# Maggie Stiefvater on piracy - MERGED THREAD



## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

Maggie Stiefvater has made a fascinating post which turns the received wisdom about ebook piracy on its head.


__
https://166952028861%2Five-decided-to-tell-you-guys-a-story-about

It's a strategy worth considering if you're being heavily pirated, and you want to have a great launch.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

I liked her post, but I'm not sure about her conclusions. According to her post, she had half as many books available. Of course they sold out faster!

I have no doubts that piracy does hurt authors, but it is hard to say how much unless you can create a parallel universe where your book isn't pirated.


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## Pacman (Dec 18, 2016)

Ros_Jackson said:


> Maggie Stiefvater has made a fascinating post which turns the received wisdom about ebook piracy on its head.
> 
> 
> __
> ...


Thanks Ros, this is quite an article that gets to the core of the issue.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

It's a tricky subject for indies because while piracy can lead to lost sales, as Cory Doctorow points out, you won't sell anything living in obscurity. Then again, he also points out - great - so now your work is no longer obscure because of piracy, that sounds great but... you can't eat fame.


He goes on to say:


"If you want to eat, you need to focus on how to get as much money as possible, not how to get paid by everyone who enjoys your books. If piracy creates more new sales (through publicity) than it costs (through substitution), then you're ahead of the game."


As I'd said, tricky subject.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

Crystal_ said:


> I liked her post, but I'm not sure about her conclusions. According to her post, she had half as many books available. Of course they sold out faster!
> 
> I have no doubts that piracy does hurt authors, but it is hard to say how much unless you can create a parallel universe where your book isn't pirated.


It's tough, because it's just one example. It's only if the same was done over many thousands of books then we'd be able to draw any conclusions.



jaehaerys said:


> It's a tricky subject for indies because while piracy can lead to lost sales, as Cory Doctorow points out, you won't sell anything living in obscurity. Then again, he also points out - great - so now your work is no longer obscure because of piracy, that sounds great but... you can't eat fame.
> 
> He goes on to say:
> 
> ...


Indeed. Piracy is definitely a first world author problem, and not the same kind of deal for a prawn or even a midlist writer.

What I find interesting is how much convenience matters according to this account. Sow a few fake downloads, and people start to give up and start paying. I wonder how many of these fakes, on average, it took for pirates to give up looking for an illegitimate source?


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

I normally don't spend a lot of time worrying about book pirates. I mean, there's lots of reasons someone might download an ebook rather than buy it, and not all of them nefarious.

That said, if I ran into someone who believed they'd 'rather die than pay for a book' I might have to give them a good hard smack upside the head.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2017)

> That is not even remotely true. All of my books have been pirated.


Mine too, and I entirely agree with Maggie Stiefvater's conclusion. Piracy is hurting the book-selling business in general, whether you're on the bestseller's list or not.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Piracy costs every one of us. I don't know when Cory wrote that essay but I'm thinking it was 15 or 20 years ago.


He wrote that in 2013.


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

A study I read awhile ago stated that piracy affects authors differently depending on where those authors are in their careers. A Nora Roberts or Maggie Stiefvater almost always suffers from piracy, because demand for their books is high, while supplies are limited, and price is past the point where it becomes easier to just buy than to spend time and effort (and risk) to acquire for no cost. While unknown authors have a huge chance to score a following if the interest is there, and midlist authors can go either way--especially if the pirated book introduces readers to a body of work they then can choose to value, or want to collect via a reading app/storefront and the price isn't prohibitive (which is different for everyone).

Keep in mind that most of the sites that claim to have your book are just scraping Amazon listings, and are really malware-delivery sites or credit card phishing sites. Focus on things you can control. I'm a prawn, but I'm luckier than Stiefvater in that my publisher (aka, me) will publish me even if I only sell one copy, so I don't have to count on print runs to earn out or continue a series. I have to concentrate on making my decisions to accommodate my readers who are willing to pay a reasonable price for the enjoyment my books can give them. I can't worry about freegans or pirates until after I've done that.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

I ignore pirating because spending time/effort worrying about it produces a terrible ROI.


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## Rosie Scott (Oct 3, 2017)

That was depressingly enlightening. Thanks for posting. I don't like piracy and don't do it (which leads to me being one of those weird people who still buys physical CDs), but I have always tended to lean more closely to the thinking of "those people wouldn't have bought it anyway." I pirated video games as a little girl, because I didn't have the money to buy them. As a working teenager and later as an adult, I haven't pirated one. 

It makes me wonder whether the genre in question affects this. I'm sure books of all types get pirated, of course, but this Maggie Stiefvater says she's a young adult author, which makes me think her audience is mostly young people plus some stragglers. I'd have to think that younger people would be more likely to pirate, given a lack of funds comparatively to other readers and an overall higher likelihood of knowing how because of piracy's relative normalcy in the internet savvy generations. Then again, I've heard YA attracts older readers as well. I wouldn't really know, since it's not a genre I frequent in reading or writing. Just throwing a few ideas out there.

Anyway, this all just goes to show that readers are never your "friends," and some may never be true "fans." It is one more reminder that as authors we are simply providing art as a product to the populace, which is a good thing to be reminded of to keep us grounded in reality.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> So it only feels like 20 years ago. But seriously maybe he was right then-- although I suspect he was just repeating a truism without any evidence one way or another-- but he isn't right now. This author went and tested her theory. She didn't just proclaim her theory as a fact. She proved her case and kept her publishing contract. I have to respect that.


I trust the bonafides of an author like Doctorow, who's been writing about piracy for years in addition to the work that he does with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and his high profile in the tech space generally. That's in addition to his being an outspoken critic of DRM and a strong proponent of open source. I'll definitely take what he has to say on this subject more seriously than I would an anecdote from an author nowhere near as experienced or well-versed.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

As I see this (besides the story being a single instance and anecdotal), this issue is poorly-managed e-ARCs. I think that when you have a voracious audience many of whom don't have terribly much money desperately waiting for the next book and you distribute e-ARCs, you're asking for trouble.

For the vast majority of us, we neither have the vast voracious YA audience with little money nor the name for enough people to be desperately waiting for the next book.

And we have Bookfunnel to watermark the ARCs and track them. When you can potentially identify where copies come from, that makes most people stop and think twice.

Really I don't think this type of thing is a problem for the vast majority of us.

Re. normal "pirating", most of those sites that claim to have your books just put up a PDF of the sample. They don't have your book at all. They want your credit card # or they want you to click an ad and plant malware on your computer. Those sites are not worth your time.


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## KateEllison (Jul 9, 2011)

LovingLife139 said:


> It makes me wonder whether the genre in question affects this. I'm sure books of all types get pirated, of course, but this Maggie Stiefvater says she's a young adult author, which makes me think her audience is mostly young people plus some stragglers. I'd have to think that younger people would be more likely to pirate, given a lack of funds comparatively to other readers and an overall higher likelihood of knowing how because of piracy's relative normalcy in the internet savvy generations. Then again, I've heard YA attracts older readers as well.


I'd say 50-60 percent of YA readers are adults. At least.


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## InkyEditing (Oct 6, 2017)

I think part of the problem with book piracy is readers who aren’t involved with publishing don’t realise authors are a business. We all love writing...but we want to be paid for it. 

Publishing takes money to make money. They put a lot of faith in their authors to sell but if the book doesn’t deliver, well then it’s a bad investment. They will be disinclined to sign more books with the author. 

It’s readers saying “we’ll pay you in exposure”. Except exposure doesn’t pay. 

The attitude reminds me of a thread I read on reddit. Thousands of people demanded that an ebook copy should be given to the reader for free if they bought a physical paper or hardback. Thousands of people there who had no idea how publishing works, and it costs more to create ebooks than they realise. 

Part of the solution on preventing piracy would be to lift the curtain on publishing. Everything is very secretive unless you’re in the business, and it shows through readers. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

I don't think this article proves what it claims to prove. I also don't think there is any means of effectively combating piracy so worrying about it is a waste of time and energy. And I think the piracy problem is vastly overstated and comparatively small compared to the problem in music etc.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Some things to consider before anyone touts this as proof of whatever:

1. There are no numbers here whatsoever. 

2. There is no comparison of the marketing done for Book 3 vs the others. 

3. Her print run was cut in half for illogical reasons according to her - could easily be the reason why it sold out quicker. 

