Ho-hum. Another article about the "napsterization" of e-books. Shock,
horror. Alarums and excursions.

Mr. Stross is only the latest of many to notice that, if more people
are reading e-books, e-book "piracy" might actually damage the
industry. The jury is out on that, but it is something worth thinking
about.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of points in the article that need
addressing.

"When the music industry was 'Napsterized' by free file-sharing, it
suffered a blow from which it hasn’t recovered [...] according to the
Recording Industry Association of America."

This is the fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc". Or, in English, A
happened before B, therefore A caused B.

If you listen to the RIAA they'll tell you anything. But all you really
have is correlation, not causation. While peer-to-peer is probably a
factor, there have been a whole host of economic and market changes in
the intervening years which could also be responsible.

And then there's this gem:

"I will forward the suggestion [that writers learn from the example of
bands who give away content for free] along, as soon as authors can
pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers."

Why does nobody ever remember Baen and its Free Library?

Here's something to refresh Mr. Stross's memory, from his very own
paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/technology/19BAEN.html

This strategy has also been used by folks such as Cory Doctorow and
another writer by the name of Stross—Charles Stross. It doesn't exactly
seem to have hurt them either.

Now, this strategy wouldn't necessarily work for all forms of content,
and the choice of whether to give work away for free should always
reside with the creator of that content—not the pirates. But
pooh-poohing the idea that it CAN work in this way is completely
asinine.
in reference to:
"I will forward the suggestion along, as soon as authors can pack
arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers."
- Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? -
NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

--
Posted By Chris Meadows to Writing On Your Palm at 10/03/2009 09:43:00
PM

The article gets one very basic thing very wrong. The main reasons I
no longer buy much music on CD is twofold; plastic discs of
uncompressed data are impractical to manage, and CD's cost a fricken
fortune for no evident reason.

Physical books share the impracticality, especially given the amount
of travel I try to pack into my life, but the cost is not nearly on
par with the ridiculous pricing of music CD's. And given the media
coverage of how little of the actual CD price which ends up in the
artists hands there is little moral incentive to pay the highway
robbery prices when there is a free alternative a click away.

Plus, the music industry completely botched the whole transition to
electronic distribution by suing and alienating fans instead of
embracing the new opportunities. Some book distributors are already
taking steps to make electronic distribution work for them instead of
against them, and it clearly is working in at least a few cases.

And why does the fact that the book industry is presently relying on
hardback sales mean that this is The One Way It Must Be? Why not rely
on a steady stream of electronic purchases with near zero marginal
cost and no up front printing cost? Sure, the books will still need
editing and marketing, but with low marginal costs and distribution
costs, and the ability to sell directly to cellphones and highly
portable ereaders the potential profit margin is vastly higher.

A luddite article trying to alienate readers from the new, exciting
tools of publication - Mr. Stross does some excellent PR for himself.

Jesper

I totally agree. Below are some of my thoughts on this.

First of all, the recording industry has long been pretty corrupt, with
middlemen getting a lot of the money and most artists not seeing a whole lot
from traditional recording. I am old enough to remember the Payola of the
1960s-- recording companies were essentially bribing radio disk jockies to
play specific songs. Since then it has become an entire industry, with
individuals signing up huge numbers of radio stations and controlling what
they play. They get paid huge bucks by the recording studios and send some
of that along to the stations. Of course all this is on the backs of the
artists who actually make the music, but what could you do?

Today of course you can market your music directly on the Internet by giving
some of it away for free to attract an audience. Then you can make money
with concerts, sale of products such as Tee shirts, etc. And you can turn
out a huge number of people who will buy your records when you do sell them,
partly out of loyalty for having given away that music. The artists actually
probably make considerably more. But for the Recording Industry Assn. and
its members this is a disaster. Remember, they do not represent the artists.
They represent the recording industry, all the people who live off the
artists who now are being disintermediated by the Internet. The recording
industry is particularly vulnerable to this because most of us today store,
carry and listen to our music in electronic form. Once it is on your MP3
player, it really doesn't matter if you copied it from a physical CD or
downloaded it direct over the Internet.

The book publishing industry isn't (as far as I know) nearly as corrupt. But
it has out of necessity a similar economy. It takes a lot of people to print
and distribute books. All of them have to be paid. And the money comes from
the sale of the books. The result is that when you buy a $35 hardback the
writer gets probably less than $1.

Ebook publishers like eReader and Fictionwise give the author close to 50%
of the cover price of the book. I don't know what the deal is with Sony
Reader and Kindle. But the point is, even with some electronic piracy the
writer comes out way ahead. And I doubt that we will ever see the sort of
mass file sharing for books that we do for music. For one thing, it takes
much longer to consume a book. For another, it is an entirely different
audience. And third, people are beginning to discover the huge disadvantage
of file sharing -- open your computer to file sharing and you open
everything on it, not just your music collection. That means you financial
and personal information too.

And as you said, giving away books can get you a readership. I listen to
free podcasts of books by a horror/SF writer named Scott Sigler. He got a
big enough audience that when he finally published his first hardback,
"Infected", he turned out his readership to buy the book on the week it came
out, and he made the bottom of the NY Time Best Seller list.

Another writer I know, an established horror writer, is talking about
sending out an serialized version of a novel he is writing via email, also
to create interest and sales.

However, there are advantages to owning physical books. The book Scott got
on the HY Times Best Seller list was one he has already sent out as a series
of free podcasts over iTunes. Most of the people who bought the book had
alaready heard it for free, legitimately. They bought the book in part out
of loyalty to Scott.

So yes, I totally agree with you. Electronic media means huge change, and I
worry about the replacement of good factual journalism with the screaming
opinionated voices of toe blogisphere. But it also offers opportunities for
artists of various kinds. Much of the screaming is coming from the
intermediaries who are afraid, with good reason, that their businesses and
jobs are severely threatened. Don't get me wrong here, I have sympathy for
honest people whos jobs are going away. but I don't see it as threatening
the creative people as much as many would have us believe.

Bert

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Chris Meadows <robotech.mas...@gmail.com>wrote:

--
Bert Latamore
IT Journalist, Report Writer and Book Doctor
From tweets and blogs to white papers and books --
You provide the information; I craft the words.