some "information wants to be free" wackos out there that would do it anyway no matter what, most of the piracy would probably dry up overnight if publishers would provide ebook editions at a reasonable price. Scanning, OCRing and proofing just isn't worth the effort if you can buy the book for somewhere in the single digit dollar range.

Oh, and about publishers getting books in Quark, PageMaker, etc. Are you trying to say that those applications do not have the ability to export RTF or even ASCII text?