4. The act of uploading all those ARCs was itself a publicity campaign which corrupted the results.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

ParkerAvrile said:


> That is not even remotely true. All of my books have been pirated. All books by everybody I know about who has published in my genre have been pirated. All of them. If they've appeared on Amazon, and they're remotely literate, they've been pirated.
> 
> Search for your own books. You may be in shock a few minutes from now.
> 
> Piracy costs every one of us. I don't know when Cory wrote that essay but I'm thinking it was 15 or 20 years ago.


I've had "pirate copies" appear before I've uploaded the manuscript to any retailers. For my books it's usually malware rather than genuine copies, based on data from the ISBN feed rather than a human being choosing the book and uploading it.



dgaughran said:


> Some things to consider before anyone touts this as proof of whatever:
> 
> 1. There are no numbers here whatsoever.
> 
> ...


Indeed. Anecdote is not data. Point 4 is really interesting, because it was a way of letting people know about the sequel. It may not matter that it corrupts the results as long as this is an effect that can be reproduced by other authors trying the same thing.


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## KBaker (Feb 5, 2017)

Puddleduck said:


> Not saying that justifies pirating. But I think if you're trying to analyze why your book got pirated, you have to at least look at the price you're asking people to pay for a legal copy and factor in how much that might have affected the results of your experiment. These were people who wanted the book enough to get it on release day. If the price had been $7, a lot of them likely would have just purchased it.


I agree that the price-point should be taken into account, but she has no control over what her books are priced at since she's trad published so there's nothing she could do to experiment on that front. I feel like even if the price of the ebook was lower it would still get pirated due to popularity.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

I think that pirates are never going to pay and those who pay don't pirate. Ninety-five percent of those sites that claim they have your book don't really have your book. They have scraped information from Amazon and they're malware sites. Is pirating cool? No. How much money are you really going to get back if you obsess about it, though? To me there are better ways to spend my time because time is money in my world.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> I'm tired of the endless drumbeat of, "There's nothing you can do."


It's not so much, "there's nothing you can do", but more, why worry about it? You wind up spending more mental energy on it than the issue is actually due. I'd rather just spend that energy on writing the next book.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Puddleduck said:


> What are you basing that on? Do you know anyone who's ever pirated? Have you ever done it yourself? If the answer to both of those is no, then I'd guess you probably don't have a solid handle on the reason people pirate. If you don't know the motivations (and different people have different motivations), you can't really say what people will or won't do. Not everyone who pirates does it because they just don't care whether anyone gets paid. Some people who pirate even pay for copies after pirating, for various reasons. Painting all pirates as one type of person with one type of motivation and one type of behavior is unhelpful to the conversation at large because no matter what you say, you're getting it wrong about the majority of people who do this.


So clearly you know best and I should just shut my hole and not comment with an opinion on a message board, huh? I love learning new things.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Puddleduck said:


> Pretty sure I didn't say that, but thanks for re-wording my statement to be an insult to yourself. How helpful.
> 
> Opinion is one thing. Unfounded opinion based on your own feelings is another. I asked what you based your opinion on. Apparently you based it on nothing, since you offered no explanation.
> 
> Everyone has an opinion. Whether or not that opinion is informative to others is largely dependent on what it's based on, so I don't think it's out of line to ask someone what they're basing an opinion on, especially when they're making a blanket statement about the actions and motivations of others.


I didn't have to re-word it. You flat out said it.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Puddleduck said:


> I in fact did not. I'm not sure you know what "flat out said" means. If I'd actually said it, you wouldn't have needed to repeat it, now would you? That's just redundant.
> 
> Yes, I'm just being snarky now, but clearly you're only looking for a fight, since you're ignoring all of the actual points I've been making and instead are rephrasing what you think I'm saying in order to get defensive because what I actually said won't have the effect you want if you simply quote it. And I'm not here to fight, so I'm done responding to your manufactured affront.


And now I don't understand what simple words mean. I have no idea how I manage to get through the day.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

ParkerAvrile said:


> I get it that we're supposed to say "all" pirate sites are phishing sites that will harm your computer but it's Reefer Madness, isn't it? The people gleefully pirating books already know it isn't true.


So they are jerks and are hurting our bottom line. What are we supposed to do about it?

I don't like pirates, never have. I also don't much care to see returns on my KDP dash. But since I don't have any way to influence those things I can only drive myself crazy worrying about them.

Now, if only I could apply this same rule to reading my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.


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## anikad (Sep 19, 2017)

ParkerAvrile said:


> She gives a step by step process in the article about what she did about it. That's why I'm so confused about the reception to her article, which I personally thought was brilliant.


She hasn't provided any actual proof. No numbers. She's provided an anecdote. She's talked about what she did but she doesn't seem to have taken into account the print run was half that of the other book, which may well have been the reason her book sold out so quickly. She has no evidence her pdf complaining about the evils of piracy had any effect. As they say in statistics correlation does not imply causation. I personally have better things to do with my time, if someone is downloading my book off a pirate site, the chances are they aren't going to care about the evils of piracy and how it's harming me.


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## 77071 (May 15, 2014)

I would venture to guess that authors with a large teen audience have a bigger problem with this than any other.  Many teens love to read online, but if you're under 18, you can't legally have your own Amazon / other ebook account.  In this day and age.  I mean, it's ridiculous.  There ought to be a way for teens to have their own accounts to buy and read ebooks without having to do it in Mommy's name.  You literally have young children with free access to pornography and yet someone we're protecting minors by not letting them buy ebooks.  For pity's sake, it's just ridiculous.  Yes, Amazon tries to get around this by having "Amazon allowance," etc.  But it's still not YOURS.  You get to use your parents' account or something.  


Young people love being able to have instant access to content they like...just like adults do, because surprise, they're human.  They also value their privacy, because again, human beings.  I can easily see how many young people would pirate an ebook even if they felt guilty about it, when you put it into account that they might not be able to actually get it on their own legally without involving a parent.  At some point, it might seem easier to steal it than deal with the hassle of having to get it a legal way through roundabout, adult-controlled means.


And no, I'm not saying that's right, but just like the fact that theater kids "pirate" videos of live action plays by passing around grainy copies online to each other, if they don't have another way to access it legally (because of barriers such as cost and access, like, oh, any actual legal ecopies if you can't go to New York and pay thousands of bucks to see it live), then it's a lot harder to say "I would never pirate."


In Maggie's case it sounds like making it harder to get the pirated copy made it less hassle to go through the legal means.  


I think depending on your audience, if it's adults who read ebooks and have ereaders, it's probably easier to buy almost all of the time.  So there are definitely different things to consider in your demographic.  If you are an adult waiting for the hot new release of your favorite author in, say, the science fiction category, you are going to pay up and possibly pre-order so you can read it the second it's available, not futz around on stupid and dodgy websites hoping to find a somewhat legible illegal copy.


ParkerAvrile: I'm going to guess that there are other factors that come into play in the gay romance genre, as well.  Some places it's not legal to buy, people are in the closet and feel safer not having a record on their account, they're curious and underage (again, not wanting to involve parents) etc.  I admit I don't look for pirate copies of my books because I feel it's not a good value of my time...but probably mostly because it's just too distressing.  Like others here, I prefer thinking that my readers wouldn't do that...


Basically just because some genres don't have a big piracy suck on sales doesn't mean other genres don't.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

There have been reports, so I'm just stepping in to say that any further posts that are simply argumentative will be deleted. Let's keep it constructive people. Thank you.

Evenstar (Moderator)


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## Guest (Nov 1, 2017)

There is data available on people who pirate books. A study earlier in the year found they tend to be older and well off. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170316/12401436934/ebook-pirates-tend-to-be-older-well-off-which-means-they-pirate-because-human-intuition-economics.shtml

-41% of all adult pirates are aged between 18 and 29 
-47% fall into the 30 to 44-year-old bracket.
-13% are 45 and over
-two-thirds of eBook pirates have household incomes of at least $30k per year, and almost a third have incomes in six figures


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Kat M said:


> There is data available on people who pirate books. A study earlier in the year found they tend to be older and well off. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170316/12401436934/ebook-pirates-tend-to-be-older-well-off-which-means-they-pirate-because-human-intuition-economics.shtml
> 
> -41% of all adult pirates are aged between 18 and 29
> -47% fall into the 30 to 44-year-old bracket.
> ...


Interestingly, there's a lot of hate for DRM in the comments.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Developing a plan of attack that may lift not just her, but many others, out of being victimized is not "worrying" about something. It's taking action to save her series and her career instead of following the accepted wisdom and letting her series and perhaps even her trad publishing career go down in flames. People who feel victimized but try to pretend they don't... those people don't suddenly have more mental energy to deal with their writing or anything else. They have less because they feel helpless. We all know this to be true-- that's fairly basic human psychology.
> 
> Everybody's saying most pirate sites are phishing sites. Not true._ Phishing _sites are phishing sites that may masquerade as pirate sites, but pirate sites are pirate sites, and there are plenty of them that deliver the goods, and people are sharing this information quietly with each other. Nobody sane goes around downloading from random sites. They get the link from someone they trust. I get it that we're supposed to say "all" pirate sites are phishing sites that will harm your computer but it's Reefer Madness, isn't it? The people gleefully pirating books already know it isn't true.
> 
> Further... it can't be true that pirates never pay. In this very example, once the attempted pirates realized they couldn't find the whole book at the pirate sites, they went ahead and bought it. $12 is just not a lot of money for something special that you really, truly want.


I think this is overstating things a bit. Judging from the glowing reception Stiefvater has been receiving on the many booktube videos I've watched, I don't think her career is in trouble at all. Obviously, I don't know her sales figures, but clearly she's troubled by the pirates, but again she has a platform. She has a readership. Of course, it'd be great if she didn't have to deal with piracy, but I really don't think she's going to be living under a park bench any time soon.

And look, I understand piracy is a problem, and likely more so for authors with larger platforms, but I honestly don't believe it's to the point where authors' careers are in jeopardy. I view piracy as an annoyance of the internet age and where indies are concerned, I'm not sure it's an issue worthy of the time and energy required to end the practice (which would be a monumental and next to impossible task) or even to fight for that matter (because the fight never ends).

In my opinion, keeping one's nose to the grindstone, saying 'damn the torpedoes' and pumping out more quality books for readers is how you win at the end of the day.


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## Guest (Nov 1, 2017)

Stiefvater's situation is also different in that she is trad published and the release of her books might be staggered by format. Often hard copies are released first, which kind of explains why people were looking for a pdf version - the kindle title hadn't been released. Or (and I don't know the timing of it) trad often prices the kindle edition higher than the hard cover to drive sales to that version. Not to mention territorial rights, if the e-book only comes out in the UK/USA that leaves the rest of the world with only a couple of options including not getting the book at all (because it simply isn't available at ANY price) or seeking a pirate version.


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## SugarBear57 (Aug 28, 2014)

HSh said:


> I would venture to guess that authors with a large teen audience have a bigger problem with this than any other. Many teens love to read online, but if you're under 18, you can't legally have your own Amazon / other ebook account. In this day and age. I mean, it's ridiculous. There ought to be a way for teens to have their own accounts to buy and read ebooks without having to do it in Mommy's name. You literally have young children with free access to pornography and yet someone we're protecting minors by not letting them buy ebooks. For pity's sake, it's just ridiculous. Yes, Amazon tries to get around this by having "Amazon allowance," etc. But it's still not YOURS. You get to use your parents' account or something.
> 
> Young people love being able to have instant access to content they like...just like adults do, because surprise, they're human. They also value their privacy, because again, human beings. I can easily see how many young people would pirate an ebook even if they felt guilty about it, when you put it into account that they might not be able to actually get it on their own legally without involving a parent. At some point, it might seem easier to steal it than deal with the hassle of having to get it a legal way through roundabout, adult-controlled means.


https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/11/amazon-introduces-a-way-for-teens-to-independently-shop-its-site-following-parents-approval/
Amazon For Teens isn't perfect. But it does allow them to purchase things on Amazon with parental oversight and notification. Amazon is trying to help them pay for their purchases.

YA is particularly problematic from a piracy standpoint for the exact reasons that you stated. I personally prefer my YA books as hardcovers. I don't feel this way about adult fiction. Maybe it's because I read a lot of YA fantasy and there tend to be maps, diagrams, and pictures at the front or back, and I'm not that excited about looking at those in ebook format.

I picked up the illustrated version of NOTW by Rothfuss: https://www.amazon.com/Name-Wind-Anniversary-Kingkiller-Chronicle/dp/0756413710/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1509563420&sr=8-1&keywords=name+of+the+wind

I want something like NOTW's illustrated version a physical copy, not ebook. I have the ebook, so I'm willing to buy multiple versions of the same thing.

I also think that Maggie needs to have a link pointing to her books on Overdrive and encouraging her readers to ask their local libraries to buy copies.
https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=maggie%20stiefvater&f-contentCreatorNames=Maggie%20Stiefvater&autoLibrary=t&autoRegion=t&showAvailable=False

It's been a while since I got an email from a reader asking for a free book - two weeks (wink) - so I think I need to make the Overdrive link more prominent because the vast majority of my catalogue is available on Overdrive.


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## anikad (Sep 19, 2017)

ParkerAvrile said:


> They pirate because it makes them feel smart, not because they can't afford to buy the entertainment they enjoy. *Make those people feel a little foolish, and maybe they don't pirate you again.*
> 
> This is the brilliance of this author's tactic. The pirate is made to feel silly.


You like she is making an assumption as to why people pirate. There are probaly as many reasons for people to pirate as there are people. Where is the evidence that a) you are making someone feel foolish and b) they won't pirate you again? From my perspective the whole thing is a lot of wishful thinking. If you want to waste your time doing that, it's your business. I personally am not going to get into it.


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## Athena Grayson (Apr 4, 2011)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Developing a plan of attack that may lift not just her, but many others, out of being victimized is not "worrying" about something. It's taking action to save her series and her career instead of following the accepted wisdom and letting her series and perhaps even her trad publishing career go down in flames. People who feel victimized but try to pretend they don't... those people don't suddenly have more mental energy to deal with their writing or anything else. They have less because they feel helpless. We all know this to be true-- that's fairly basic human psychology.
> 
> Everybody's saying most pirate sites are phishing sites. Not true._ Phishing _sites are phishing sites that may masquerade as pirate sites, but pirate sites are pirate sites, and there are plenty of them that deliver the goods, and people are sharing this information quietly with each other. Nobody sane goes around downloading from random sites. They get the link from someone they trust. I get it that we're supposed to say "all" pirate sites are phishing sites that will harm your computer but it's Reefer Madness, isn't it? The people gleefully pirating books already know it isn't true.
> 
> Further... it can't be true that pirates never pay. In this very example, once the attempted pirates realized they couldn't find the whole book at the pirate sites, they went ahead and bought it. $12 is just not a lot of money for something special that you really, truly want.


The problem with this is, as others have posted, without data, we have anecdote and correlation does not always equal causation. What she and her brother did was a very clever move to control their ARCs in the wild, but once the book is released, it's out there and then what? That solves an event-based problem (particularly important to trad published, since the trad model tends to rely on velocity of sales at release, rather than a slower upward trend), but not an ongoing problem (how much do you want to bet that whoever wants to find a pirate copy of that book can now find one *and* that there are certain elements who'd make it a point to advertise the fact just out of sheer orneriness). To be fair, authors in the tradpub world have been subject to crappy situations surrounding ARCs for years (IIRC, one pretty name-brand romance author found the ARC of her latest release going for over a hundred bucks on ebay *the day her book released* - how's that for a slap in the face. People suck, sometimes).

Your last sentence is the one tangible way to combat piracy. If it's something special that you really really want, you'll pay for it if the price is reasonable. There's a point out there somewhere for every person tempted to pirate where the price dips low enough to make it easier to buy than to spend the time and effort to pirate, download, convert, sideload, etc. Price your books attractively so that the bulk of your readers *don't* find it onerous to shell out for the legit copies, and realize there will always be pirates around who will die before paying for an ebook. But that's their hill to die on, and your army is free to march on through the pass to greener pastures without stopping at their church to fight what they consider a holy war.

Before ebooks, there were people who swore up and down they'd never buy anything but used paperbacks. And they'd never buy the hardcover, and there were shoplifters, too. They've always been factored into the cost of doing business, and it's going to be every writer's personal choice as to how much sleep to lose over it.


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## Guest (Nov 1, 2017)

> SugarBear57's suggestion to point younger or lower income readers to Overdrive


From the data in the 2017 study I linked to it doesn't appear that people in that demographic are doing _nearly _as much pirating as older people with a decent amount of money. Doesn't mean it's not worth doing, of course. Just that we need to find other solutions for the vast majority of pirates.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think that pirates are never going to pay and those who pay don't pirate. Ninety-five percent of those sites that claim they have your book don't really have your book. They have scraped information from Amazon and they're malware sites. Is pirating cool? No. How much money are you really going to get back if you obsess about it, though? To me there are better ways to spend my time because time is money in my world.


This. I have two friends who used to download a boatload of videogames from torrent sites when they were younger - mostly because they weren't sure they'd like those games, and hated the idea of paying (in advance) for something they might not like. Indie games were downloaded more often because they were more 'unknown' and not many reviews, recommendations etc available for them.

If they hadn't downloaded them, they wouldn't have played them. Because their interest in those games was only so-so. They did pay for AAA titles by game companies they trusted to deliver quality content, or for games by companies whose content (including pirated content) they enjoyed in the past.

Personally, I only download or stream content that's not available in English or German (meaning, I need an inofficial translation) or not available in my country - like Game of Thrones, I had no means to pay HBO to stream from them. Didn't feel like waiting half a year or more for a German dub when my friends were already talking about the show, and spoilers everywhere.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Don't fear piracy.

Fear publishers who release ARCs months before the book comes out.

Name your favorite TV series. Or movie franchise. Let's go with two obvious ones; Game of Thrones and Star Wars.

If you could see the next episode of Game of Thrones before it was officially released, would you?

If your buddy had a screener of The Last Jedi, in 4000k high definition and 7.1 Dolby, all cued up on his home entertainment system and ready to watch, would you say, "No thanks, I'll wait for the official release in two months?" 

Besides the whole causation/correlation problems, there's a lot odd about this story.

First of all... she created a pdf?

Who reads pdfs?

Second, I checked out Pirate Bay and Demonoid, and saw no pdfs by this author, who mentioned "pdf" over a dozen times in her blog. I saw epubs, mobi, and audio being shared, but no pdf. About two dozen files on both sites, many with no seeders or leechers, some with only a few of each. I counted 11 leechers, total, for about eight titles. Not eight each. Eight total. And considering most torrent sites share trackers, I'd say that it amounted to the majority of people who were pirating her at that moment in time.

Sure, 11 people per day downloading you for free might seem awful, but there is no way to prove that a shared copy equals a lost sale.

But I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume she was pirated thousands of times--which, as far as I know, is impossible to show unless you're watching leechers and keeping track of IPs in real time.

I've always said that piracy doesn't harm sales. But if she'd been pirated thousands of times prior to the official book being released, I'd agree that her sales were harmed. How much they were harmed is anyone's guess.

Does the average Kindle reader know how to download a torrent? I'd say no. Did thousands? I highly doubt it.

If there were thousands of rabid fans downloading your book early, that's a quality problem to have. Stop making them wait 12 months for your next book because that's how long it takes your legacy publisher to get the job done, and give it to them the moment it's finished. And if you charge $9.99, like your legacy publisher does, you can earn $7 instead of $1.49.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

ParkerAvrile said:


> She provided more than an anecdote. She and her brother came up with an actionable path that demonstrably worked and that other people could find useful. That's worthy of my attention.


This plan dates back to the Limewire days, when record companies would release an mp3 that was just the first eight bars of the song repeated over and over.

It worked for about twenty seconds, until someone uploaded a legit file.

As I wrote on Passive Voice, there has always been a secondary market for ARCs. Some booksellers could only make ends meet by selling galleys. I've been to hundred of bookstores, and I've signed galleys for booksellers. Every little bit helps.

Piracy will always exist. It's genetic. Sharing is a big part of communication, which is how our species has thrived. Can you imagine some guy trying to patent making fire? Or the wheel? Or how much Shakespeare "borrowed"? If there were copyright back then, the Bard would have been sued years before Romeo and Juliet...

Don't worry about piracy. Worry about finding fans. And if you get fans who discovered you through piracy, consider yourself lucky. Because the only reliable studies I've seen about the effects of piracy point to pirates buying more legit media than the average consumer.

And even though there has never been a confirmed case of an author being pirated into poverty, if that happens to you, start selling t-shirts. Because if hundreds of thousands of people love your books that much, some of them will buy shirts.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JA Konrath said:


> Don't fear piracy.
> 
> Fear publishers who release ARCs months before the book comes out.
> 
> ...


I suggest the burden of proof lies on the other side: Where's the evidence that piracy does not hurt sales? After all, your claim assumes that pirates only read books, listen to music, and watch TV and movies because they can pirate them. If someone developed a magic bullet for piracy tomorrow, your theory implies that all the pirates would give up on these things instead of paying for them. Maybe they'd consume less, but giving it all up is implausible.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

WHDean said:


> I suggest the burden of proof lies on the other side: Where's the evidence that piracy does not hurt sales? After all, your claim assumes that pirates only read books, listen to music, and watch TV and movies because they can pirate them. If someone developed a magic bullet for piracy tomorrow, your theory implies that all the pirates would give up on these things instead of paying for them. Maybe they'd consume less, but giving it all up is implausible.


It's all about the numbers. By the time you'd be popular enough that you'd have enough people pirating your work to truly make a difference financially, you'd have more than enough fame/visibility to be making all of that lost revenue back and then some off of sales.

Stephen King and George R.R. Martin I'm sure have their books pirated plenty, but they're so visible that it's a drop in the bucket.

Simply put, the more visible you are, the more you're going to be pirated and the more pirated you are the more visible you are and the more visible you are the greater your readership and the more money you're making off of sales anyway.

Konrath is right, if piracy winds up leading to you having a larger platform and your work thus winds up in the hands of more and more people, consider yourself lucky and milk that attention for all its worth.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

jaehaerys said:


> It's all about the numbers. By the time you'd be popular enough that you'd have enough people pirating your work to truly make a difference financially, you'd have more than enough fame/visibility to be making all of that lost revenue back and then some off of sales.
> 
> Stephen King and George R.R. Martin I'm sure have their books pirated plenty, but they're so visible that it's a drop in the bucket.
> 
> Simply put, the more visible you are, the more you're going to be pirated and the more pirated you are the more visible you are and the more visible you are the greater your readership and the more money you're making off of sales anyway.


This doesn't speak to my objection at all. It doesn't work on its own either. King and Martin are published by big houses with big paper sales through big paper channels. Where's the evidence that easily pirated digital self-pubbers get rich before they get ripped off and that this magical law will continue in the future?



> Konrath is right, if piracy winds up leading to you having a larger platform and your work thus winds up in the hands of more and more people, consider yourself lucky and milk that attention for all its worth.


The idea that you can build a platform from pirate channels assumes there's sell-through to the paid market. I have yet to see any evidence of this, and it conflicts with consumer behaviour everywhere else. People shop at one place by default for one type of thing, and go to other places when they can't get something there or the savings justify it. Yet we're expected to believe that pirates will migrate to the paying market instead of waiting for the pirated version. Maybe some do and will. But they are and will be the exceptions rather than the rule.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

WHDean said:


> I suggest the burden of proof lies on the other side: Where's the evidence that piracy does not hurt sales?


Nope.

If you're making a claim that you're hurt, the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to the world to prove you weren't hurt.

When a crime is committed, they call witnesses who can corroborate. They don't call on people who didn't see or hear anything.

For example, if I claim I have a leprechaun in my attic, it's up to me to prove it. It isn't up to you to prove I don't have a leprechaun.
If I say that something is hurting me, and I draw a specious correlation to something else that is happening at the same time, I need to prove there is a connection.

Or else global warming is caused by the demise of piracy on the seven seas. (Thank you Flying Spaghetti Monster).

This is why the Scientific Method demands a control.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Edward Trimnell said:


> If books are widely available on the Internet for free, then sooner or later, the business model of selling books does go away. JA Konrath's glib suggestion to "start selling tee shirts" isn't going to work for mid-list authors. (It would be a reach even for Stephen King. How many people really want a Stephen King tee shirt?)


The business model is going to go away?

Can you name a business model that went away which wasn't replaced by another earning model?

I cannot. IP has value, and continues to have value, even in the age of YouTube and giving it away for free.

I'm not glib, brother. I've learned this.



Edward Trimnell said:


> Talk to indie musicians about this: The music business was decimated 15 years ago by rampant piracy, and musicians are still struggling as a result. And as articles like the one below suggest, the ones most hurt by piracy are not the Taylor Swifts, but the emerging (i.e., midlist) musicians:
> 
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2016/02/01/how-online-piracy-hurts-emerging-artists/#1f1fafa07774


These same musicians who earn a dime on a $15 CD?

I don't have any desire to fisk the Forbes article. But anyone can Google how Napster led to sales, rather than decimated them.

I don't think that pirates are a "free marketing team", I do think they are a symptom of success. If you're being file-shared, you can make a living.

Show me a single instance that denies this, based on the scientific method.


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## DarkScribe (Aug 30, 2012)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think that pirates are never going to pay and those who pay don't pirate. Ninety-five percent of those sites that claim they have your book don't really have your book. They have scraped information from Amazon and they're malware sites. Is pirating cool? No. How much money are you really going to get back if you obsess about it, though? To me there are better ways to spend my time because time is money in my world.


There has been a lot of discussion on the fact of piracy. but little on the method. The suggestion that most sites offering pirated material are malware sites that only offer a pretend novel is wrong. For the inexperienced pirate, maybe that might sometimes be the case, but for those who know what they are doing, finding a copy of almost any modern popular novel is safe and simple. This is because experienced pirates don't simply enter the name of the novel they want into their favourite search engine, they use a dedicated BitTorrent client to find and manage the downloading. Such software allows them to rate the safety and quality of the download - almost like Amazon's reviews. Such clients can use TOR and are almost impossible to control. Last year we did a check on availability using Vuze, one of the more popular clients, and found that all but a handful of every NYT bestselling novel was available. They even have an Amazon category with most of the top 100 available. 
For some reason, although there has been a crackdown on Movie, TV and music piracy, there has been little focus on literature. As long as TOR exists and software like Vuze exists, pirating of books will remain an unpleasant fact of life.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

JA Konrath said:


> Nope.
> 
> If you're making a claim that you're hurt, the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to the world to prove you weren't hurt.
> 
> ...


You're confusing tort law and criminal law. Piracy is already a crime, so I hardly have to prove being wronged by piracy. The question at issue is damages. In logical terms, the proposition to be proved or refuted is that, in addition to being a crime, piracy causes a loss to the pirated.

Your conclusion that piracy does not cause a loss to the pirated rests on the indefensible premise that pirates only read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies because they can pirate these things. In other words, you can only get to the conclusion that piracy doesn't cost sales via the untenable proposition that pirates would stop consuming entertainment if they couldn't pirate it. Because you need to throw human nature out the window on the way to your conclusion, the burden of proof rests on you.

I fail to see how you could make even a probative case. No doubt the lower cost (assuming piracy really is cheaper or cheaper for some) will increase consumption. But to show no loss, you need to show that the ability to pirate has caused a demand for entertainment that did not exist before and that is completely dependent on the existence of the pirate channel (and thus independent of the paying market). That's nonsensical. No mass of people's desire to read books came from and depends on the existence of piracy.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

I'm not worried about piracy. What is the difference between now and thirty years ago where I'd borrow a book from a friend? Someone paid for it somewhere and there was no control inside a paperback saying "don't lend this out."

I read a lot of books that way. Was I a pirate? I also bought a lot of paperbacks and loaned many of them out. Was I a vile distributor of pirated product?

Libraries let you read all the books you want for free.

Nope, not worried about piracy. Maybe that's why so many middle class people are pirates - maybe they were used to loaning and borrowing books without the author or publisher policing them on where their book was.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Edward Trimnell said:


> But criminal behavior can be disruptive to innovation, to the detriment of both consumers and creators. I'm sure you're aware of the KDP scammers who have taken money away from both authors and Amazon. No one benefits from that behavior except the criminals. And eventually, it could lead Amazon to curtail KDP--which could harm all of us.


Well...

As far as money goes, KDP isn't zero sum. If I get paid a share, it doesn't take away from your share, because the pot is determined after the page reads have happened, not prior to them.

The scammers have taken bestseller slots, but it remains to be seen how much that extra visibility boosts sales.

The scammers have also taken All Star money. But that's a bonus, not a salary. And it's at Amazon's discretion.

If KDP is the cash cow we all believe it is, then there is no reason for Amazon to curtail it, even if some aren't playing fair. But there is no business, anywhere, that doesn't have some players cheating.



Edward Trimnell said:


> Likewise, with the piracy sites. Let's not romanticize these rackets. They are criminal enterprises whose purpose is to transfer income from authors to the owners of the sites. (Almost all of them have some kind of a revenue model, usually based on showing ads or distributing malware.)
> 
> I'm all for innovation and making things cheaper, but this doesn't require criminal behavior.


I drive over the speed limit, enjoy many kinds of illegal drugs, have had the kind of sex that would get me arrested in several states, and I've pirated movies, books, and music.

All are illegal. And, I believe, that's a problem with the laws, not with my behavior. I've blogged at length about how copyright, in its current Draconian US form, is harmful. Not just to artists, but to society.

It's great for big business, though.



Edward Trimnell said:


> To cite your example of the $15 CD, in which the musicians were making $1 (assuming that was the case): A better situation would be a $5 CD (or download) in which the musician makes $4, as this shares the benefits of innovation with both consumers and creators. But how would it be advantageous (or fair) to simply turn all the benefits over to a criminal piracy site? And why should any creator support that?


Not $1. Ten cents.

And your argument is fallacious. There are no cases where pirates get all benefits. In fact, pirates don't make any money. They share, and they acquire without paying, but they don't make a buck. Pirate sites make a ton of money through ads (and, more recently, through BTC mining), but they don't actually do any of the file sharing. They just facilitate it.



Edward Trimnell said:


> My point is: I don't want to give the piracy sites *anything*, if it can be helped. There are plenty of legitimate ways of making creative work cheaper (and free, as a marketing technique) without piracy.
> 
> I agree that piracy is going to continue (like all criminal behavior) but let's call it what it is: criminal behavior.


It's criminal behavior because current laws state it is. Laws change. Prior to R v W, abortion was criminal. Until a few years ago, in Colorado, pot was criminal. Did the inherent nature of weed magically go from "bad" to "good" because some mornic lawmakers finally got woke?

I've yet to see a single credible study that shows how piracy harms anyone. But there have been studies that show how piracy helps. Here's one of many:

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

WHDean said:


> Your conclusion that piracy does not cause a loss to the pirated rests on the indefensible premise that pirates only read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies because they can pirate these things. In other words, you can only get to the conclusion that piracy doesn't cost sales via the untenable proposition that pirates would stop consuming entertainment if they couldn't pirate it. Because you need to throw human nature out the window on the way to your conclusion, the burden of proof rests on you.


I'm not the one throwing human nature out the window here. It's human nature to communicate, and to share. You've never loaned a book to your sister?

Digital media cannot be owned. It is licensed. That iTunes library you've spent $5000 on over the course of your life? Legally, your heirs can't inherit it.

There have been many studies that show how pirates consume more paid media than non-pirates. https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-consumers-130510/



WHDean said:


> demand for entertainment that did not exist before and that is completely dependent on the existence of the pirate channel (and thus independent of the paying market). That's nonsensical.


Really? Ever been to YouTube?

While YouTube is voluntary, whereas being pirated is not, it is still a channel where artists freely share without any monetary compensation. Only in its later years did YouTube monetize. When it began, no one made money. And even now, many uploaders don't opt for ads.

No one has been able to prove that free media hurts paid media. One of the biggest type of media pirates is TV shows. This is TVs fault. If they made the show available after the airdate, piracy wouldn't be required to view a show you missed.

But there has always been unfounded worry. Musicians actually feared recordings, because they thought if people could own a record, no one would pay to hear them play. Movies feared TV. Music producers feared cassettes. Everyone feared the recordable CD player. And yet none of these distruptions ever stopped media from being produced, and monetarily consumed.

Big business has always windowed media. And while it has made Big Business billions of dollars, it is contrary to what consumers actually want. I've spoken to bigshot editors and CEOs who actually said, with a straight face, that consumers wanted the $30 hardcover first, and liked waiting a full year for the more reasonable paperback.

It's impossible to show that piracy harms sales, except in one case. When the media is being purposely restricted, sales can suffer. That's because demand outweighs supply. But when media is available easily and cheaply, there is a very good case to be made that those who pirate it wouldn't have paid for it in the first place.

Let's look at weed. It's illegal in many states. But the demand is there, and the black market meets that demand. Make it legal, and the need for the black market dwindles.

Make the media cheaply and widely and legally available, and there's no need to fileshare. With the staggering amount of free media already available, you can spend many lifetimes consuming media without breaking any laws.

Everyone on KBoards knows the value of free. We've all done Countdown deals, or jumped through hoops to make something permafree. But mention piracy, and there is near-universal panic about free media. Not because free is bad. But because choice has been taken away.

I understand how not having control over your IP can be frightening. But unless someone is printing and selling your work without permission, don't sweat piracy. There is no more competition between your KDP ebooks and pirates sharing your mobis than there is with consumers who buy first edition hardcovers and those who only shop at Half Price Books.


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## amdonehere (May 1, 2015)

We can't really compare to musicians because musicians can use streaming and downloads as loss leaders to promote live concerts where they can try to make their money back. I don't think readers would flock to see us and buy $100+ tickets for a live reading . . . .


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## KBaker (Feb 5, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> As I see this (besides the story being a single instance and anecdotal), this issue is poorly-managed e-ARCs. I think that when you have a voracious audience many of whom don't have terribly much money desperately waiting for the next book and you distribute e-ARCs, you're asking for trouble.


Upon thinking about the situation this ^ is pretty much Stiefvater's situation. The eARC was distrubted too early and impatient readers jumped on the chance to read it before release. I really don't think price had anything to do with it considering her sales were consistent for the previous 2 books. She was already well-established prior to her Raven Cycle series so a random drop-off on book 3 shouldn't have happened. the eARC getting distributed well before the release was the publisher's mistake.

So basically: pirating books before release can/will hurt sales (especially in a well-established series). After release: it may still hurt but not as much.



Laran Mithras said:


> I'm not worried about piracy. What is the difference between now and thirty years ago where I'd borrow a book from a friend? Someone paid for it somewhere and there was no control inside a paperback saying "don't lend this out."
> 
> I read a lot of books that way. Was I a pirate? I also bought a lot of paperbacks and loaned many of them out. Was I a vile distributor of pirated product?
> 
> ...


I don't believe lending/borrowing is considered piracy. It's more of making illegal copies to sell for your own monetary gain. But I get your point. The line is a little blurred when it comes to piracy in which you're the one downloading the content. I almost understand the mindset of: "Well, libraries let you read for free. What's the difference?" To me the difference is the monetary gain. The pirate sites gain money from ads and traffic, so technically they're illegally making money from the content of other creators. Libraries don't run to make profit. Most even let you get a free card. 
But then that brings up used bookstores. After a book is purchased once, publishers and authors no longer make money from it no matter how many times it's resold.
The line is too fuzzy.

My opinion: Most people would rather buy a book than spend time searching for a legit free download. Those who consistently search for a free version before buying aren't your target audience.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

KateEllison said:


> I'd say 50-60 percent of YA readers are adults. At least.


And not all teenagers are without money. Besides, indie ebooks tend to be priced very reasonably. The same kind of teenagers who would make bookstore purchases in the old days would certainly be able to afford ebooks today.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

JA Konrath said:


> Nope.
> 
> If you're making a claim that you're hurt, the burden of proof is on you. It's not up to the world to prove you weren't hurt.
> 
> ...


Piracy is against the law. You don't have to prove you're hurt by it to seek legal action.

There's not much we can do about piracy, and I doubt it hurts as much as this author believes it does, but let's not pretend it's a victimless crime.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Just to add another link 

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/152921-why-people-pirate-in-south-africa.html It doesn't mention books, but still makes interesting reading.

The majority of South Africans pirate because it is convenient, rather than to save money. This is one of the findings of MyBroadband's 2016 South African Online Piracy Survey.

The survey was completed by 2,385 IT professionals and tech-savvy South African broadband users.

The results showed that 65% of respondents have pirated movies, TV shows, and music over the last 12 months.

It further showed that 44% of tech-savvy consumers who pirate online are DStv subscribers, while 34% of pirates subscribe to a video streaming service.

It is interesting to note that around 50% of people who pirate online regularly buy movies and games.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Crystal_ said:


> Piracy is against the law.


That's true. But positive law is arbitrary. What is illegal today may be deemed legal - or even decriminalized - tomorrow (as JA Konrath noted above).

As for whether piracy _should_ be against the law, that, to me, is a whole 'nuther debate.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

WHDean said:


> This doesn't speak to my objection at all. It doesn't work on its own either. King and Martin are published by big houses with big paper sales through big paper channels. Where's the evidence that easily pirated digital self-pubbers get rich before they get ripped off and that this magical law will continue in the future?


You don't get pirated to any great extent without being popular first. Thousands of people aren't usually going to pirate a largely invisible, non-sought-after book.



> The idea that you can build a platform from pirate channels assumes there's sell-through to the paid market. I have yet to see any evidence of this, and it conflicts with consumer behaviour everywhere else. People shop at one place by default for one type of thing, and go to other places when they can't get something there or the savings justify it. Yet we're expected to believe that pirates will migrate to the paying market instead of waiting for the pirated version. Maybe some do and will. But they are and will be the exceptions rather than the rule.


If you're being pirated widely, it does mean your work is going into the hands of more people. That's just math. But then again, if you're being pirated widely, your work is already known to many people anyway. Again, this isn't an issue for most indies who are largely invisible in the market. Again, it's not like pirates are lining up around the block to pirate a book nobody's heard of from an author who's a virtual unknown.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Puddleduck said:


> Yet it seems that your position rests on the premise that someone who pirates a copy of digital content never ever buys a legit copy of that same digital content. Which is untrue.
> 
> Obviously most of them won't, but it's not a "one pirated copy = one lost sale" equation.


These are both strawmen. I didn't say pirates never buy legal content and nothing I claimed depends on that being true. I said there's no evidence of sell-through from the pirate market. And I explicitly said in my first post that I'm not claiming a one-to-one loss and I implied it in the second post in the lower price remark. Nor did I claim to know what the loss-per-download is, only that there has to be a loss proportionate to the size of the pirate market.



JA Konrath said:


> I'm not the one throwing human nature out the window here. It's human nature to communicate, and to share. You've never loaned a book to your sister?
> 
> Digital media cannot be owned. It is licensed. That iTunes library you've spent $5000 on over the course of your life? Legally, your heirs can't inherit it.
> 
> ...


I don't see how this speaks against my point. My only point is that the no loss from piracy claim cannot be true unless human economic behaviour does not apply in this one case. Like I said, I do not claim to know what the loss is exactly, but the apparent size of the pirate market says it's significant. And it's likely more significant for authors whose primary income is digital content.

Still, I will say this about your remarks. I don't buy the implicit premise that piracy will remain constant. I suspect that the pirate market is only being kept in check by the unseen costs of participation. It requires technical know-how to navigate and both malware and convenience impose costs that put the lie to whole "free stuff" business. But this could all change tomorrow.

As for the research about pirates, the data is equivocal. The survey is being interpreted to mean that pirates buy more stuff than non-pirates. But change the categories to the far more neutral term consumer, and you have a more neutral interpretation: Larger consumers of digital content pirate more than smaller consumers. That doesn't lend support to either case.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

jaehaerys said:


> If you're being pirated widely, it does mean your work is going into the hands of more people. That's just math.


It does not matter how many hands have your book if none of those hands are paying for it. Being the most-read author in Russia and China is utterly useless. The same applies to pirate markets here. Where's the evidence for the sell-through to the paying market? Your remarks say the opposite: Authors are pirated in proportion to their paying market popularity, not the other way around.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Puddleduck said:


> That's exactly the point I was responding to, though. There _is _sell through. I know because I've done it myself (buy legit copies, sometimes multiples in different formats, of the exact same thing I pirated--usually of something I wouldn't have ever been exposed to if I hadn't pirated it first). You may say that's only anecdote, not evidence, but if I did it, I'm sure there are plenty of others who do it. It doesn't need to be _everyone _to be _not no one_.
> 
> (And no, I don't pirate anymore, haven't for years, but I did at one time, so I know a little of why people do it.)


We have stories of people monetizing social media content that went viral; e.g., the _Go the F*** to Sleep story, S*** My Dad Says,_ and even Andy Weir's _The Martian_. Where are the comparable examples of someone successfully monetizing on the back of spreading through piracy channels? I hear crickets.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Puddleduck said:


> That doesn't really respond to what I said. You said there's no evidence of sell through. I gave you evidence in the form of my personal experience. If you intend this as a response to that, please clarify your meaning.


I base my conclusions on consumer behaviour. Most people shop in the same places most of the time, so most people will get their next book from the same place they got their last one, most of the time. This has to be the default assumption about paying and pirate markets until someone shows some good evidence that it doesn't work the way it works everywhere else. None of this rules out your behaviour, which is why I offered some anecdotes that would amount to something. If being pirated generates word of mouth in the paid market, there must be some examples of this spillover--something like the monetized social media stories. But no one has ever shown me any; the spillover only goes from paid to pirate, not the reverse. Now, this doesn't mean it can't happen. It just means it ought to happen now and then if word of mouth in the pirate markets counts for anything.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

My YA books are pirated more than my adult books, even though they sell less. On very rare occasions, pirates end up buying books. I can see that when I get sales in a country where I usually don't sell much and they'll always buy the books that are missing on the pirate sites. For example, someone will buy book 4 and 5 in a series, but never the second or the third since those have been pirated (book 1 tends to be free, so I don't count that). Also, when I had what I thought was a disappointing book launch a few years ago, I realized someone put up a pirate copy on Scribd, and I think it was the first result on Google when someone searched for the book title. Once I got it taken down, my sales recovered. 

The only thing that worries me is that many teens who learned how to pirate because they didn't have money and credit cards to buy will keep doing that when they get older because it's so easy. There are also pirates who only know pirate sites, and they'll request my permafrees on there, even though they could get them legally without any problem in any format they need through Smashwords or any other vendor.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Puddleduck said:


> I disagree that it's more or less universal that people who get content from one location will always and only (or even primarily) continue to get it from that location. You say that like it's a definite truth, but I don't think it is. Most people don't only shop at one store, even for similar items, if they have a choice of others. Why does _your _default assumption _have to be_ the default assumption, as you claim?


Because it's a fact, one you could easily look up because nothing is studied more than consumer behaviour. Here are some 2017 figures:



> The International Council of Shopping Centers' (ICSC) survey on brand loyalty found that the majority of U.S. adults are loyal to both product-brands (82%) and retailers (84%).


Is 84% "primarily" enough for you? This is why I didn't cite anything and no one but you challenged me: It is common knowledge that people stick to their stores and brands.



> You're basically making an assumption based on what you call "consumer behavior" and then challenging those of us who disagree to present evidence to the contrary. Except people have linked to things that show that pirates buy a lot of legit copies of things, and that is also not good enough for you. I'm not sure what kind of evidence you're looking for that pirates do also buy legit copies of things (again, yes, including legit copies of the exact things they also pirate) if what we've already given you isn't good enough.


Most of the studies presented here don't contradict what I said. I spoke to one of Konrath's studies above. Jan's study found, for example, that 50% of people who regularly pirate also buy movies and games. How does that prove that people don't stick to their channels? All that means is that half the pirates surveyed couldn't get everything they wanted from pirate sites.

Konrath did cite one that seemed to undercut my loss claim a little bit. He cited a blogger who cited a study that was "suppressed" by the EU. (Oh, yes, of course, the Man is hiding the truth!) Did either you, Konrath, or the blogger even read any of that study? I suspect not. Because if you had read even the executive summary, you see major errors: Table S.3 Estimate of displacement rates (p. 14) says -38% for books, meaning 38 of every 100 illegal downloads are lost sales. Yet the text describing the table says "For books, the reported number of illegal streams is negligible. The estimated displacement rate of illegal book downloads is insignificant." Huh? Which number is right, the table or the description? Maybe this is why the report was "suppressed." This is why you should actually read the thing before presuming to lecture someone about ignoring evidence based on what a blogger or anyone else says it says.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

I'm fully in the piracy is wrong camp, and I'd love to see it stomped out. But when I look at the emotional toll of trying to play whack-a-mole with piracy sites, the impossibility of knowing how well it's working, and the time and energy spent that would take away from other activities, I can only see a really terrible return on my investment. Look at author of the linked article, for example. How much new work is she producing versus stressing about and trying to bring down pirates, and then struggling to produce more books because it has left her drained and demoralized?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe I'm better off both financially and emotionally by ignoring pirates and working on my next book instead.


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## Steve Voelker (Feb 27, 2014)

MonkeyScribe said:


> I'm fully in the piracy is wrong camp, and I'd love to see it stomped out. But when I look at the emotional toll of trying to play whack-a-mole with piracy sites, the impossibility of knowing how well it's working, and the time and energy spent that would take away from other activities, I can only see a really terrible return on my investment. Look at author of the linked article, for example. How much new work is she producing versus stressing about and trying to bring down pirates, and then struggling to produce more books because it has left her drained and demoralized?
> 
> I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe I'm better off both financially and emotionally by ignoring pirates and working on my next book instead.


There is definitely a point of diminishing returns. I send takedown notices when I find an audiobook posted on youtube, or if I come across something popping up in normal search results. But there is no way I'm going to rid the world of every pirated copy of my work. And for the most part, my time is better spent creating new words and finding actual, paying readers for them.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Steve Voelker said:


> I send takedown notices when I find an audiobook posted on youtube,


Heh heh. One of my projects this winter is to start putting up my audiobooks on YouTube. I know it can be invaluable free advertising, because I've bought books that I first heard on YouTube for free.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

JA Konrath said:


> Heh heh. One of my projects this winter is to start putting up my audiobooks on YouTube. I know it can be invaluable free advertising, because I've bought books that I first heard on YouTube for free.


I constantly do that with music. Hear it on YouTube, buy it on Amazon.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

MonkeyScribe said:


> I'm fully in the piracy is wrong camp, and I'd love to see it stomped out. But when I look at the emotional toll of trying to play whack-a-mole with piracy sites, the impossibility of knowing how well it's working, and the time and energy spent that would take away from other activities, I can only see a really terrible return on my investment. Look at author of the linked article, for example. How much new work is she producing versus stressing about and trying to bring down pirates, and then struggling to produce more books because it has left her drained and demoralized?
> 
> I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe I'm better off both financially and emotionally by ignoring pirates and working on my next book instead.


Yeah. It's not often I pull out the "I'm a writer, not a (whatever)" card, but piracy is one of those times. I can do all those self-publishing non-writer things like arranging for my own editor and advertising, but those net me tangible results. Sending takedown notices to websites results in very little, from what I've seen.

I'd love to see an end to piracy, but it's just not something I'm willing to spend extra brain power on, since I already have plenty of things to do.

Good for the article writer, that she feels like she's succeeded in her goal. Most of us are in situations that bear little similarity to hers, and there's no way to know for sure what caused her end result. As everyone who took statistics has been saying here, correlation =/= causation. There are too many variables in her situation, and not enough hard data.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Sam B said:


> Good for the article writer, that she feels like she's succeeded in her goal. Most of us are in situations that bear little similarity to hers, and there's no way to know for sure what caused her end result. As everyone who took statistics has been saying here, correlation =/= causation.


And more importantly, as you point out, correlation in her case does not equal causation in mine.


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## Sam B (Mar 28, 2017)

MonkeyScribe said:


> And more importantly, as you point out, correlation in her case does not equal causation in mine.


Excellent point!


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

WHDean said:


> It does not matter how many hands have your book if none of those hands are paying for it. Being the most-read author in Russia and China is utterly useless. The same applies to pirate markets here. Where's the evidence for the sell-through to the paying market? Your remarks say the opposite: Authors are pirated in proportion to their paying market popularity, not the other way around.


Which assumes those extra hands will continue to not pay for your work in perpetuity which unless you're psychic is impossible to determine.

As for the debate at large, I'll say it again...the only authors who are being pirated widely are authors with sizable enough platforms that make their work noticeable and sought after by readers. And if you have a sizable enough platform that your work is sought after, chances are financially you're doing just fine...even if you're not making Martin or King kind of money. 

Piracy is annoying, and there is an argument to be made about the morality of it, but other than that it's pretty much a non-issue...especially for small-time indies, i.e. most of us.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Edward Trimnell said:


> So here's a compromise: Close down websites that host pirated content, or act as intermediaries in the distribution of pirated content (especially if they have a revenue model, which most of them do).


Holy net neutrality, Batman!

Before we start censoring the internet of content we don't approve of, let's look at the fallacy in that statement. Pirate sites DO NOT host content. Peers host the content. With torrents, a peer-to-peer network doesn't exist on Pirate Bay. it exists on personal computers that all share scraps of data.

In the case of file lockers, the data is encrypted so the host--I'm looking at you Kim Dotcom--has no idea what files are being uploaded and downloaded.

It's like shutting down an alley and blaming the city for the drug deals that happen there.



Edward Trimnell said:


> Like you, I grew up in the 1980s. My first copy of AC/DC's "Back in Black" was "pirated". I copied it from my friend's vinyl LP album. I'd be willing to bet that you engaged in similar behavior.


Ha! I just pirated that album. I bought it on cassette, didn't want to spend two hours ripping it to wav files, so I downloaded a 320 file of it. Also, I just saw AC/DC in Chicago, fifth row with my family, paid $800 per ticket, and blew another $300 in merch.



Edward Trimnell said:


> What I *didn't* do is make 1 million copies of "Back in Black" and make them freely available to anyone in Cincinnati, then build a business model around my piracy. That's where the complaint is.


Well, that's not how piracy works. No one makes a million copies of anything. I'm talking about Internet filesharing here, not the huge bootleg DVD market that begins in Malaysia and winds up next to the three card monte stands on the streets of NY. I'm talking torrents and file lockers.

In those cases, it is one person sharing digital media. The sites don't host it, or don't know about it. And a great deal of the digital media that is shared is legal, or at least harmless because the media is no longer available for sale.

Torrent sites and file locker sites don't make money through selling pirated data. They make money through ads, premium memberships, and most recently, BTC mining.

The only difference between you taping your friend's LP and filesharing is familiarity, distance, and scope.

Things get really gray when you realize that digital media isn't ownable. It's licensed. If you buy some iTunes songs, you aren't legally allowed to bequeath them to your children after you die. And I really don't want to get into the very long argument of tangibility, intangibly, and loss.

The reason I butted into this thread was to say that piracy will always be here, and trying to stop it is futile and possibly harmful (let's let ISPs start censoring content!), and that there is no reliable evidence that piracy harms artists, businesses, or industries. That may not seem logical. But lots of truths don't seem logical.


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## 9 Diamonds (Oct 4, 2016)

Read and weep:

http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/166952028861/ive-decided-to-tell-you-guys-a-story-about


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Don't really agree. Also, this has been discussed at length here:

https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,257467.0.html


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2017)

There are many roads to piracy. If it's not with e-ARCS you can experience the same problem when the actual e-book releases. Anything digital (movies, music, books) is easy game for a lot of people, unfortunately.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Merged two threads ont he same topic, discussing the same article . . . sorry for any confusion.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

This thread made me curious. I hadn't looked at my books in ages for pirating, so I did some searches. First, I searched the book title with the word free. There weren't too many, which I thought was great. Then I searched the book titles with my author name and pdf. I found *176* sites that were giving free pdfs, mobis, or epubs for "joining" when I'd had enough. There were full Google pages of some of my books on rip-off websites (the full pages were run by the same people), and I'm not a big-name author. I'm hardly visible. I wonder how lucrative these sites are.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

I'm gonna throw out the hypothesis that her lack of sales have nothing to do with pirating and everything to do with her social media behavior. 

Like the idea that piracy has diverted some significant amount of sales, it's an educated guess.


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## MClayton (Nov 10, 2010)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> I think that pirates are never going to pay and those who pay don't pirate.


This isn't true, though. Several years ago I belonged to a local book club. The women were voracious readers who no doubt spent hundreds of dollars per year on books. We met monthly, and were usually scheduled to read and discuss 2-3 books per meeting. These were also all fairly well-to-do, professional women - and man, did they love to get their hands on pirated books. The day after a meeting emails were flying around telling members where to get the assigned books for free. It was like a game - "Let's see if we can find this somewhere for free." These weren't women who wouldn't pay for a book; these were women who made a game out of getting books for free. Your neighbor, my neighbor, our kids' teachers, the pediatrician, the lawyer with the office on Main Street - women who would happily pay for a book they wanted, but thought it was fun to find a free version online.

When I questioned the practice, I no longer got the emails. 

I think the "they wouldn't pay anyway" trope has been repeated so often we no longer even think about it, we just repeat it. And we'd _like_ to think it's true, but it isn't.

Another oft-repeated statement I'm not sure is true: "It hurts the big authors, but doesn't make a difference to authors who don't sell much to begin with."

It causes the "big" authors to lose _more_ money, no doubt. But I'm not sure it makes as big a dent in their day-to-day living. If I lose the income from twenty pirated books per month, that's enough to pay my kid's lunch money. As someone above said, it hurts everyone.

I'm the first to give a book away if I know someone wants it and can't afford it. But those women I discussed above? They could certainly afford it, and I don't think they're an anomaly. I think they're more common than we want to believe.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

MClayton said:


> Another oft-repeated statement I'm not sure is true: "It hurts the big authors, but doesn't make a difference to authors who don't sell much to begin with."
> 
> It causes the "big" authors to lose _more_ money, no doubt. But I'm not sure it makes as big a dent in their day-to-day living. If I lose the income from twenty pirated books per month, that's enough to pay my kid's lunch money. As someone above said, it hurts everyone.


I would guess that the ratios are fairly similar all the way up the chain. For example, you lose 15% of sales to piracy at 100 sales per month or 100,000 sales per month, and 50% of those people would have paid money for it otherwise. Completely inventing the percentages, of course, since there's no way to know, but I'm guessing the ratio looks fairly constant once you gain the bare minimum of visibility to have people pirating in the first place.


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## Laran Mithras (Nov 22, 2016)

Safe, certain, sure, common? I see a lot of that in here.

A pirate will never pay for the book.
A person who receives a copy from the pirate may or may not go buy the book - and also may become a customer with the rest of your books.

*I think those two things are sure and certain.*

It's the pirate who is the problem - and I'll just repeat, when I was younger I swapped books with friends all the time. I also read in the library for free. Bought a lot of books, too. I was not a pirate and therefore not engaged in piracy. If I really liked the author I read, I went and bought my own copy and more of the backlist.


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## readingril (Oct 29, 2010)

I have friend who purchases ebooks over $10, strips the DRM, and shares with friends (non internet) and they'll split the cost. I don't think the book goes beyond their group? Then, if and when the book goes on sale they each buy it. I know they did it with Diana Gabaldon's latest.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

MClayton said:


> This isn't true, though. Several years ago I belonged to a local book club. The women were voracious readers who no doubt spent hundreds of dollars per year on books. We met monthly, and were usually scheduled to read and discuss 2-3 books per meeting. These were also all fairly well-to-do, professional women - and man, did they love to get their hands on pirated books. The day after a meeting emails were flying around telling members where to get the assigned books for free. It was like a game - "Let's see if we can find this somewhere for free." These weren't women who wouldn't pay for a book; these were women who made a game out of getting books for free. Your neighbor, my neighbor, our kids' teachers, the pediatrician, the lawyer with the office on Main Street - women who would happily pay for a book they wanted, but thought it was fun to find a free version online.
> 
> When I questioned the practice, I no longer got the emails.
> 
> ...


*I'm the first to give a book away if I know someone wants it and can't afford it. But those women I discussed above? They could certainly afford it, and I don't think they're an anomaly. I think they're more common than we want to believe. 
*
I agree. It's the only explanation I can think of for the huge number of piracy sites for my books, which are women's novels that provoke discussion. I told a friend about it. He suggested that authors might consider sending emails to the FBI complaining about the theft of their work and connecting it to fraudulently getting credit card information. I don't know if it would help, but if the FBI got one thousand or more emails--we could all send the same email--it would certainly get attention.


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## Speaker-To-Animals (Feb 21, 2012)

You know when you can guarantee that you're going to lose sales to piracy? When you have rabid fans and it's easier to get the work through piracy than it is through legitimate means. And since we're talking about people _reading the book before it was released_, that seems to be exactly what the author is talking about.

See also PBS. I saw so many people trying to figure out how to watch Downton or Great British Bakeoff because PBS was delaying them by six months. Or the Dr. Who Christmas special before BBC America figured out they should run it at, you know, Christmas. Or the Harry Potter books before they finally released them in ebook format.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

merged with existing thread on this topic -- sorry for any confusion.


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